Less guilty by reason of adolescence: developmental immaturity, diminished responsibility, and the juvenile death penalty

The authors use a developmental perspective to examine questions about the criminal culpability of juveniles and the juvenile death penalty. Under principles of criminal law, culpability is mitigated when the actor's decision-making capacity is diminished, when the criminal act was coerced, or when the act was out of character. The authors argue that juveniles should not be held to the same standards of criminal responsibility as adults, because adolescents' decision-making capacity is diminished, they are less able to resist coercive influence, and their character is still undergoing change. The uniqueness of immaturity as a mitigating condition argues for a commitment to a legal environment under which most youths are dealt with in a separate justice system and none are eligible for capital punishment.     

Age differences in attitude change: influences of cognitive resources and motivation on responses to argument quantity

This study examined the influences of cognitive resources and motivation on how young and older adults process different quantities of persuasive arguments. In the first experiment session, both young and older adults rated their attitudes toward marijuana legalization and capital punishment. After a week, they read either 3 or 9 similar-quality arguments supporting marijuana legalization and capital punishment. Half of participants were assigned to the high-involvement condition (i.e., told that they were going to discuss the arguments later with the experimenter) and the other half were assigned to the low-involvement condition (i.e., given no instructions). After reading the arguments, participants rated their attitudes toward those 2 social issues again. Highly involved young adults changed their attitudes regardless of the quantity of arguments, whereas lowly involved young adults' attitude change was influenced by the argument quantity. Older adults in both high-involvement and low-involvement conditions changed their attitudes according to the argument quantity. Working memory was found to mediate the age effects on attitude change. This finding demonstrated the importance of a cognitive mechanism in accounting for age differences in attitude change.     

Legal Punishment and the Public Identification of Offenders

In the United States, the identities of criminal offenders are matters of public record, accessible to prospective employers, the press, and ordinary citizens. In European countries, the identities of offenders are routinely kept hidden, with some exceptions. The question addressed in this discussion concerns whether the public disclosure of the identities of offenders is part and parcel of their legal punishment. My contentions are that public disclosure is not conceptually part of legal punishment, necessary to serve substantive penal aims, or likely to enhance penal aims. At times, it will conflict with defensible aims of legal punishment. Other values might support or require the public identification of criminal offenders, but the aims of legal punishment do not appear to do so.     

Political orientation and perceptions of adolescent autonomy and judicial culpability

This study probed general attitudes about processing youths in adult criminal court across a range of offenses, explored attitudes about age of autonomous decision‐making for several activities outside the criminal justice context, and examined the interaction between these two realms. The major finding was that adults favor adult punishment of adolescent offenders at younger ages than they favor autonomy in other decision‐making contexts; the gap is widest for those who identify themselves as conservatives. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The disposables: our treatment of violent adolescents

This paper discusses the clinical perceptions of levels of attachment disorder as theorized by John Bowlby. The findings are based on interview data of juvenile delinquent offenders who have committed criminal acts that are serious enough to warrant their being tried as adults. The data are based on clinical interviews, and the interviewer encourages empirical research of the clinical findings. It is suggested that attachment levels may be a viable means of determining appropriate types of rehabilitative interventions for juvenile offenders.     

Deciding the Fate of Others: The Cognitive Underpinnings of Racially Biased Juror Decision Making

In criminal law, jurors are supposed to ignore defendant race when considering factual matters of culpability. However, when judging the merits of a criminal case, jurors’ ability (or inability) to avoid bias may affect verdicts. Fact-based decision making expend cognitive resources, while heuristic-based decisions (e.g., using criminal stereotypes) conserve resources. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive resources and prejudice attitudes about Blacks influenced trial outcomes. We tested the impact of working memory capacity (WMC), cognitive load, prejudice, and target race (Black, White) on penalties ascribed to fictional criminal defendants in ambiguous-fact cases. Results showed that when “loaded,” prejudiced-low-WMC persons supported guilty verdicts with higher confidence more often for Black than White defendants. Conversely, regardless of WMC or prejudice attitude, participants penalized White defendants more often when not loaded. We suggest that cognitive resources and prejudice attitude influence fact-based decisions. Links to juror judgments and potential trial outcomes are discussed.     

