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| Dr. Michael J. Bradley |
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One of the basic tenets of American law is that defendants must have the mental capability to understand, participate in, and make informed decisions about their legal options. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that retarded and mentally ill people cannot be legally held to adult standards of accountability since their brains don’t work so well. Yet last year this nation prosecuted over 200,000 mentally challenged individuals belonging to another minority by virtue of their proven neurological handicaps. We call them teenagers. Children as young as 11 are currently being prosecuted as adults at the same time that science is conclusively proving what every high school teacher and exasperated parent has known for decades: Adolescents are not adults. Study after study proves that teenage brains are neurological works in progress, biological construction sites needing signs that read, “Please pardon our behaviors during renovations.” Stated simply, the brain parts needed for things like impulse control, planning, and emotional restraint are not all there at the onset of adolescence. This is part of why kids can act so strangely at times. The most recent embarrassment for America’s lovers of child prosecution comes from Temple University where researchers found that over one-third of kids being prosecuted as adults were found to be profoundly mentally incompetent to the standard set for adult prisoners. And that adult standard of legal mental incompetence requires a severe degree of handicap. Sadly, this is not news to the very prosecutors who set out to end the lives of these kids. The same “justice” system that viciously prosecutes child criminals as “competent” also holds that kids under the age of 18 are too mentally incompetent to sign contracts, buy beer or cigarettes, or vote. But should these incompetent children commit a crime, the law says that their mental handicaps magically disappear. “Sorry, kid, but at 15 you’re too irresponsible to be trusted with a beer. But, hey, if you shot somebody, come on back and see us. That proves you must be an adult.” Amazingly, child criminality has become our litmus test of child competency. Since our society can’t decide if teens are children or adults, we make them sort of both. We put them in an out-of-control culture where at very early ages they must face complex, life-altering decisions about sex, drugs and violence. And they get to do this with neurologically deficient brains. Consequently we now have over 20,000 juveniles in adult prisons, some as young as age 11. There they get raped, assaulted, and otherwise very well trained on how to be really skilled monsters when they’re freed. Even the accountants keep telling us that it’s cheaper to treat these kids than to punish them. But our lust for revenge seems sated only by punishment, not rehabilitation. And it’s the teenagers who are nuts? Does any of this impact on kids who will never shoot anybody? Yes, because in viewing adolescents as adults we’ve largely forgotten that they are, indeed, children, and as such they need skilled, patient, respect-based parenting more critically now than ever in their lives, just at the time when it’s most difficult to give it to them. Teen MRI’s show adolescent brains to be those of children journeying to adulthood, but clearly not yet adults. So no, they can’t go to Cancun on unsupervised, co-ed trips. And no, they can’t be held to adult standards of criminal accountability. So how did we get so far down this insane path of seeing children as adults? A farmer with a pretense-leveling drawl once asked me how researchers came to think that teen brains were fully formed. When I explained that prior studies just measured brain size versus specific development, he shook his head. “Well, hell,” he chuckled, “If y’all would’a just look at ‘em, y’all wooda’ seen they ain’t all growed up. Why’d y’all assume their brains was all grow’d up?” A fair question, don’t you think? And perhaps a fair question to put before our prosecutors and legislators as well. Enter our Chat Forum by clicking here |
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 Editor’s Note: To share your parenting issues, or to get Dr. Bradley's professional advice, please click here to visit Dr. Bradley’s Online Parenting Forum. |