Statement of Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.

on HR 2289, The Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009

June 9, 2009

I am a psychologist on the faculty of Temple University, as well as the former director of the
MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. I
am also the co-author, with Columbia University law professor Elizabeth Scott, of a new book
called Rethinking Juvenile Justice.

For the past 30 years, I have been conducting research on various aspects of adolescent
development, most recently, on the implications of research on brain development during this
age period for understanding adolescents’ behavior, including behavior that is harmful to
themselves and others. What have scientists learned? Two important lessons stand out.

First, we now are certain that brain maturation continues long after childhood, well into the early
adult years. Second, the specific nature of this change has important implications for how we
view adolescent behavior under the law. So let me begin by describing how the brain changes in
adolescence, and then say a few words about why it matters for today’s hearing.

Three sets of brain changes take place in adolescence that are especially important. First, early in
adolescence, around the time of puberty, there is a dramatic change in brain systems that govern
our experience of pleasure, or reward. Receptors in the decision-making regions of the brain for
dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for the sensation of reward, are more active in
early adolescence than at any other time in development. This helps explain why adolescents are
especially inclined toward sensation-seeking and experimentation with alcohol, tobacco, and
other drugs, and why teenagers pay so much attention to the immediate and rewarding aspects of
risky behavior that they often ignore its potential costs. During this same period, there are also
major changes in the brain systems that process social information, which tells us why
adolescents become so sensitive to the opinions of others and so susceptible to their influence.

The second major brain change is that, over the course of adolescence, there is a gradual
maturation of brain regions and systems that are responsible for self-control. These systems put
the brakes on impulsive behavior. They permit us to think ahead and allow us to more
judiciously weigh the rewards and costs of risky decisions before acting. However, unlike the
changes in reward sensitivity or social information processing, which take place early in
adolescence, the maturation of the self-control system is more gradual, and not complete until the
early 20s. As a consequence, middle adolescence – the period from 13 to 17 – is a period of
heightened vulnerability to risky and reckless behavior, including crime and delinquency. The
engines are running at full throttle, so to speak, but there is not yet a skilled driver behind the
wheel.

Finally, throughout adolescence and into young adulthood, the connections between different
brain regions are still maturing, allowing for the more efficient use of brain power and the better
coordination of emotions and reason. The brain systems that govern complicated decision-
making are easily taxed during adolescence. You’ve probably seen this in your own children.
When 16-year-olds are in controlled environments where they have time to think before acting,

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and when they can turn to adults for guidance, they often demonstrate adult-like maturity. But
their capacity for mature judgment is still fragile at this age, and it is easily disrupted by
situations that are emotionally arousing or stressful. The very same teenager who can compose a
mature and thoughtful answer to a philosophical question posed in social studies class might
behave irrationally and impulsively when with his friends or in the heat of the moment. And
because a large proportion of juvenile offenders have substance abuse and other mental health
problems, and this may make them all the more vulnerable to lapses in self-control. There are
several important implications of this brain research for juvenile justice policy and practice.

A bedrock principle of our criminal law is that offenders are punished in proportion to their level
of responsibility for their behavior. Under the law, for example, people are punished less harshly
when their behavior is impulsive or coerced by others, or when their actions had potential
consequences that they could not have anticipated. But brain science tells us that adolescents are
inherently less able than adults to control themselves, to resist peer pressure, or to think ahead –
and anyone in this room who has been the parent of a teenager has seen this first hand. In a legal
system like ours, which punishes in proportion to an offender’s responsibility for his actions,
juvenile offenders should not be punished as harshly as we punish mature adults, even when they
have committed comparable crimes. The U.S. Supreme Court followed this logic a few years ago
when it abolished the juvenile death penalty. Our harshest penalties, the Court ruled, should be
reserved for the “worst of the worst.” Individuals who are not fully responsible for what they do
surely are not in this category.

Second, because we know that brain maturation continues well into the 20s, teenagers are still
works in progress, and many of them do things out of youthful impetuousness that they would
not do just a few years later, when their brains are more fully developed. It is therefore
important that we treat adolescents who have broken the law in ways consistent with the idea that
most of them will outgrow this behavior as they mature into adulthood. Studies show that more
than 90 percent of adolescents who commit crimes – even very serious crimes – cease their
criminal behavior by time adolescence has ended. This finding has been reported by many
researchers, and it is one that has once again emerged in our ongoing study of serious offenders
here in Pennsylvania. We have not yet followed our research subjects through their 20s, but
other studies show that virtually all offenders, even those whose criminal behavior persists into
early adulthood, desist from crime by the time they are 30. So holding a juvenile in prison
beyond his 30th birthday, at a cost of between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, doesn’t make a lot
of fiscal sense.

We have always known that adolescents behave differently than adults. Young people are more
impulsive, more short-sighted, more willing to take risks, and more susceptible to the influence
of their peers. Anyone who has raised a teenager, taught a teenager, counseled a teenager, or
been a teenager knows this. Scientific discoveries about brain development have helped us
understand why this is true, but they haven’t changed the basic story line. Those who founded a
separate system of juvenile justice in America some 100 years ago had it right, even without the
benefit of brain scans, when they made a commitment to treating young people who have
violated the law differently than how we treat adults. Recent research on brain development
should strengthen our commitment to this basic principle.