Treating the adolescent victim-turned-offender.

Many juvenile sex offenders are also victims of sexual abuse. However, treatment primarily focuses on the juvenile's criminal acts in a confrontational, nonsympathetic manner. In the present paper, a survey of professionals in the sexual abuse treatment field assessed attitudes toward juvenile sex offender treatment. Those in the corrections field were the greatest supporters of confrontational and punitive therapy methods, while the majority favored flexibility in treatment.     

Victim-Centered Retributivism

Abstract: Critics charge that retributivists fail to show why the state should concern itself with ensuring that criminal offenders are punished in accordance with their ill deserts. Drawing on the notion that the state should attempt to equalize the realization of the interests designated by rights, it is argued that legal punishment restores the equality of condition, disrupted by criminal conduct, that all citizens are entitled to. While this equality of condition might be restored in various ways, it is argued that the imposition of punitive losses is the most appropriate way to restore it in most cases. An account of the ill deserts of offenders, as a function of the harms their crimes produce and the extent of their culpability for those harms, is briefly elaborated.     

Sentencing Convicted Juvenile Felony Offenders in the Adult Court: The Direct Effects of Race

While research indicates that Black and Hispanic adults sentenced in the criminal court tend to be rendered more severe punishments than their White counterparts, only one prior study has examined whether this finding holds for juveniles tried in the adult system. The findings from this sole study need replication, however, since the effects posed by trial type were not taken into account and it is likely that the results are confounded by measurement error resulting from overlap in criminal sentencing. The current study addressed these issues by assessing whether race has a direct impact on waived juveniles being criminally sentenced to restitution, probation, or jail. Data were derived from a secondary, cross‐sectional national dataset on felony juvenile offenders convicted in the adult system. Three hypotheses were tested. After controlling for a number of important legal and extra‐legal predictors of sentencing, race differences in sentencing outcomes were observed and the findings yielded partial support for the hypotheses. The implications of the research are noted. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jugendliche Gewaltdelinquenz,psychosoziale Merkmale und Migrationsstatus

As part of the longitudinal study ?Chances and risks during the life course“, the emergence of deviant and delinquent behavior is studied. The data basis of the present study consists of self-reports of male ninth grade pupils from Dortmund and Nuremberg schools (n?=?726). Particularly, data applying to perpetration of an offence in the past year were analyzed, including dark-figures data for violent offences. The indices for violent crime were related to several psychosocial characteristics (e.g. violence-approving attitudes, self-centered personality traits and corporal punishment by parents), considering type of school and migration background. From a developmental psychopathology perspective, these psychosocial characteristics can contribute to juvenile delinquency and violence. Overall, the empirical findings suggest that juveniles with migration backgrounds show significantly more violence and peer delinquency than juveniles without migration backgrounds. Furthermore, there seems to be empirical evidence that there are significant differences between violent offenders and non-violent offenders or young people with migration backgrounds and young people without migration backgrounds, respectively, with regard to various psychosocial characteristics. Additional results refer to school type specific analyses. Limitations of the present study and implications of the findings for future research on juvenile violence are discussed focusing on violence prevention and interventional approaches.     

Reactions to youth crime: perceptions of accountability and competency

Recent changes in juvenile justice policies have stimulated debate among legal professionals and social scientists. As such, public opinion concerning juvenile offenders is an important and timely topic for empirical study. In the present study, respondents read a scenario about a juvenile who committed a crime, and then decided on a sentence and rated perceptions of the juvenile's accountability and legal competence. Four between-subject factors were manipulated: age of the defendant (11 versus 14 versus 17 years), type of crime (shooting versus arson), crime outcome (victim injured versus died), and time delay between the instigating incident and the crime (immediately versus one day). The type and outcome of the crime were major motivating factors in sentencing decisions and perceptions of legal competence, and, although younger offenders were seen as less accountable and less competent than older offenders, sentence allocation and attitudes towards punishment were not significantly affected by offender age.     

