Neuroscience in The Juvenile Justice
Abstract
Recent developments in Neuroscience have played a considerable role in juvenile justice reforms. The knowledge acquired from neuroscience about the composition and functioning of the developing teen brain is now used to guide law hand in hand with public policy. This paper discusses the training program implemented by the police foundation in partnership with the California Police Chiefs Association termed “Policing the Teen Brain” which has a primary purpose of providing adequate information to law enforcement officers while dealing with the youth all in the process of ensuring smooth relations and safety to both parties. Also included are the detailed explanations of the purpose of the training program, how it operates, results expected and various research on the same.
Neuroscience in The Juvenile Justice
Introduction
Recent developments in Neuroscience have been able to make a breakthrough in juvenile justice. The knowledge acquired from neuroscience about the composition and functioning of the developing teen brain is now used to guide law hand in hand with public policy (Bonnie & Scott, 2013). This being the case, recent research has depicted that the prefrontal cortex matures moderately, and the maturation process stretches out throughout puberty and into adulthood. Progress in the field of neuroscience has, therefore driven outstanding advancements in brain biology (Yeung et al., 2017), which has helped bring impartiality into the juvenile justice system. When working with the youth, law enforcement officers have certain attitudes towards them regarding fair treatment and whether they should be treated as adults or not (Goodrich et al.,2014, p. 87). On the other hand, youth attitudes towards the law enforcement officers primarily depend on past experiences that the youths may have had with the law enforcers. Negative past experiences bring about negative attitudes (Goodrich et al.,2014, p. 86). Apart from neuroscience, getting to know these attitudes are essential in evaluating schemes that improve officer and youth safety. On this basis, this paper will discuss “Policing The Teen Brain,” a training program based on recent developments in neuroscience available to law enforcement officers that improve safety to both them and the youth while working together.
The training program implemented by the police foundation in partnership with the California Police Chiefs Association termed “Policing The Teen Brain” has a primary purpose of providing adequate information to law enforcement officers while dealing with the youth all in the process of ensuring smooth relations and safety to both parties (Police foundation, 2020, p.1). In the today society, law enforcement officers keep on pondering on their roles in youth partnerships and how this can be done in a manner that is considered suffer while at the same time preventing juvenile delinquency. This being the case, the question of how best to work and respond to youth is critical in the training program. Based on community policing principles, authoritative figures in law enforcement acknowledge that engaging the youth is an essential juvenile delinquency prevention measure that needs a tailored approach (Police foundation, 2020, p.1).
Based on evidence-based research such as that of (Bonnie & Scott, 2013), which claimed that the evolving neuroscience experimentation was associated with juvenile risk-taking and offending, it has been identified that juvenile brains are entirely different from adult brains. Therefore, getting to know these differences will help the law enforcement officers in their workings with the youth to ensure safety and effectiveness. Since community policing widens the law enforcement officer’s duty, it gives them the chance to bring about significant influence on juvenile lives while at the same time leading to safer communities. This training program is therefore based on community policing practices hand in hand with problem-oriented policing to bring about positive sway on cognizance of law enforcement officers by juveniles (Police Foundation, 2020, p.1). With this in place, the officer-juvenile experience would be positive.
The details of how the training program operates first involve understanding in the neuroscience aspect how teenage brains differ from those of adults, followed by the importance of law enforcement officers acknowledging the distinctive traits of the juvenile brain when working with them. Beginning with the former, science has proved across time that brains differ according to age. During stages of adolescence in juveniles, mood swings and unpredictable behaviors are often noticed on the juveniles, to which many people have claimed that hormones are partly to blame for these reactions since during this stage they are quite intense. However, scientists discovered the clarification to this disorderly behavior, associating it with the brain’s structure during puberty.
According to neuroscientists, structure changes of the brain continue up to the later phases of child growth. This being the case, the juvenile’s brain does not resemble that of an adult until the individual reaches his/her twenties (Police Foundation, 2020, p.1). After knowing this, the training moves on to the latter segment of the importance of law enforcement officers acknowledging the distinctive traits of the juvenile brain when working with them. Before taking into consideration the neuroscience issue of brain development, the working relations between the officers and the juveniles was described as volatile and clumsy. This being the case, should the law enforcement officers take into consideration the training program, based on child growth and juvenile brain theories, then their working with the youths would be more efficient and effective. It is important to note that the initial contact a juvenile encounter with the justice system is with a law enforcement officer. Thus the essence of the initial interaction has a high possibility of modelling and influencing the future behavior of the juveniles towards the officers (Police Foundation, 2020, p.2).
