Reckless Juveniles

From the Abstract: “Modern doctrine and scholarship largely take it for granted that offenders should be criminally punished for reckless acts. Yet, developments in our understanding of human behavior can shed light on how we define and attribute criminal liability, or at least force us to grapple with the categories that have existed for so long. This Article examines recklessness and related doctrines in light of the shifts in understanding of adolescent behavior and its biological roots, to see what insights we might attain, or what challenges these understandings pose to this foundational mens rea doctrine. Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that youth are categorically different for purposes of criminal sentencing, and that these categorical differences in maturity, ability to make reasoned decisions, resist outside pressure and influences and the like lead to objective lines being drawn between youth and adults. The Court’s distinctions have drawn on a significant body of research literature, including brain imaging scans that help us understand the maturation of the human brain over the course of adolescence. This Article posits that these developments, when mapped onto existing criminal law, call into question holding youth responsible for offenses that require actual foresight of the consequences of their risky behavior. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent analyses of the categorical differences between youth and adults in the criminal realm, as well as the science and social science research underlying these differences, wears away – for this category of individuals – the basis for holding youth in juvenile or adult court accountable for crimes of “foresight” and express disregard for risk.”