Problems with the ban on executing juveniles (pt 1)

Troubleshooter · 03-23-2005, 12:12 PM

Bad Brains
How the Supreme Court's teen execution decision proves too much
Ronald Bailey

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that teenagers under age 18 who commit premeditated murder cannot be executed. The court based its ruling in part on recent studies that found that the frontal lobesof teenagers were not sufficiently developed, making them not fully responsible for their actions. To justify its ruling, the court majority adopted many of the arguments put forth in an amicus brief sponsored by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, among others.

That brief argued that recent neuroimaging studies had found that the "brain's frontal lobes are still structurally immature well into late adolescence. The prefrontal cortex (which.is most associated with impulse control, risk assessment, and moral reasoning) is 'one of the last brain regions to mature.'" Consequently, the amicus brief concluded the evidence "based upon studies of normal adolescents, leads to the conclusion that normal adolescents cannot be expected to operate with the level of maturity, judgment, risk aversion, or impulse control of an adult. Adolescents cannot be expected to transcend their own psychological or biological capacities. However, an adolescent who has suffered brain trauma, a dysfunctional family life, violence, or abuse cannot be presumed to operate even at standard levels for adolescents."

Naturally, death penalty opponents and child advocacy organizations hailed the court's decision. But this diminished capacity argument could well play out in disturbing ways.

Already the immature teen brain argument has been used by legislators to impose various restrictions on teenage drivers, including limits on times they can drive, the number of passengers they can carry, and their use of mobile phones. That may appear reasonable; after all, teenagers do account disproportionately for traffic accidents.

Progressives who applauded the Supreme Court's decision with regard to imposing the death penalty might not be so happy when conservatives turn around and use that decision to justify imposing more parental consent laws on teenage women who are seeking an abortion. And will statutory rape lawsneed to be revised in light of the findings with regard to the immaturity of teenage brains? Furthermore, if teenagers aren't responsible for their actions with regard to violence, driving, or sex, how can they be expected to cast their ballots responsibly in elections? For that matter, how can teenagers responsibly sign up for military service? And surely the immaturity defense can be used by the tens of thousands of juveniles who are arrested each year for drug abuse offenses.

Troubleshooter · 03-23-2005, 12:13 PM

But let's set aside teenage brains for the moment. What about the brains of adults? A new study from Australia has found that parts of the frontal lobes of drug addictsare underdeveloped. "We believe that this braking system is faulty in patients with compulsive behaviours like addiction, such that affected individuals cannot stop themselves even though they know the consequences of their actions could be devastating," says Murat Yucel, who led the research.

Violent adult criminals also seem to have brain abnormalities that might fall under the Supreme Court's teen murderer decision. Brain researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) imaged the brains of 21 men with psychopathic personalities who had committed serious violent crimes. They foundthat they had "an 11 percent to 14 percent reduction in the volume of nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex compared to normal males—a deficit of about two teaspoons' worth." Tellingly, Adrian Raine, the USC psychopathologist who headed up the study, noted that the prefrontal cortex appears to be critical for self-restraint and deliberate foresight. "One thing we know about antisocials is that they do not think ahead," said Raine.

So the question naturally arises: If teenage culpability for criminal behavior (and other behaviors, for that matter) is reduced on the grounds that their brains do not function like normal adult brains, shouldn't the culpability of adults whose prefrontal cortexes are similarly underdeveloped be reduced? Should adults with stunted frontal lobes "be expected to transcend their own psychological or biological capacities?"

In any case, what would it mean to "transcend" one's psychological or biological capacities? We're all limited by our psychological and biological capacities. As neuroscience advances and we become better able to peer inside our skulls, we may find that many of us—possibly most of us—have exculpatory neuronal glitches. If a person hits someone else, wouldn't that mean, by definition, that the executive faculties in his frontal lobes had failed to exercise their inhibitory functions? His neurons made him do it; but they are his neurons, and he's responsible for them.

University of California–San Diego neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland points out that a child learns about proper moral behavior in the social world the same way he or she learns about the physical world—that is, by interacting with it himself or watching others. The child then either bears the consequences of his actions or sees the consequences of other people's choices. Churchland concludes, "The default presumption that agents are responsible for their actions is empirically necessary to an agent's learning, both emotionally and cognitively, how to evaluate the consequences of certain events and the price of taking risks."

The Supreme Court's underage execution decision has us slipping far down the slope of universal neurological exculpation, and it raises interesting questions about what standard we should use to hold people responsible in criminal cases. I would suggest an old-fashioned one: If a person can distinguish between right and wrong, then we hold her responsible for her actions. Interestingly, the AMA's amicus brief noted, "Cognitive experts have shown that the difference between teenage and adult behavior is not a function of the adolescent's inability to distinguish right from wrong."