Juvenile Offending and Crime in Early Adulthood: A Large Sample Analysis

Using large sample archival data from the state of South Carolina’s juvenile justice agency and other state agencies, we examined the background, early experiential and delinquency-related variables predicting young adult (ages 17–30 years) offending among juvenile offenders. We also examined characteristics of juvenile offenders who committed only a single misdemeanor offense, compared to non-juvenile offenders. Finally, we examined the variables that accounted for group differences in persistence of juvenile offending. Early adverse experiences including family-related adversities, mental health problems, identification as having school-related disabilities and juvenile recidivism accounted for more than 20 % of the variance in adult offending. Cox proportional hazards analysis revealed several time-dependent covariates including gender, age at first offense and repeat versus one time offending. Contrary to the view that the one time, misdemeanor level juvenile offending represents only minor departure from normative adolescent behavior, we found that this group of offenders differed significantly from non-delinquents on every category of risk for adult offending and also were more likely than non-delinquents to commit felonies as adults. Finally, in comparing adolescence-limited offenders with life-course persistent offenders, we accounted for more than 50 % of the variance in criminal outcomes on the basis of measures of background, early adversity, psychological characteristics and age of first juvenile arrest or referral.     

Fatherhood and Delinquency: An Examination of Risk Factors and Offending Patterns Associated with Fatherhood Status among Serious Juvenile Offenders

Despite a large body of literature across multiple disciplines on adolescent motherhood, adolescent fathers have been largely absent from empirical research. Previous findings suggest that young men who experience multiple risk factors across a range of life domains have a high likelihood of becoming fathers at an early age, which can negatively impact their developmental trajectories and age-normative transitions (e.g. from school to work). However, little is known about the risk factors for fatherhood among high-risk juvenile offenders; nor is it well understood how fatherhood is related to criminal behavior in this population. The current study investigated risk factors and offending patterns associated with adolescent fatherhood status in a sample of serious juvenile offenders (N?=?1170). Consistent with previous studies, fatherhood status was associated with greater risk exposure among serious juvenile offenders. Furthermore, change in fatherhood status was associated with higher levels of overall offending, aggressive offending, income-related offending, and non-drug-related income offending. In light of these findings, we propose that supports and resources are needed to facilitate juvenile offenders in their role as fathers during this time.     

The Backyard Politics of Attitudes Toward Immigration

Using two survey experiments, I reconsider the role that the racialized physical traits and level of assimilation of salient immigrants play in shaping attitudes toward immigration. In the first experiment, a nationwide sample of 767 White, non‐Latino adults was exposed to a story about a family of undocumented immigrants living in the Unites States who were at risk of deportation. Subjects were randomly assigned to view a version of the story in which the immigrants were depicted with light skin and stereotypically Eurocentric features, or dark skin and stereotypically Afrocentric features, and their level of assimilation to mainstream American culture was suggested to be high or low. Similar to previous research, the study's results show that assimilation has a direct effect on attitudes toward immigration. Yet in contrast to previous studies, the racialized physical traits proved to be a much more important factor in shaping attitudes toward immigration than previously demonstrated. The role of an immigrant's racialized physical traits was replicated in a second survey experiment of 902 White, non‐Latino adults. Overall, the findings shed new light on how media depictions of immigrants are affecting immigration attitudes, as well as the nuanced ways that race continues to shape public opinion in the United States today.     

The Effect of Strong Versus Weak Evidence on the Assessment of Race Stereotypic and Race Nonstereotypic Crimes1

The effects of defendant race, type of crime, and strength of evidence on the perception and evaluation of criminal offenses were examined. Consistent with past research, defendants accused of race stereotypic crimes were more likely to be perceived as guilty and as more typical offenders than were defendants accused of race nonstereotypic crimes. The strength of evidence supplied to subjects did moderate the interaction between defendant race and type of crime on some of the punishment items. These findings and their implications for future related research are discussed.     

