A brief final post on deterring adolescence, inspired by a story on Slate about four teens charged with child pornography for filming themselves having consensual sex and tweeting a video of it. The police chief said the charge will “send a message to others that kids shouldn’t be involved in this type of behavior, and hopefully this will serve as a deterrent.” If only that were so, prosecutions like this might make some sense. But there is great support for the idea that the criminal law provides very little deterrence when it comes to young people. Their impulsivity, tendency to offend in groups, preference for immediate rewards, and discounting of the future mean that the possibility of getting caught and getting punished plays little role in their decision-making calculus. In the words of Christopher Slobogin, the deterrent force of the criminal law is “literally an afterthought” for adolescents.
This has important consequences in all sorts of arenas, within and beyond criminal justice. The lack of a meaningful deterrent effect of criminal law is one reason (among many) why I argued that DNA collection from juveniles should be reconsidered. In short, we can’t regulate adolescence out of adolescents. They don’t respond to the incentives baked into the law the same way that adults do. In this important time when juvenile justice norms are being rebuilt, we must use what we’ve long known and what we newly know about young people to make for smarter policy. This is especially true when, as now, contact with the criminal justice system and criminal records can have such devastating, permanent impacts on lives.
Like my other April guest bloggers, I wanted to thank Howard and Prawfsblawg for giving me a chance to share thoughts on adolescence every couple of days. I even got a few comments to some of my posts, and made a couple of new friends in the process. This is a wonderful community, and I am thankful it exists.
Cheers.
Posted by Kevin Lapp on April 3, 2015 at 08:12 PM
Comments
What an awful story. I think these prosecutions raise serious First Amendment problems: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2238125
Posted by: carissa | Apr 3, 2015 10:58:42 PM