The legal system is part of the social machinery aimed at training our neurons to behave properly. Neuroscience may inform our judgments about whether our neurons have been properly trained, but in the end we have no choice but to hold people responsible for their actions. After all, it's not as though the young murderer in the case the Supreme Court considered got off scot-free. He's likely to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. In this case, one hopes that both teenagers and the rest of us learn impulse control by watching bad things happen to those who don't succeed in controlling their impulses.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech Revolution will be published in June by Prometheus Books.

mrnoodle · 03-23-2005, 12:26 PM

Quote:

The Supreme Court's underage execution decision has us slipping far down the slope of universal neurological exculpation, and it raises interesting questions about what standard we should use to hold people responsible in criminal cases. I would suggest an old-fashioned one: If a person can distinguish between right and wrong, then we hold her responsible for her actions. Interestingly, the AMA's amicus brief noted, "Cognitive experts have shown that the difference between teenage and adult behavior is not a function of the adolescent's inability to distinguish right from wrong."

This day had to come eventually. As science figures out more and more about our brains, new treatments for neurological shortcomings will follow. There might even be a pill that 'cures' criminal impulses one day.

Until then, we'll keep running into these foggy patches where we're not sure whether to cure someone or punish them. So, we rely on moral judgements. My question is, will the future "cure" for criminal impulse also cure the moral deficit that causes one to obey that impulse? And which are we punishing?

Troubleshooter · 03-23-2005, 12:40 PM

There are other issues to look at along that slope...

From the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics website.
============================================================
AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS CONSIDER ANTI-DRUG VACCINATIONS
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...373794,00.html
============================================================

The newspaper _The Australian _ reports that “a group of Queensland politicians want the federal Government to investigate giving an anti-junkie vaccination to babies. The vaccination, being considered by British MPs, would render children immune to becoming smokers or drug users.”

This follows on a similar proposal made last year by some British MPs. The CCLE worked to educate the British last year, and is now working to educate the Australians: Coercive pharmacotherapy is bad public policy and a flagrant violation of many important legal rights including Freedom of Thought.

Our 50-page Pharmacotherapy Report (See next news item) foresaw this trend last year and we have been working hard to forestall government efforts to enforce social policy by altering the very architecture of the human body. This is a hugely important issue!

xoxoxoBruce · 03-23-2005, 06:09 PM

Oh goody...Stepfordtralia.

russotto · 03-24-2005, 12:59 PM

The immature brain argument is horse pucky, invented in order to come up for a justification for treating adolescents as children.

True, your brain continues to change and develop post-adolescence. But it continue to do so for your entire life. Once your brain stops changing and developing, you're dead.

jaguar · 03-25-2005, 11:34 AM

Quote:

The newspaper _The Australian _ reports that “a group of Queensland politicians want the federal Government to investigate giving an anti-junkie vaccination to babies. The vaccination, being considered by British MPs, would render children immune to becoming smokers or drug users.”

What about alcoholics? Or is that a socially accepted way of killing yourself? Fuck this horseshit, no wonder there's a steady stream of people emigrating to more liberal asian countries.

More on topic, this kind of bio/neuroethics is only going to get more complex, I cannot wait to see how badly it gets mashed in the soundbites. The causation/correlation problems with some of these things (teen driving) is already a worry. I'll never understand it really, we tackle the symptoms when they get in the way but never, ever the causes. I will also never understand why people who happily pop paxil and prozac (or have a few stiff drinks after a long day) think cocaine and marijuana are wrong.

jinx · 03-25-2005, 12:46 PM

Cocaine is wrong. Turns perfectly normal people into arrogant, greedy assholes. I hate that shit.

jaguar · 03-25-2005, 01:11 PM

Yea I've never seen booze make anyone arrogant, rowdy, violent, greedy or assholes. Good thing that.

wolf · 03-25-2005, 01:25 PM

Cocaine is much more efficient about it, though.

jaguar · 03-25-2005, 01:38 PM

pricepoint is close these days

Happy Monkey · 03-25-2005, 01:43 PM

I misread "pricepoint" as "powerpoint", and it still made sense.

jaguar · 03-25-2005, 02:00 PM

well price/power crossover

richlevy · 03-25-2005, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf

Cocaine is much more efficient about it, though.

If you mix the two together, you can become President!

Brown Thrasher · 03-25-2005, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaguar

What about alcoholics? Or is that a socially accepted way of killing yourself? Fuck this horseshit, no wonder there's a steady stream of people emigrating to more liberal asian countries.

