Should youth offenders be charged as adults and do they have the mental capacity to stand trial? Questions regarding the legal proceeding of young perpetrators and adults is a typical ethical cornerstone in forensic psychology. I do not believe that youthful offenders should be charged as adults. In addition, I understand that that they do not have enough mental capacity to fully understand their actions because of brain development. The other issue is the question of why they committed the crime in the first place. Youthful offenders tried as adults can receive harsher prison sentences and be sent to an adult prison. I consider that youthful offenders have the compatibility of reform when given proper treatment. Accordingly, the judicial process of young people should be different from how adult offenders and criminals are tried.
First of all, this is explained from a physiological point of view, since youthful offenders’ brains have not yet matured and are not ready to make difficult decisions. A key difference between a child’s brain and an adult’s brain is that children lack the presence of the prefrontal cortex (Tyler, 2015). Prefrontal cortex covers the front part of the frontal lobe in the brain. It controls humans’ ability to delay and reflect, consider all options, contemplate risks and consequences and have social intelligence.
In addition, another problem is the emotional intelligence of adolescents and their mobile psyche. The social-emotional system controls the emotional state of the brain, and is located in the orbital frontal areas. Raid growth or development of these areas can cause teens to have a higher response to both negative and positive emotions, increased sensation seeking behavior as well as a need to have rewards (Tyler, 2015). As these responses usually die down with age or maturity we know that children don’t have what it takes to make good decisions and cannot mentally stand trial and should be sent to a treatment facility.
Often youthful offenders who are tried as an adult are given harsher sentences. They spend the main time of their lives in the conditions of an adult prison and cannot truly realize what they have done and embark on the path of re-education. On the contrary, they develop aggression and anger at the surrounding world for its injustice (Watt et al., 2017). Young offenders cannot communicate with peers and often the state does not distinguish groups of teenagers as separate from other prisoners (Youth Offenders, 2020). Accordingly, they continue their development in the society of adult criminals, among whom there is a large proportion of criminal elements and repeat offenders.
However, there is an opposing position that supports punishing young people in the same way as adults. This is partly due to the severity of the crime committed or the harshness with which the person committed them (van den Brink, 2022). In this case, the society is aimed at a fair trial of the person who has committed a criminal act and sentencing the offender to a term in accordance with the law. Such an opinion is due to the desire to punish a person and show others how detrimental to their lives the prejudice can be.
In conclusion, it should be said about. that juvenile trial is still an open ethical issue in criminal psychology. However, teenagers have an extremely fluid psyche and insufficiently developed emotional intelligence to stand trial as adults. Accordingly, the answer to the question posed about whether adults and young people should be judged the same way is no. They do not have enough knowledge and experience to stand trial and defend themselves with arguments without affecting their further mental development.
Reference
Tyler, M. (2015). Understanding the adolescent brain and legal culpability. ABA. Web.
van den Brink, Y. (2022). Equality in the youth court: Meaning, perceptions and implications of the principle of equality in youth justice. Youth Justice, 22(3), 245-271. Web.
Watt, B. D., O’Leary, J., & O’Toole, S. (2017). Juvenile fitness for trial: Lawyer and youth justice officer professional survey. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 24(2), 191-204.
Youth Offenders. (2020). CPS. Web.