Age/Cohort Differences in Judgments About Criminal Transgressions

To examine possible age/cohort differences in social judgment processes, young and older adults were asked to evaluate criminal offenders described in case files that manipulated both race of offender and the extenuating circumstances preceding the crime. Direct mail was used to reach a wider sample; 218 young (M = 30.21 years) and 167 older (M = 68.57 years) adults provided usable responses. Older adults more strongly recommended parole and estimated less future crime than young adults. There were no age differences in attributions to the criminal's basic nature, but respondents from older age groups and earlier born cohorts more frequently attributed crimes to circumstances. Respondents' judgments of White and Black criminals were generally equitable. Findings suggest that older adults may attach greater importance to contextual factors in their judgments of criminals' actions and make more circumstantial attributions than young adults when there is sufficient context to offer a nondispositional account for behavior.     

Ambivalence toward mothers who kill: an examination of 45 U.S. cases of maternal neonaticide

Public opinion about neonaticide (the killing of a newborn within the first 24 hours of life) has varied across time and cultures. Some nations have passed legislation on behalf of maternal offenders with the assumption that childbirth, a time of unique biological change, may lead to mental disturbance. The United States, however, makes no such distinction; offenders are prosecuted under general homicide laws. Nevertheless, U.S. courts often consider a mother's emotional and physical condition prior to and during delivery. This study includes 44 female offenders and 45 infant deaths and highlights society's ambivalence toward neonaticide offenders. The authors suggest that this ambivalence may be attributed to: (1) the perception that an offender's emotional and physical turmoil during the birth and homicide reduces her culpability; (2) the sentiment that neonaticide offenders are more "redeemable" than other offenders; and (3) the uncertainty about the personhood of a fetus or newborn.     

Trust and understanding in the attorney-juvenile relationship

This study investigated whether court-experienced juveniles differ from court-experienced adults in their understanding of the defense counsel role and their trust in attorneys. Court-experienced juveniles and young adults, ages 12 to 20, were compared on measures of trust, attitudes toward authority, understanding about the role of defense counsel, trial-related knowledge, and the Trust in My Lawyer Scale. The findings showed that court-related knowledge is associated with both level of intellectual functioning and age and that court-related misunderstandings are associated with mistrust in attorneys. The findings did not support the assertion that there are significant differences between juveniles and young adults in their trust of their attorneys. Results regarding parental involvement, attorney characteristics, and interaction effects of race and intellectual functioning in relation to trust are also discussed.     

Application of Megan's law to juveniles

This article examines (a) the history of registration and notification statutes for sex offenders and the concerns and legal challenges they have faced, (b) psychology's limited knowledge about normal versus abnormal sexual development, and (c) research that suggests rates of recidivism for sexual offenses may be lower for juveniles than for adults who have been discovered and received punishment and/or treatment. Although the behaviors of juvenile and adult sex offenders may appear similar, the underlying mechanisms triggering the behaviors may be different or juveniles' patterns of behaviors may be less established, accounting for some of the observed differences in recidivism rates. Although the authors recognize the critical objective of protecting victims and potential victims, this article focuses on intervention efforts with juvenile sex offenders.     

Changes in Public Attitudes and Perceptions about Homelessness Between 1990 and 2016

Public attitudes on homelessness can and has influenced policies and services for homeless populations. This study surveyed national public attitudes about homelessness in the 21st century and examined changes in attitudes in the past two decades. An online survey of public attitudes about homelessness was conducted with 541 U.S. adults across 47 states in November 2016 using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Survey results were compared to two public surveys conducted in 1990. Compared to previous surveys, the current sample endorsed more compassion, government support, and liberal attitudes about homelessness. The largest changes were related to increased support for homeless individuals to use public spaces for sleeping and panhandling. When asked about the demographic composition of the homeless population, the contemporary sample tended to overestimate the proportions who were young and racial/ethnic minorities, while underestimating the proportions who were married, or had mental health or substance abuse problems. Together, the findings suggest there has been an increase in compassion and liberal attitudes toward homelessness in the past two decades. Greater support for homeless individuals during an era of economic recessions and governmental homeless initiatives presents opportunities for new public health approaches to address homelessness.