Serious Crimes and Adolescents: Should Cognitive Development Play a Role?
Brandallyn M Nunn
Utah State University
Abstract
This paper describes what various opinions, studies, and scientific articles have found about if adolescents – specifically 15 to 16-year-olds – should be tried as adults for serious crimes. It brings up if their cognitive development should have any sway on the courts judgments. This paper will cover the reasons behind if they should be tried as adults at a younger age, or if they should be tried as juveniles and receive the more lenient punishments.
You have seen it on the news. The offense may be a little different in each case, but what they all have in common is an adolescent and a serious crime. …show more content…
But more recent scientific evidence states that the brain is not fully developed until an individual is in their early 20s (Meter 2017). So, one point of view could be that we could not possibly try adolescent offenders as adults because their brains were not fully developed. They did not have the cognitive maturity to make better decisions. Their prefrontal cortex is not fully matured. This part of the brain is in charge of regulating judgment, decision making, and impulse control (Meter 2017). Really the adolescent offender should not be held accountable to an adult sentence when they cannot think fully like and …show more content…
A 14-year-old is more likely to be influenced to not perform criminal behavior because of the consequences it could have, such as if they do something wrong, will their friends be arrested and the peer pressure associated with that, while older adolescents have a higher chance of being less affected by those same things. A recent study done by John Leverso, William Bielby, and Lynette Hoelter examined how social and cognitive factors can shape a serious juvenile offender’s activity. Also, it studied how the cognitive development of adolescents affects the impact of those factors over time (2015). They looked at youth from 14 to 18 years of age who had been convicted of a serious crime. They interviewed them twice – collected when the youth were first interviewed and 18-24 months later – to measure the relationship between criminal behavior and impulsiveness. They found that there was indeed a strong relationship between impulsiveness and behavior regardless of the age of the offender. Younger adolescents were more susceptible to peer pressure and risk for the consequences to friends for their behavior, but older adolescents were less impacted by that. So really the likelihood of repeats in serious behavior can continue after the adolescent becomes an adult. They could be tried as an adult because their behavior patterns will continue on similar
Brandallyn M Nunn
Utah State University
Abstract
This paper describes what various opinions, studies, and scientific articles have found about if adolescents – specifically 15 to 16-year-olds – should be tried as adults for serious crimes. It brings up if their cognitive development should have any sway on the courts judgments. This paper will cover the reasons behind if they should be tried as adults at a younger age, or if they should be tried as juveniles and receive the more lenient punishments.
You have seen it on the news. The offense may be a little different in each case, but what they all have in common is an adolescent and a serious crime. …show more content…
But more recent scientific evidence states that the brain is not fully developed until an individual is in their early 20s (Meter 2017). So, one point of view could be that we could not possibly try adolescent offenders as adults because their brains were not fully developed. They did not have the cognitive maturity to make better decisions. Their prefrontal cortex is not fully matured. This part of the brain is in charge of regulating judgment, decision making, and impulse control (Meter 2017). Really the adolescent offender should not be held accountable to an adult sentence when they cannot think fully like and …show more content…
A 14-year-old is more likely to be influenced to not perform criminal behavior because of the consequences it could have, such as if they do something wrong, will their friends be arrested and the peer pressure associated with that, while older adolescents have a higher chance of being less affected by those same things. A recent study done by John Leverso, William Bielby, and Lynette Hoelter examined how social and cognitive factors can shape a serious juvenile offender’s activity. Also, it studied how the cognitive development of adolescents affects the impact of those factors over time (2015). They looked at youth from 14 to 18 years of age who had been convicted of a serious crime. They interviewed them twice – collected when the youth were first interviewed and 18-24 months later – to measure the relationship between criminal behavior and impulsiveness. They found that there was indeed a strong relationship between impulsiveness and behavior regardless of the age of the offender. Younger adolescents were more susceptible to peer pressure and risk for the consequences to friends for their behavior, but older adolescents were less impacted by that. So really the likelihood of repeats in serious behavior can continue after the adolescent becomes an adult. They could be tried as an adult because their behavior patterns will continue on similar