Nothing was ever said of his family or personal background, but it was assumed to be unpleasant. Having grown up with family problems, sexually, verbally, or physically abusive parents, or neglecting parents contributes to most, if not all juvenile crimes (Flowers 134-137). Laurence Steinberg, professor of psychology at Temple University and the director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, says:.
The Question here is, at what age can we be so .
sure of a person's inability to change in the .
context of an attempt by society to change that.
person that we would sentence to death? I don't .
think 16 or 17 seems like a very reasonable .
answer to that. (New York Times 2).
The adolescent age of 16 or 17 is an age where the adolescent mind is still growing. During the adolescent years of human brain development, the brain begins pullulating hormones. The center of the brain that controls reasoning and impulse control, the prefrontal cortex, is unfinished in the development process (www.pbs.org). Thus, the adolescent is unable to reason well and controlling those hormone-induced impulses can be quite difficult. In other words, the decisions that are made by an adolescent, bad or good, are not always the same decisions that would be made by that same person in that same situation later in life. Adolescence is a time of poor judgment and unstable emotions (www.pbs.org). Also, during the time of adolescence, children are more susceptible to the psychological disease schizophrenia than any other point in their life and it can begin as early as age 12 (www.pbs.org). Until the prefrontal cortex has fully matured, usually between the ages of 20 and 30 and varying for everyone, the person remains vulnerable to irrational decision-making, impulsive behavior, and schizophrenia.
Adolescent maltreatment is another factor in the delinquency and the criminality of juveniles (Flowers 133).