Adolescent brain science has already transformed juvenile justice policy. As we see from recent Supreme Court rulings that ended the death penalty and life without parole for juveniles, the Court is predisposed to appreciate arguments that indicate that adolescents are neurobiologically different from adults.

Brain science may also elucidate neurodevelopmental implications for juvenile offenders subject to prolonged removal from the community, facilities with limited educational and rehabilitative resources, solitary confinement, or transfer to the adult criminal system for trial and incarceration as an adult. If these conditions can be shown to have long-term, detrimental effects on the adolescent brain, might it be possible to establish a scientific and legal basis for the “right to a sound brain,” or a healthy context for brain development, enforceable through the Eighth Amendment?

On Thursday, March 12, 2015, the MGH Center for Law Brain & Behavior’s Juvenile Justice working group presented a public symposium at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center of Harvard Medical School bringing together a juvenile court Judge (Hon. Jay Blitzman), forensic mental health evaluation and juvenile justice policy expert (Thomas Grisso), adolescent developmental neuroscientist (Leah Somerville), and Department of Youth Services clinician (Jeanne Tomich) to elucidate this question. Robert Kinscherff, forensic psychologist and Senior Associate at the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, moderated the conversation.

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By David A. Grimes | The Huffington Post | March 14, 2015

In March of 2015, the West Virginia legislature overrode the Governor’s veto of HB 2568, the “Pain-Cable Unborn Child Protection Act.” As noted by the Governor, who vetoed a similar bill last year, the bill is unconstitutional. Arizona passed a similar law in 2012, and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of appeals struck down the law as blatantly unconstitutional. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the appellate court decision, which means that the law’s rejection as unconstitutional stands. Undeterred, West Virginia has now repeated the error.

When realtors dictate the practice of medicine, everyone loses. The West Virginia bill features junk science and other glaring deficiencies. The caption of the bill is illustrative: It has two different errors, one medical and one semantic. First, a fetus is incapable of experiencing pain. Second, a child cannot reside in the uterus. Use of a dictionary resolves the semantic problem, but what is the evidence concerning the notion of fetal “pain”? Continue reading »

Laurence Steinberg, Elizabeth Cauffman, and Kathryn C. Monahan | US Department of Justice – Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Bulletin | March 2015

Highlights:

The Pathways to Desistance study followed more than 1,300 serious juvenile offenders for 7 years after their conviction. In this bulletin, the authors present key findings on the link between psychosocial maturity and desistance from crime in the males in the Pathways sample as they transition from midadolescence to early adulthood (ages 14–25):

• Recent research indicates that youth experience protracted maturation, into their midtwenties, of brain systems responsible for self-regulation. This has stimulated interest in measuring young offenders’ psychosocial maturity into early adulthood.
• Youth whose antisocial behavior persisted into early adulthood were found to have lower levels of psychosocial maturity in adolescence and deficits in their development of maturity (i.e., arrested development) compared with other antisocial youth.
• The vast majority of juvenile offenders, even those who commit serious crimes, grow out of antisocial activity as they transition to adulthood. Most juvenile offending is, in fact, limited to adolescence.
• This study suggests that the process of maturing out of crime is linked to the process of maturing more generally, including the development of impulse control and future orientation.

Read the full article here.

Click to view event poster.

Do criminal penalties have any deterrent effect on drug addicts – people who already are willing to throw away their jobs, relationships, or even lives for their “fix”?  What does brain science tell us about addicts’ capacities to exert self control and to be held criminally responsible?

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015, a leading neuroscientist of addiction, Joshua Buckholtz, a criminal law scholar, Amanda Pustilnik, and a former judge, Hon. Nancy Gertner, discussed whether the law should reconsider aspects of responsibility and punishment in light of new science about self-control.

The event was held from 12-1pm at Wasserstein Hall at Harvard Law School. Continue reading »

CLBB mourns the loss of Shervert H. Frazier, Jr., MD. Dr. Frazier, psychiatrist in chief for McLean Hospital from 1972 to 1989, member of CLBB Scientific Faculty since 2008, and a luminary and a force for change in the field of psychiatry, passed away on Tuesday, March 3, 2015. He was 93.

See the statement released by McLean Hospital below, or read Dr. Frazier’s obituary. Continue reading »