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The Intersection Between Young Adult Sentencing And Mass Incarceration, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
The Intersection Between Young Adult Sentencing And Mass Incarceration, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Scholarship
This Article connects two growing categories of academic literature and policy reform: arguments for treating young adults in the criminal justice system less severely than older adults because of evidence showing brain development and maturation continue until the mid-twenties; and arguments calling for reducing mass incarceration and identifying various mechanisms to do so. These categories overlap, but research has not previously built in-depth connections between the two.
Connecting the two bodies of literature helps identify and strengthen arguments for reform. First, changing charging, detention, and sentencing practices for young adults is one important tool to reduce mass incarceration. Young adults …