By Vanguard Staff
A growing number of states are rolling back juvenile justice reforms and expanding the circumstances under which minors can be prosecuted as adults, despite decades of research suggesting that harsher penalties do little to deter crime and may increase recidivism, according to a recent analysis by Atlantic reporter Elizabeth Bruenig.
The article traces the debate through the case of four Indiana teenagers who were charged with felony murder after a burglary in 2012 resulted in the death of one of their accomplices. Although the teens did not directly cause the death, they were prosecuted as adults and initially received sentences of at least 50 years.
The case later became a focal point in discussions about juvenile sentencing. In 2015, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that one teen’s 55-year sentence was “disproportionate” given “what we now know about adolescent brain development and the impact it has on a juvenile’s susceptibility to engaging in risky behaviors.”
While Indiana subsequently adopted reforms aimed at diverting more youth away from the criminal legal system, prosecutors in the state can still charge children as young as 12 as adults in certain cases.
According to the report, recent crime concerns have fueled a new wave of legislation across the country that expands adult prosecution for minors. In Missouri, Gov. Mike Kehoe signed legislation allowing more juveniles to be tried as adults.
“If a juvenile is going to act like an adult and commit a crime like an adult, they need to understand that those, unfortunately, have consequences,” Kehoe said.
The article notes that lawmakers in Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina and Louisiana have also enacted measures making it easier to prosecute youth in adult courts or impose harsher penalties.
Researchers and juvenile justice advocates cited in the article argue that such policies run contrary to decades of evidence.
“We typically see, and we’re certainly seeing it now, an eagerness—it’s not even anxiety; I call it ‘eagerness’—of state legislatures in particular to appear to be tough on crime, and the easiest way to do that is with children,” Rutgers University law professor Laura Cohen told The Atlantic.
Cohen added that young people accused of crimes have “no natural lobbyist constituency,” making them politically vulnerable.
The article reports that juvenile crime and arrests have declined dramatically since the mid-1990s, with FBI data showing reductions of roughly 75 percent since their peak in 1995. Nevertheless, periodic increases in crime rates continue to generate calls for tougher responses to youth offending.
Columbia Law School professor Josh Gupta-Kagan said the United States previously experienced “an explosion of incarceration” during the 1980s and 1990s as states expanded adult prosecution of juveniles and adopted automatic transfer laws.
Subsequent research found little evidence that those policies deterred crime. Instead, many states later embraced “raise the age” reforms that kept more youth cases in juvenile court.
The article points to Massachusetts and Connecticut as examples where raising the age of adult prosecution coincided with substantial declines in youth arrests.
Still, the political momentum behind reform slowed during the pandemic-era rise in crime.
According to Gupta-Kagan, rising crime “took some of the momentum out of” the juvenile justice reform movement.
Cohen described the current moment as one of “equipoise,” with some jurisdictions preserving reforms while others dismantle them. She called the trend “a classic example of bad cases making bad law” and attributed part of the shift to “a shift in political winds” as the country moves politically to the right.
Supporters of tougher juvenile penalties contend that accountability is necessary when minors commit serious crimes.
“We need some accountability,” Peter Moskos, an instructor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Atlantic. “The left won’t talk about punishment at all.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee similarly argued, “Violent criminals shouldn’t be let off the hook just because they are under the age of 18.”
Tennessee state Sen. Brent Taylor defended legislation expanding adult prosecution of youth, stating that “we have to make crime illegal again!”
However, researchers cited in the article argue that neurological science supports treating juveniles differently than adults.
“We’ve got developmental evidence, neuroscience evidence, demonstrating in a really compelling, scientific way how adolescent brains really are different than adult brains and how that does impact decision making,” Gupta-Kagan said.
The article explains that the prefrontal cortex, which governs planning, reasoning and impulse control, continues developing into the early 20s. During adolescence, emotional processing centers of the brain play a larger role in decision-making, contributing to greater impulsivity and susceptibility to peer pressure.
Josh Rovner of the Sentencing Project noted that society already recognizes these developmental differences in other contexts.
“We don’t let them join the Army,” Rovner said. “We don’t let them sign a contract; we certainly don’t let them vote or serve on juries.”
The article highlights research suggesting that transferring youth into adult courts may actually increase future offending. A 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meta-analysis found that juveniles transferred to adult courts generally committed more crimes and more violent crimes than similarly situated youth who remained in juvenile systems.
The study concluded that “transferring juveniles to the adult system is counterproductive as a strategy for preventing or reducing violence.”
Researchers have also documented higher rates of victimization and suicide among minors incarcerated in adult facilities.
“Children who are prosecuted as adults and incarcerated with adults are subjected to rates of victimization that are twice or three times that of those who remain in the youth justice system,” Cohen said.
Rovner further argued that the threat of adult prosecution can pressure young defendants into accepting plea bargains without fully understanding the long-term consequences.
“Young people value the present over the future, and so they’re likely to accept the guilty plea on something that will send them home faster,” Rovner said. “They don’t understand the array of collateral consequences that will follow them for the rest of their lives.”
The article concludes that while calls for tougher punishment often arise after high-profile crimes, a growing body of research suggests that rehabilitation-focused approaches are more effective at reducing future offending and improving long-term outcomes for young people. According to Cohen, a justice system that recognizes the developmental differences of youth “is much better positioned to meet the needs of youth” than one primarily focused on retribution.
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