In order for results to be attained in the law enforcement training program, the officers must be provided with the most excellent practices for working with the youth. Discovering how juveniles think is essential. Through Strategies for Youth (SFY), this training program revolves around law enforcement officers associating effectively with the youth on the basis of psychiatric practise hand in hand with neurological research. The training is also focused on “developmental competency” whereby the officers are trained to recognize that juveniles discern, process and counter situations according to their growth stage and brain structure. Therefore, developmentally competent law enforcement officers are consistent in their interactions with the juveniles’ developmental stage (Police Foundation, 2020, p.4). The training program is incorporated with scientific and evidence-based information that is linked with practical approaches which empower the officers to downsize interactions with the youth efficiently. Community-situated youth-serving institutions are also included in the training, together with youth who are offered monetary compensation to take part in role-plays.
The techniques of instruction revolve around interactive sessions with juvenile development specialists and psychiatrists. In each training session, scenario-based examples, assessment of law enforcement officer attitudes and joint discussions take place (Police Foundation, 2020, p.4). The results expected, therefore, include the de-escalation of insignificant incidences, minimizing instances of juvenile arrests, and juvenile justice reforms. This means that through the training program and the officers acquiring knowledge on the developmental stages of juveniles according to the brain structure, they would be focused more on substitutes to arrest for scenarios that could be certainly settled without undergoing the justice system of juveniles. This, therefore, entails diversion options by the law enforcement officers whenever possible. (Police Foundation, 2020, p.3).
Research on the training program’s use of neuroscience showed that through the usage of contemporary and existing technologies, scientists have been able to follow the development of the brain and in the process, scrutinizing the link between the functions of the brain, behavior and development. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has also been credited for having come up with improvements in perceiving brain function and growth without the use of traditional approaches such as radiation. This makes the usage of MRI to study the juveniles a harmless process. Doctor Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist, carried out a study in which he scrutinized the brains of over a hundred children each at an interval of two years beginning from preliminary childhood up to twenty years of age with the MRI scanning technique.
The scans taken in the study concluded that late changes occurred in the gray matter volume, which is responsible for the formation of the cortex in the brain which accountable for though and memory. Thus, the gray matter’s volume increase at one point then decreases later, which is considered a normal and inevitable part of growth. It was also evident that distinct parts of the cortex mature at contrasting rates. With this in consideration, areas of the cortex that are involved purely in essential functions are the first to mature, for instance, the control of movement. An interesting discovery was that the brain parts that are considered responsible for other functions like the control of impulse, solving of problems and the making of decisions were among the last to develop (Police Foundation, 2020, p.2). Thus, according to this research, the juvenile brain influences the way the juveniles relate with other individuals, particularly with the authorities like law enforcement officers. They are regarded as demonstrative, egocentric and reckless. They have a tendency of engaging in vicious behavior and are unsusceptible to authority, which leads to negative experiences with the law enforcement officers through conflicts. This hinders the safety of both the officers and the youths since their working relationship is shaky. This is why the law enforcement officers must understand the juveniles in a neuroscience context to help diminish situations like this effectively. Basing on research by (Bonnie & Scott, 2013), legal policies on juveniles will always be on the grounds various deliberations, developmental maturity being one of them. Therefore, neuroscience is used to confront policies that subject juveniles on the same category as adults.
The University’s core value of “respect” applies to the contents of the research in that for a stable working relationship to exist between the law enforcement officers and the youths, respect must be present in both parties. The youths should respect authorities and do as the authorities dictate. At the same time, the authorities should also respect the theories behind the brain development of the juveniles and interact with them according to how their training program mandated (Police Foundation, 2020, p.3).
In conclusion, “Policing the Teen Brain” training program which is based on recent developments in neuroscience improves safety to both the law enforcement officers and the youth while working together since the officers are aware of how to deal with the juveniles according to their brain development.
References
Bonnie, R., & Scott, E. (2013). The Teenage Brain. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(2), 158-161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412471678
Goodrich, S., Anderson, S & LaMotte, V. (2014). Evaluation of a Program Designed to Promote Positive Police and Youth Interactions. Journal of Juvenile Justice. 3. 55. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265048226_Evaluation_of_a_Program_Designed_to_Promote_Positive_Police_and_Youth_Interactions
Police Foundation. (2020). Teen Brain: Preparing Your Officers to Engage with Youth [eBook] (pp. 1-8). Retrieved 17 August 2020, from http://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/PF_IssueBriefs_TeenBrain_Final.pdf.
Yeung, A., Goto, T., & Leung, W. (2017). The Changing Landscape of Neuroscience Research, 2006–2015: A Bibliometric Study. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2017.00120