# data[].attributes.body
"A 2019 study of alchol consumption in India found “a causal channel between alcohol consumption and domestic violence,” in that men who were legally allowed to drink were “substantially more likely to consume alcohol” and “significantly more likely to commit violence against their partners.” Lowering the MLDA is likely to raise domestic abuse rates".
Source: Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age?
Con 1
Para 3

# data[].attributes.body
"I’m sorry but if having 16-year olds in the voting booth is the answer to some civic problem we have, I guess I don’t know what the question is. People point to pitiful voter turnout, but is simply adding more eligible voters the answer to civic malaise? One organization that supports this nationally, FairVote, says it will have a “trickle-up effect,” getting parents more engaged. I suppose when my teenagers wanted to support Ralph Nader for president, it mildly engaged my ridicule instincts".
Source: No, We Shouldn’t Lower the Voting Age to 16
Para 2

# data[].attributes.body
"Steinberg said, arguing that the results suggest that the teenage
brain finds peer approval extremely rewarding. What’s more, when Steinberg and his colleagues investigated
further, they saw a strong correlation between the brain’s reward centers and riskier behaviors." -The Teen Brain in a Grown-up World

# data[].attributes.body
"Placing juveniles in adult jails and prisons is an appalling injustice—and it doesn’t work to reduce crime. With the JJDPA set to be reauthorized this year, Congress must amend the Act to ban the placement of children or teens in adult jails or prisons no matter what court hears their case. This is the right and sensible thing to do."(Paragraph 8) - childrensdefense.org

# data[].attributes.body
"Young people develop logical reasoning before they develop impulse
control, for example. That means kids can recognize bad behavior even before they can overcome the natural
urges and social pressures to participate in it."

# data[].attributes.body
"Most heartbreaking, even the teens the researchers felt most certain could make it to college never quite get there (at least by the end of the 10-year study)".
Source: Why Becoming an Adult Means Something Very Different When You’re Poor
Para 11

# data[].attributes.headline
David- "A different survey found 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21" 

# data[].attributes.subject
David- "A different survey found 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21" 

# data[].attributes.body
In the 19th century, teenagers were expected to raise their own children and work in the fields. This was true
even though 19th-century teenagers were physically and intellectually less advanced than teenagers today.
Thanks to better nutrition and more formal schooling, today’s children generally reach puberty earlier and are,
at least in theory, more informed about the world around them. - How Old is Old Enough?

# data[].attributes.body
"The young adults in the Baltimore
study have no such breathing space: They have to support younger siblings when drug-addicted parents can’t, or
care for the babies they’ve already had, or earn their own way to escape violence. They aren’t exploring their
way into adulthood; they are lurching there, as fast as possible."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1. Why Becoming an Adult Means Something Very Different When You’re Poor .pdf

# data[].attributes.body
"Students eager for college wound up instead at for-profit trade schools. Kids who wanted to be doctors
downgraded to careers as nursing assistants. Kids who dreamed of careers in hospitality had to settle for jobs at
Chick-fil-A, with no clear path from one to the other."(para. 8)

# data[].attributes.body
"Social scientists Tak Wing Chan, PhD, and Matthew Clayton, DPhil, say that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn’t be competent voters because “research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years,”- Should the voting age be lowered

# data[].attributes.body
“We’re still learning. Whereas, once upon a time, we imagined adolescence to end at 18,
now we don’t really know when this process of development ends....Twenty-five, 26, 28, 30, 32? We don’t know.”
Source: You’re an Adult, but Your Brain Might Not Be, Experts Say

# data[].attributes.body
“I know a million people who if I needed to sell drugs or rob houses or stuff like that, that I could have the job
at any time and be making enough money to support myself,” Kareem, 20, says. He wants a job in the legal
economy. But employers say they’ll call back and they never do. “It’s as if,” he says, “I was destined to be a
criminal.” - Paragraph 21 article "Why Becoming an Adult Means Something Very Different When You’re Poor"

# data[].attributes.body
"Lowering the voting age is tricky under the law. The federal law allows it, since the wording of the 26th
Amendment provides that citizens over 18 may not be denied the right to vote based on age." - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YFUgjXLD7VS3dWgNRzzY5u8WKQ_M47_g paragraph 6

# data[].attributes.body
"The wording of the 26th, amendment provides that citizens over 18 may not be denied the right to vote based on age. Arguably the Constitution could again be amended to change the age to 16, though the bar for such amendments is high,
requiring two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures to approve." (Paragraph 6)

# data[].attributes.body
"Your brain consists of two types of tissue, gray matter and white matter. In your first decade of life, the gray matter grows and expands rapidly as many new synapses, or connections between nerves, are being made. The gray matter grows as you learn and are exposed to new experiences as a child".
Source: You’re an Adult, but Your Brain Might Not Be, Experts Say
Para 8

# data[].attributes.headline
David- "In the 30 years since MLDA 21 was introduced, drunk driving fatalities decreased by a third. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that MLDA 21 has saved 31,417 lives from 1975-2016. Lowering the MLDA would surely increase traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths" Con 1, paragraph 2

