Law Commons^™

How Should Justice Policy Treat Young Offenders?: A Knowledge Brief Of The Macarthur Foundation Research Network On Law And Neuroscience, Bj Casey, Richard J. Bonnie, Andre Davis, David L. Faigman, Morris B. Hoffman, Owen D. Jones, Read Montague, Stephen J. Morse, Marcus E. Raichle, Jennifer E. Richeson, Elizabeth S. Scott, Laurence Steinberg, Kim Taylor-Thompson, Anthony Wagner

Faculty Scholarship

The justice system in the United States has long recognized that juvenile offenders are not the same as adults, and has tried to incorporate those differences into law and policy. But only in recent decades have behavioral scientists and neuroscientists, along with policymakers, looked rigorously at developmental differences, seeking answers to two overarching questions: Are young offenders, purely by virtue of their immaturity, different from older individuals who commit crimes? And, if they are, how should justice policy take this into account?

A growing body of research on adolescent development now confirms that teenagers are indeed inherently different from adults, …

The School-To-Prison Pipeline's Legal Architecture: Lessons From The Spring Valley Incident And Its Aftermath, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

In October 2015, a Black teenager at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina had her cell phone out in her math class. Her teacher told her repeatedly to put it away. Repeatedly she refused. The teacher then called a school administrator, who similarly instructed her to put away her phone. The student continued to refuse. The administrator then called the school resource officer (“SRO”), the uniformed, armed deputy sheriff assigned to the school. The SRO came and informed the student that she had to put away her cell phone. When the student again refused, the officer arrested her …