More on topic, this kind of bio/neuroethics is only going to get more complex, I cannot wait to see how badly it gets mashed in the soundbites. The causation/correlation problems with some of these things (teen driving) is already a worry. I'll never understand it really, we tackle the symptoms when they get in the way but never, ever the causes. I will also never understand why people who happily pop paxil and prozac (or have a few stiff drinks after a long day) think cocaine and marijuana are wrong.

I have not seen a report on alcoholics having a problem with the frontal cortex. I think science has proven it is more of a gene aboration. Alcoholics actually are allergic to alcohol. There brain does not break down a certain chemical in the brain the way it does in non-alcoholics. I think it's been proven that in certain anti-social men with violent tendencies; there seems to be an extra y chromosone that may cause the violent tendencies. I may be wrong about this, so don't qoute me on it. However, I seem to remember while studying abnormal psy. this was an agreed upon conclusion in the realm of science. I agree with you on your last sentence; but as you know the latter are illegal. God knows why, for alcohol definetley causes more violence than the use of marijuana........ I may have mistated my first point, for drinking alcohol excessively for a long period of time brings on dementa in many cases. Therfore, it would cause a problem with the frontal cortex of the brain.....

03-23-2005, 12:12 PM	#1
Troubleshooter The urban Jane Goodall Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 3,012	Problems with the ban on executing juveniles (pt 1) Bad Brains How the Supreme Court's teen execution decision proves too much Ronald Bailey Last month the Supreme Court ruled that teenagers under age 18 who commit premeditated murder cannot be executed. The court based its ruling in part on recent studies that found that the frontal lobesof teenagers were not sufficiently developed, making them not fully responsible for their actions. To justify its ruling, the court majority adopted many of the arguments put forth in an amicus brief sponsored by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, among others. That brief argued that recent neuroimaging studies had found that the "brain's frontal lobes are still structurally immature well into late adolescence. The prefrontal cortex (which.is most associated with impulse control, risk assessment, and moral reasoning) is 'one of the last brain regions to mature.'" Consequently, the amicus brief concluded the evidence "based upon studies of normal adolescents, leads to the conclusion that normal adolescents cannot be expected to operate with the level of maturity, judgment, risk aversion, or impulse control of an adult. Adolescents cannot be expected to transcend their own psychological or biological capacities. However, an adolescent who has suffered brain trauma, a dysfunctional family life, violence, or abuse cannot be presumed to operate even at standard levels for adolescents." Naturally, death penalty opponents and child advocacy organizations hailed the court's decision. But this diminished capacity argument could well play out in disturbing ways. Already the immature teen brain argument has been used by legislators to impose various restrictions on teenage drivers, including limits on times they can drive, the number of passengers they can carry, and their use of mobile phones. That may appear reasonable; after all, teenagers do account disproportionately for traffic accidents. Progressives who applauded the Supreme Court's decision with regard to imposing the death penalty might not be so happy when conservatives turn around and use that decision to justify imposing more parental consent laws on teenage women who are seeking an abortion. And will statutory rape lawsneed to be revised in light of the findings with regard to the immaturity of teenage brains? Furthermore, if teenagers aren't responsible for their actions with regard to violence, driving, or sex, how can they be expected to cast their ballots responsibly in elections? For that matter, how can teenagers responsibly sign up for military service? And surely the immaturity defense can be used by the tens of thousands of juveniles who are arrested each year for drug abuse offenses. __________________ I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle

03-23-2005, 12:13 PM	#2
Troubleshooter The urban Jane Goodall Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 3,012	Problems with the ban on executing juveniles (pt 2) But let's set aside teenage brains for the moment. What about the brains of adults? A new study from Australia has found that parts of the frontal lobes of drug addictsare underdeveloped. "We believe that this braking system is faulty in patients with compulsive behaviours like addiction, such that affected individuals cannot stop themselves even though they know the consequences of their actions could be devastating," says Murat Yucel, who led the research. Violent adult criminals also seem to have brain abnormalities that might fall under the Supreme Court's teen murderer decision. Brain researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) imaged the brains of 21 men with psychopathic personalities who had committed serious violent crimes. They foundthat they had "an 11 percent to 14 percent reduction in the volume of nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex compared to normal males—a deficit of about two teaspoons' worth." Tellingly, Adrian Raine, the USC psychopathologist who headed up the study, noted that the prefrontal cortex appears to be critical for self-restraint and deliberate foresight. "One thing we know about antisocials is that they do not think ahead," said Raine. So the question naturally arises: If teenage culpability for criminal behavior (and other behaviors, for that matter) is reduced on the grounds that their brains do not function like normal adult brains, shouldn't the culpability of adults whose prefrontal cortexes are similarly underdeveloped be reduced? Should adults with stunted frontal lobes "be expected to transcend their own psychological or biological capacities?" In any case, what would it mean to "transcend" one's psychological or biological capacities? We're all limited by our psychological and biological capacities. As neuroscience advances and we become better able to peer inside our skulls, we may find that many of us—possibly most of us—have exculpatory neuronal glitches. If a person hits someone else, wouldn't that mean, by definition, that the executive faculties in his frontal lobes had failed to exercise their inhibitory functions? His neurons made him do it; but they are his neurons, and he's responsible for them. University of California–San Diego neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland points out that a child learns about proper moral behavior in the social world the same way he or she learns about the physical world—that is, by interacting with it himself or watching others. The child then either bears the consequences of his actions or sees the consequences of other people's choices. Churchland concludes, "The default presumption that agents are responsible for their actions is empirically necessary to an agent's learning, both emotionally and cognitively, how to evaluate the consequences of certain events and the price of taking risks." The Supreme Court's underage execution decision has us slipping far down the slope of universal neurological exculpation, and it raises interesting questions about what standard we should use to hold people responsible in criminal cases. I would suggest an old-fashioned one: If a person can distinguish between right and wrong, then we hold her responsible for her actions. Interestingly, the AMA's amicus brief noted, "Cognitive experts have shown that the difference between teenage and adult behavior is not a function of the adolescent's inability to distinguish right from wrong." The legal system is part of the social machinery aimed at training our neurons to behave properly. Neuroscience may inform our judgments about whether our neurons have been properly trained, but in the end we have no choice but to hold people responsible for their actions. After all, it's not as though the young murderer in the case the Supreme Court considered got off scot-free. He's likely to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. In this case, one hopes that both teenagers and the rest of us learn impulse control by watching bad things happen to those who don't succeed in controlling their impulses. Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech Revolution will be published in June by Prometheus Books. __________________ I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle

03-23-2005, 12:40 PM	#4
Troubleshooter The urban Jane Goodall Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 3,012	There are other issues to look at along that slope... From the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics website. ============================================================ AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS CONSIDER ANTI-DRUG VACCINATIONS http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...373794,00.html ============================================================ The newspaper _The Australian _ reports that “a group of Queensland politicians want the federal Government to investigate giving an anti-junkie vaccination to babies. The vaccination, being considered by British MPs, would render children immune to becoming smokers or drug users.” This follows on a similar proposal made last year by some British MPs. The CCLE worked to educate the British last year, and is now working to educate the Australians: Coercive pharmacotherapy is bad public policy and a flagrant violation of many important legal rights including Freedom of Thought. Our 50-page Pharmacotherapy Report (See next news item) foresaw this trend last year and we have been working hard to forestall government efforts to enforce social policy by altering the very architecture of the human body. This is a hugely important issue! __________________ I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle

03-23-2005, 06:09 PM	#5
xoxoxoBruce The future is unwritten Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 71,105	Oh goody...Stepfordtralia. __________________ The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.

03-25-2005, 12:46 PM	#8
jinx Come on, cat. Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: general vicinity of Philadelphia area Posts: 7,013	Cocaine is wrong. Turns perfectly normal people into arrogant, greedy assholes. I hate that shit. __________________ Crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good.

03-24-2005, 12:59 PM	#6
russotto Professor Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 1,788	The immature brain argument is horse pucky, invented in order to come up for a justification for treating adolescents as children. True, your brain continues to change and develop post-adolescence. But it continue to do so for your entire life. Once your brain stops changing and developing, you're dead.

03-25-2005, 01:11 PM	#9
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	Yea I've never seen booze make anyone arrogant, rowdy, violent, greedy or assholes. Good thing that. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

03-25-2005, 01:25 PM	#10
wolf lobber of scimitars Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Phila Burbs Posts: 20,774	Cocaine is much more efficient about it, though. __________________ wolf eht htiw og "Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception." --G. Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island High Priestess of the Church of the Whale Penis

03-25-2005, 01:38 PM	#11
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	pricepoint is close these days __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

03-25-2005, 01:43 PM	#12
Happy Monkey I think this line's mostly filler. Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: DC Posts: 13,575	I misread "pricepoint" as "powerpoint", and it still made sense. __________________ _________________ \|...............\| We live in the nick of times. \| Len 17, Wid 3 \| \|_______________\| [pics]

03-25-2005, 02:00 PM	#13
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	well price/power crossover __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

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