News and Commentary Archive

Explore recent scientific discoveries and news as well as CLBB events, commentary, and press.

Mission

The Center for Law, Brain & Behavior puts the most accurate and actionable neuroscience in the hands of judges, lawyers, policymakers and journalists—people who shape the standards and practices of our legal system and affect its impact on people’s lives. We work to make the legal system more effective and more just for all those affected by the law.

White Paper on the Science of Late Adolescence: A Guide for Judges, Attorneys, and Policy Makers

In September of 2020, the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital convened a virtual Neuroscience Summit with legal scholars and attorneys, neuroscientists, physicians and psychologists from multiple specialties, and members of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. The Summit’s focus was: The science of emerging adulthood: What do we know and how might this knowledge be appropriately applied in the law?

The impetus for the Summit was a series of landmark United States Supreme Court decisions between 2005 – 2016 in which the Court clarified that the developmental immaturity of youth who committed crimes under age 18 offered them protection under the Eighth Amendment that bars their execution, life sentences without possibility of parole for non-homicide crimes, and imposition of mandatory life without possibility of parole for homicides. Further litigation of the reach of Eighth Amendment protections for juveniles was anticipated and, in fact, the Supreme Court issued another decision bearing upon what procedures are required in sentencing juveniles for capital offenses in April 2021 in Jones v. Mississippi.

In this line of cases, the U.S. Supreme Court increasingly relied upon developmental neuroscience and related areas of developmental social sciences. The Court also relied upon developmental sciences in ruling in JDB. v. North Carolina (2011) that a youth’s age must be a factor considered in determining their capacity to waive their Miranda rights when interrogated by police. These cases sparked litigation in state and federal courts about whether Eighth Amendment protections afforded youth under age 18 should be extended to older adolescents and emerging young adults. As a result, State legislatures have also begun to consider extending juvenile court jurisdiction or the age of full criminal culpability beyond age 18. Further, State juvenile justice and correctional authorities have begun considering reforms to better align responses developmentally in preventing or responding to misconduct by adolescents and emerging adults.

These litigated cases and policy initiatives could signal a sea-change in how we attempt to support positive youth development, prevent youthful crime, and foster rehabilitation and community safety when crimes are committed. However, the success of science- based law and policy initiatives remains uncertain and hotly contested.

It is into this complex and dynamic context that CLBB releases the White Paper on the Science of Late Adolescence: A Guide for Judges, Attorneys, and Policy Makers. This White Paper is the product of the Neuroscience Summit and intensive multidisciplinary collaboration over the months since the Summit. We anticipate that it will have significant and enduring impact nationally in shaping litigation, legislation, and practice across multiple professions and systems that interact with juveniles, late adolescents, and emerging adults.

We hope that you find it helpful in your own thinking about the role of developmental neuroscience and related developmental research in fostering positive outcomes for our young persons, their families, and our communities. As importantly, we hope that it provides information that can support science-based policies, practices, reforms, and innovations which you and others will devise and implement.

Sincerely,

Summer Learning Series: Justice and the Developing Brain

In summer 2020, CLBB is excited to partner with More Than Words, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins, and the Committee for Public Counsel Services (the Public Defender Agency of Massachusetts) to present a new online learning series led by Dr. Robert Kinscherff, JD, PhD.

You can click here to register and for more information.

Description: Emerging adults are more likely to be arrested, be incarcerated, and to recidivate after release. Join the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, the brain-science experts at the MGH Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and the staff and youth at More Than Words to learn why and discuss how we can reverse this trend.

Why Are Young People So Bad at Coronavirus Social distancing? Blame Their Brains.

CLBB Co-Founder and Co-Director Dr. Judith Edersheim on Why Are Young People So Bad at Coronavirus Social distancing? Blame Their Brains. in USA Today.

When the world began to shelter in place, the news was filled with accounts of groups of teenagers hanging out on the beach and being scolded for their selfishness. Adults told them to grow up and use good judgment and stop being reckless.

But these lectures were utterly ineffective. Even after one spring breaker’s infamous declaration that he wasn’t going to let COVID-19 stop him from partying, and the internet backlash that followed, college students were still going to parties and flouting their recklessness on Twitter with the hashtag #boomerremover

Now that many universities are considering postponing a return to campus until 2021, this problem has returned to the front burner. Why can’t these young adults simply follow the rules like everyone else? As experts in neuroscience and the law, my colleagues and I urge you not to judge these youths too harshly. Their brains are very much to blame.  Keep reading …

 

 

The Forgotten: Juveniles In Detention During COVID-19

CLBB Student Research Assistants Fenella McLuskie, Sina Sadeghzadeh, and Oliver Q. Sussman on The Forgotten: Juveniles In Detention During COVID-19 in The Harvard Crimson. Fenella McLuskie is a first-year student at Harvard Law School. Sina Sadeghzadeh ’21 is a Neuroscience concentrator in Dunster House. Oliver Q. Sussman ’21 is a Neuroscience concentrator in Pforzheimer House.

With more than two million people affected worldwide, the novel coronavirus is exposing social inequities. In a study of COVID-19 and youth, about 90 percent of infected children developed mild to moderate symptoms while only 0.6 percent suffered more severe complications. Yet true to the theme of exacerbated inequality, some populations of youth are at a higher risk than this overall average would suggest.

Compared to other children, children in the juvenile justice system are disproportionately more likely to have compromised immunity, asthma, and other underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk for developing acute coronavirus complications. While there has been much attention paid to different vulnerable populations in our society, juvenile detainees, as usual, are often left out of the conversation. Keep reading …

 

19-Year-Olds Don’t Belong in Adult Prisons

By Nancy Gertner | The Boston Globe | June 20, 2017

Governor Baker introduced a criminal justice bill in February to great fanfare. Designed to give prisoners incarcerated on mandatory minimum sentences access to good-time credit to hasten their release and to provide reentry programming, it received wide bipartisan support — as it should. The justification was clear. “Reducing recidivism,” Baker said, was the bill’s focus. The people of Massachusetts benefit “when more individuals exit the system as law abiding and productive members of the society.”

True enough. Except for those sentenced to life imprisonment, all prisoners get out of jail, and if their needs have not been addressed inside prison, not much will change when they get outside. The bill the governor proposed should help. But measures that would do much much more to address recidivism are pending before the Legislature. Representatives Evandro Carvalho and Kay Khan and Senators Cynthia Creem and Karen Spilka propose to gradually raise the age at which juveniles will be subject to juvenile court jurisdiction to include 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds.

Keeping 18-to-20-year-olds in the juvenile system, where they must attend school and participate in rehabilitative programming, where they are given supervision and intensive services, is the best bet to reduce recidivism. The governor should be championing these bills, as law enforcement representatives already have. Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins and former sheriff Frank Cousins are publicly supporting the bill, because sheriffs know better than anyone what damaging environments adult facilities can be for young people. Our current approach to this age group is a failure, with reoffending being more common than rehabilitation. It is time to try something new, informed by science and aimed at more than incremental change. Continue reading »