Grief, Accountability and Youth Incarceration with Professor Laurence Ralph

This talk examines the ramifications of juvenile incarceration. Since the 2010s, brain development studies have greatly influenced US Supreme Court proceedings concerning juvenile crime. These studies suggest that the prefrontal cortex—which is responsible for impulse control, planning, and risk avoidance—is still developing until the age of twenty-five. Defense attorneys and public defenders increasingly use brain science to support the position that adolescents’ incompletely developed brains render them not fully blameworthy and makes it inappropriate to sentence them as adults. And yet, US prosecutors have wide discretion to work around the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the status of juveniles. Moreover, even if prosecutors base their sentences on the Court’s findings, the governor of their state can replace them. One consequence of prosecutorial discretion, in other words, is that the law is unevenly applied, making it difficult for a victim’s family to heal from homicide. Drawing from the literature in child psychology as well as the sociology and anthropology of urban violence, I argue that, as a society, our idea of accountability is incomplete. As I would come to learn when a teenage family member of mine was murdered, even within the progressive embrace of cities like San Francisco, a stark contrast between the rhetoric of a fair trial and the stark reality of juvenile justice persists. Rather than seeking to provide solutions for the problem of juvenile crime, this talk lays bare the tensions and societal contradictions this phenomenon creates.