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Juveniles are not as mature as adults, and we recognize this in many ways under the law.
Individuals can not vote until they are 18 because we do not believe they are mature enough to
exercise this responsibility wisely. They can not enter into legal contracts. They can not
purchase alcohol or tobacco. About the only adult privilege we confer to individuals under 18 is
the right to drive an automobile, and given what we are learning about brain development, many
states are even questioning the wisdom of that. Our willingness to treat juveniles like adults
when they commit crimes, and expose them to the same punishments as adults when they are
convicted, is inconsistent with virtually every other decision we make about teenagers under
federal and state law.

There are some who contend that having life without parole as a potential punishment for
juveniles who commit serious offenses will serve the purpose of deterring other would-be
offenders from committing crimes. If only our teenagers listened to us enough to plan ahead so
well! The fact is that very same limitations that make juveniles less responsible for their acts –
their impulsivity, short-sightedness, and susceptibility to peer pressure – also make them less
likely to be deterred by the law or by the example of others. And in fact, scientific studies of
whether the prospect of a harsh sentence deters young people from committing crimes clearly
show that the answer is no.

In the final analysis, there are only two only possible rationales for sentencing juveniles to life
without the possibility of parole: they deserve the most severe punishment our system has the
capacity to apply or that they are so likely to be dangerous for so long that we need to incarcerate
them for life to protect the community. As to the first of these rationales, I believe, as the
Supreme Court ruled in the juvenile death penalty case, that by virtue of their inherent
immaturity, adolescents should not be exposed to punishments we reserve for the worst of the
worst. And as to issue of public safety, the data show very clearly that even the worst juvenile
offenders are unlikely to pose much of a threat once they have reached the age of 30.

Juveniles who commit crimes should be held responsible for their behavior, punished for their
offenses, and treated in a way that protects the community. But we have the capacity to do this
without locking them up for life and wasting taxpayers’ dollars unnecessarily.

__________________________

Biographical Information
__________________________

Laurence Steinberg , Ph.D. , is the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell
Professor of Psychology at Temple University. Dr. Steinberg has taught previously at Cornell
University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
He was educated at Vassar College and at Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in
Developmental Psychology in 1977. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association,
has been a Faculty Scholar of the William T. Grant Foundation, and was Director of the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and
Juvenile Justice.

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Dr. Steinberg is Past-President of the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American
Psychological Association and a former President of the Society for Research on Adolescence.
He has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the John P. Hill Award for Outstanding
Contributions to the Study of Adolescence, the American Psychological Association Urie
Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of
Science and Society, the Society for Adolescent Medicine's Gallagher Lectureship, the American
Psychological Association Presidential Citation, and the American Psychological Association
Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. Dr. Steinberg also has been
recognized for excellence in research and teaching by the University of California, the University
of Wisconsin, and Temple University, where he was honored as one of the university's Great
Teachers.

A nationally and internationally renowned expert on psychological development during

adolescence, Dr. Steinberg's research has focused on a range of topics in the study of
contemporary adolescence, including adolescent brain development, risk-taking and decision-
making, parent-adolescent relationships, adolescent employment, high school reform, and
juvenile justice. His work has been funded by a variety of public and private organizations,
including the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S.
Department of Justice, the MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the
William Penn Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Spencer
Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.

Dr. Steinberg served as a member of the National Academies’ Panel on the Health Implications
of Child Labor; Committee on the Science of Adolescent Health and Development; and Board on
Children, Youth, and Families, and currently chairs the Committee on the Science of
Adolescence. He has been a frequent consultant to state and federal agencies and lawmakers on
child labor, secondary education, and juvenile justice policy and was the lead scientist on the
amicus curiae brief filed by the American Psychological Association in Roper v. Simmons, the
landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that abolished the juvenile death penalty. He has also
provided expert testimony and consultation in a number of legal cases involving adolescent brain
and behavioral development.

Dr. Steinberg is the author of more than 250 articles and essays on growth and development
during the teenage years, and the author or editor of eleven books, including Adolescence
(McGraw-Hill), the leading college textbook on adolescent development, now in its 8th edition;
When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment (with
Ellen Greenberger; Basic Books); You and Your Adolescent: A Parent's Guide for Ages 10 to 20
(with Ann Levine; HarperCollins); Crossing Paths: How Your Child's Adolescence Triggers
Your Own Crisis (with Wendy Steinberg; Simon & Schuster), Beyond the Classroom: Why
School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do (with Bradford Brown and Sanford
Dornbusch; Simon & Schuster), Studying Minority Adolescents: Conceptual, Methodological,
and Theoretical Issues (co-edited with Vonnie McLoyd; Erlbaum), the Handbook of Adolescent
Psychology (co-edited with Richard Lerner; Wiley), Rethinking Juvenile Justice (with Elizabeth
Scott; Harvard University Press), and The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting (Simon &
Schuster), which has been translated into ten languages.

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Dr. Steinberg is a frequent consultant on adolescent development for print and electronic media,
including The New York Times and National Public Radio. He has also has written for many
popular outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington
Post.

Source: http://www.temple.edu/psychology/lds/