Defense attorneys working in juvenile courts scrutinize evidence, cross-examine police and advocate for specialized services for their young clients. But with heavy caseloads and little time to prepare for hearings, it can be difficult to build a case around the fundamentals of adolescent development and youth crime. Topics like neuroplasticity, synaptic pruning or hot cognition can soar right past most judges’ heads.
A new publicly available resource aims to assist these attorneys, as well as prosecutors, bench officers, probation and parole officers, advocates, incarcerated people and their relatives. The NeuroLaw Library is a free, open-access repository designed to translate the science for actionable use in courts.
The goal is to standardize the notion that young people require and deserve different treatment than adults.
“The courts are still lagging far behind the science,” said library director Stephanie Tabashneck. “The vision is to really leverage neuroscience in the pursuit of a more fair justice system instead of continuing to label kids as somehow dangerous.”
Billed as the nation’s first resource dedicated to expanding the footprint of neuroscience in the criminal justice system, the NeuroLaw Library is a project of the Harvard-based Center for Law, Brain & Behavior and Massachusetts General Hospital. Its tagline reads “convert reading into action.”
The library’s website features relevant open-source journal articles and cutting-edge research; sample motions; a sentencing memorandum; amicus briefs and affidavits. Resources also include toolkits, educational videos, a glossary of legal and scientific terms and neuroscience knowledge that is digestible to the lay public, in part through reliance on AI. Summaries of dense neuroscience research findings can be adjusted to a sixth-grade reading level, Tabashneck said, with expert oversight that ensures accuracy.
Among the extensive archives is a sample expert witness statement penned by forensic psychologist Christen Carson that lays out several key findings for youth. It focuses on their underdeveloped moral reasoning, an inability to correctly weigh risks and impulsive decision-making.
“By biological fact, adolescents wield a brain that, in its circuitry and anatomy, is tilted towards emotion, intensity, impulsivity, and poor self-regulation,” Carson writes.
Tabashneck, a forensic psychologist and attorney, stressed the importance of understanding how teenagers and young adults — ages 13 to 24 — are prone to making risky decisions because of rapid physiological changes in their brains. Those decisions can land youth in situations where they are committing crimes and causing harm to themselves and others.
Thus it’s all the more critical, library backers argue, that all the players in the juvenile courts fully grasp the relevant science. The brain’s frontal lobe — which guides planning and impulse control — is not fully formed until the mid 20s, while the amygdala, where processing emotions occurs, is by that stage already “hyper-developed.” That mismatch of cognitive processes can sometimes result in antisocial behavior.
“It’s like having a Ferrari engine with Smart car brakes,” Tabashneck said.
Brain science as it relates to adolescent development has become a hallmark of changes in juvenile justice policy in the 21st century.
During the 1990s, scientists used a new process known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to detect signs of the growth in the prefrontal cortex. These scans showed the continuing process of brain development during adolescence and early adulthood, with full maturation not occurring until age 26.
The implications of that research for the juvenile justice system emerged with a string of landmark Supreme Court cases, starting with Roper v. Simmons in 2004. The case involved Christopher Simmons, who committed a grisly murder at age 17 and was sentenced to death.
But the nation’s highest court ruled that capital punishment for a minor constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In addition to propensity for immature and irresponsible behavior, the justices also noted research revealing the influence of peer pressure on young people and their inability to escape harmful environments.
“By biological fact, adolescents wield a brain that, in its circuitry and anatomy, is tilted towards emotion, intensity, impulsivity, and poor self-regulation.”
— forensic psychologist Christen Carson
By the same token, young people also possess a higher likelihood of redemption, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority decision.
“From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed,” Kennedy wrote.
That case was followed by four precedent-setting decisions between 2005 and 2015 that established kids are not simply small adults — and they shouldn’t be viewed as such in the eyes of the law. As a result, young people under age 18 can no longer be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, and law enforcement must consider a child’s age during interrogations.
Marsha Levick, co-founder and chief legal officer of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, said despite the Supreme Court decisions and broad acceptance these days that kids should be treated differently than adults, knowledge about neuroscience varies widely across states and the thousands of local courts handling juvenile cases. That’s why the new library is so needed, she added.
“It’s important that we make this information widely available, so that it is not just in the hands of a select few, but everyone involved in the charging, prosecution and resolution of cases involving children,” Levick said.
A longtime advocate for reliance on neuroscience in the youth justice system, Levick also said brain science can be used to alter sentencing patterns for people sent to prison for decades for offenses committed in their youth.
“We’re locking them up way beyond the amount of time necessary to hold them responsible for the conduct that they’ve committed, and far longer than necessary to be comfortable and confident that they’ll return to their communities and that those communities will be safe,” she said.
The widespread use of neuroscience has not come without some backlash. Caren Harp, a Liberty University law professor and former head of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention during the Trump administration, called for restraint in the use of neuroscience in the juvenile justice system. Such research is “not ready for policymakers or the courtroom,” she noted in a 2017 op-ed for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.
“Misplaced reliance on nascent neuroscience and neuroimaging evidence to remove from youth and young adults the consequences of their criminal behavior invites pushback from those who favor a retributive system, and it may create some unintended and unwanted consequences for youth and young adults,” Harp wrote.
There is even some evidence that the Supreme Court may be shifting its stance, Levick and other advocates suggest. The composition of the court has changed dramatically over the past two decades since Justice Kennedy’s departure. And while the current set of Supreme Court justices haven’t as yet taken up a weighty youth justice case, a 2021 ruling suggests the court may no longer be as interested in expanding protections for youth.
In Jones v. Mississippi, for example, the court ruled that a young person can be sentenced to life without parole, without a separate finding that he or she is “permanently incorrigible,” or beyond rehabilitation. While the ruling does not overturn legal precedent, it provides wide discretion to states and judges in sentencing decisions.
“It’s like having a Ferrari engine with Smart car brakes.”
— library director Stephanie Tabashneck on the adolescent brain
Still, Justice Policy Institute Executive Director Jasmine Tyler said courts should do more to build on the idea that “kids aren’t just little adults.” Instead, she said more youth justice systems should be thinking like car rental companies. Businesses such as Enterprise and Avis often won’t rent to customers 24 and younger, due to their propensity for risky decision-making.
Justice advocates also say brain science must be considered for adults serving lengthy terms for crimes committed in their youth. Over the past decade, more incarcerated people have become eligible for so-called “Second Look” laws in some states and federal courtrooms. These policies allow judges to revisit exceptionally long sentences.
Tyler said the NeuroLaw Library maps out how such appeals can be made — by explaining how impulsivity can be driven by peer pressure, for example, leading to crimes such as carjacking and retail theft. When presented to judges, along with a person’s childhood circumstances and exposure to trauma, such information can “reset” the way a person is perceived in court.
“It really helps to show that over time, they have developed into a new person,” Tyler said, “that they are no longer operating with that same prefrontal cortex and with the same brain that got them into contact with the criminal legal system.”