Rehabilitation Versus Incarceration of Juvenile Offenders: Public Preferences in Four Models for Change States

Analyzes how American juvenile justice system policy has become increasingly punitive over the last few decades and examines citizens' willingness to pay for incarceration versus rehabilitation of youth offenders

Developmental Research and the Child Advocacy Process

This text is excerpted from Grisso, T., & Steinberg, L. (2005). Between a rock and a soft place: Developmental research and the child advocacy process. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34, 619-627

Judgment and decision making in adolescence

In this article, we review the most important findings to have emerged during the past 10 years in the study of judgment and decision making (JDM) in adolescence and look ahead to possible new directions in this burgeoning area of research. Three inter-related shifts in research emphasis are of particular importance and serve to organize this review. First, research grounded in normative models of JDM has moved beyond the study of age differences in risk perception and toward a dynamic account of the factors predicting adolescent decisions. Second, the field has seen widespread adoption of dual-process models of cognitive development that describe 2 relatively independent modes of information processing, typically contrasting an analytic (cold) system with an experiential (hot) one. Finally, there has been an increase in attention to the social, emotional, and self-regulatory factors that influence JDM. This shift in focus reflects the growing influence of findings from developmental neuroscience, which describe a pattern of structural and functional maturation that may set the stage for a heightened propensity to make risky decisions in adolescence

Age differences in strategic planning as indexed by the Tower of London

The present study examined age differences in performance on the Tower of London, a measure of strategic planning, in a diverse sample of 890 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30. Although mature performance was attained by age 17 on relatively easy problems, performance on the hardest problems showed improvements into the early 20s. Furthermore, whereas age-related performance gains by children and adolescents (ages 10–17) on the hardest problems were partially mediated by maturational improvements in both working memory and impulse control, improved performance in adulthood (ages 18+) was fully mediated by late gains in impulse control. Findings support an emerging picture of late adolescence as a time of continuing improvement in planned, goal-directed behavior

Peer Influences on Adolescent Risk Behavior

Moving beyond studies of age differences in “cool” cognitive ­processes related to risk perception and reasoning, new approaches to understanding ­adolescent risk behavior highlight the influence of “hot” social and emotional ­factors on adolescents’ decisions. Building on evidence from developmental neuroscience, we present a theory that highlights an adolescent gap in the developmental timing of neurobehavioral systems underpinning incentive processing and cognitive control. Whereas changes in brain regions involved in incentive processing result in heightened sensitivity to social and emotional rewards in early adolescence, cognitive control systems do not reach full maturity until late adolescence or early adulthood. Within this framework, middle adolescence represents a window of heightened vulnerability to peer influences toward risk-taking behavior. At a time when adolescents spend an increasing amount of time with peers, research suggests that exposure to peer-related stimuli sensitizes the reward system to the reward value of risky behavior. As the cognitive control system gradually matures, adolescents gain the capacity to exercise self-regulation in socio-emotionally challenging situations, reflected by an increasing capacity to resist peer influence

Peer Influences on Adolescent Risk Behavior

Moving beyond studies of age differences in “cool” cognitive ­processes related to risk perception and reasoning, new approaches to understanding ­adolescent risk behavior highlight the influence of “hot” social and emotional ­factors on adolescents’ decisions. Building on evidence from developmental neuroscience, we present a theory that highlights an adolescent gap in the developmental timing of neurobehavioral systems underpinning incentive processing and cognitive control. Whereas changes in brain regions involved in incentive processing result in heightened sensitivity to social and emotional rewards in early adolescence, cognitive control systems do not reach full maturity until late adolescence or early adulthood. Within this framework, middle adolescence represents a window of heightened vulnerability to peer influences toward risk-taking behavior. At a time when adolescents spend an increasing amount of time with peers, research suggests that exposure to peer-related stimuli sensitizes the reward system to the reward value of risky behavior. As the cognitive control system gradually matures, adolescents gain the capacity to exercise self-regulation in socio-emotionally challenging situations, reflected by an increasing capacity to resist peer influence

Social Welfare and Fairness in Juvenile Crime Regulation

The question of how lawmakers should respond to developmental differences between adolescents and adults in formulating juvenile crime policy has been the subject of debate for a generation. A theme of the punitive law reforms that dismantled the traditional juvenile justice system in the 1980s and 1990s was that adolescents were not different from adults in any way that was relevant to criminal punishment – or at least that any differences were trumped by the demands of public safety. But this view has been challenged in recent years; scholars and courts have recognized that adolescents, due to their developmental immaturity, are less culpable than adults and that the principle of proportionality requires that teens be punished less severely for their criminal offenses. Moreover, some scholars have invoked developmental research to challenge the core assumption underlying the punitive law reforms that harsh sanctions promote public safety and reduce the social cost of juvenile crime. And there is evidence that lawmakers are listening. In this Article, we argue that a developmental model of juvenile crime regulation grounded in scientific knowledge about adolescence is both fairer to young offenders and more likely to promote social welfare than a regime that fails to attend to developmental research. We challenge the punitive reformers who have presumed that public safety is enhanced and social welfare promoted if serious juvenile offenders are punished as adults, and who have been unconcerned about whether their approach is compatible with principles of fair punishment. We focus here primarily on the social welfare argument for a separate and more lenient juvenile justice system grounded in a developmental framework. First, the argument for mitigation on the grounds of developmental immaturity is more familiar, and although it supports less punishment, it provides no strong basis for a separate justice system. Moreover, lawmakers and the public care about accountability, but they may care even more about public safety; fears about the threat of young superpredators propelled the transformation of juvenile crime policy that took place in the late twentieth century. Thus, a regime that deals with juveniles more leniently than adults (because they deserve less punishment) is likely to fail in the political arena if public safety is imperiled. In short, the viability of the developmental model depends on evidence that the punitive response of the past generation is not only inconsistent with basic principles of fairness, but also that it has failed to minimize the social cost of juvenile crime, and that regulation based on social science research is more likely to attain this goal