# data[].attributes.subject
David- "In the 30 years since MLDA 21 was introduced, drunk driving fatalities decreased by a third. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that MLDA 21 has saved 31,417 lives from 1975-2016. Lowering the MLDA would surely increase traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths" Con 1, paragraph 2

# data[].attributes.body
"...the newest brain research suggests that
adolescence is a time of exceptional plasticity, where the brain can remodel itself in response to the
environment."- "The Teen Brain in a Grown-Up World" by Kayt Sukel

# data[].attributes.body
"...brain regions involved with rewards and motivation, like the nucleus accumbens and striatum, mature much more quickly than the prefontal cortex, the brain's executive control center. The result is a neurobiological recipe for risk-taking: A brain that puts high premium on rewards but lacks the maturity to think things through and put the brakes on behaviours that could result in unhealthy consequences" ~ Sukel.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5. The Teen Brain in a Grown-up World.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
“Brain development occurs in waves, with different brain regions having their major developmental events at
different times,” she said. “So, the measurements that index brain maturation will give you different answers
depending on what measure you’re focusing on and where in the brain you’re looking.”

source- You're an Adult, but your brain might not be, experts say
paragraph 6

# data[].attributes.body
We shouldn't lower the voting age to 16: Two cities in Maryland—Tacoma Park (population 10,000) and Hyattsville (population 18,000)—have lowered the
voting age to 16 for municipal elections only. In the primaries, 22 states allow 17-year olds to vote if they will turn 18 prior to the general election in the fall.
Paragraph 5

# data[].attributes.headline
David- "In Florida, for instance, the state got tough on teenage criminals when juvenile crime rates jumped during the 1990s, threatening not only residents and visitors, but Florida’s bedrock tourism industry itself. Two such juvenile offenders, one who raped a woman when he was 13, and another who committed armed robbery at 16,brought the appeals heard by the Supreme Court last week." How old is old enough

# data[].attributes.subject
David- "In Florida, for instance, the state got tough on teenage criminals when juvenile crime rates jumped during the 1990s, threatening not only residents and visitors, but Florida’s bedrock tourism industry itself. Two such juvenile offenders, one who raped a woman when he was 13, and another who committed armed robbery at 16,brought the appeals heard by the Supreme Court last week." How old is old enough

# data[].attributes.body
"Consequently, in most states, a 10-year-old charged with murder can be tried as an adult. Slightly older teens can be tried in adult courts for virtually every other crime."
Source: what is the age of responsibility
Paragraph 4

# data[].attributes.body
"Some supporters of holding the drinking age steady acknowledge that 21, when it comes right down to it, is an arbitrary age"
Source: what is the age of responsibility
Paragraph 18

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"Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result."
source Children in Adult Prison (eji.org)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent.

In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up. And so we pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.

But until recently, these legal protections didn't apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children. Kids as young as eight can still be charged as an adult, held in an adult jail, and sentenced to extreme sentences in an adult prison. EJI is working to protect children from abusive treatment in the adult criminal justice system.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where kids as young as 13 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Before the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, 366 people were executed for juvenile offenses. That ban allowed EJI to focus on some 3000 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses committed when they were 17 or younger. Children as young as 13 were among those condemned to die in prison.

Most of these sentences were mandatory-the sentencing judge was not allowed to consider the child's age or life history. Some children were sentenced for crimes where no one was killed or even injured, and many were convicted even though older teens or adults were primarily responsible for the crime. Seventy percent of those 14 or younger who were sentenced to die in prison were children of color.

EJI launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. Three years later, we argued in the Supreme Court that the Constitution forbids sentencing children to die in prison. On May 17, 2010, the Court in Graham v. Florida barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. The Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults have to be considered in sentencing. Since 2010, we have successfully represented children across the country to obtain new sentences.

We went back to the Supreme Court after Graham to argue that sentencing kids to die in prison is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. In 2012, the Court in Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. The ruling affected thousands of people whose sentencers did not consider their age, the details of the offense, or any other mitigating factors. The Court did not ban all juvenile life-without-parole sentences, but held that requiring sentencers to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change" should make such sentences "uncommon."

Some states refused to apply to older cases. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that applies retroactively and requires new sentencing hearings for everyone serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense when they were under 18. Montgomery reaffirmed that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for all but the rare juvenile for whom rehabilitation is impossible.

Over a thousand people who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses have been resentenced because of , and hundreds have been released.

Incarcerating children with adults needlessly puts kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma, and suicide.

4.5K

Some 4,500 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.

9x

Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.

100%

Every state in America has capacity to house juveniles separate from adults but many refuse to do so.

Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma. They often act impulsively, recklessly, and irresponsibly. In an adult jail or prison, this behavior results in more aggressive punishment-which can worsen a child's mental health problems.

Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result.

Some statutes require "sight and sound" separation of children in adult facilities to shield them from physical and sexual violence. But in practice, this often means kids are put in solitary confinement, where they're at risk of significant psychological trauma from isolation.

The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing-they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

Kids' low social status compared to adult interrogators, beliefs about the need to obey authority, greater dependence on adults, and vulnerability to intimidation makes them uniquely susceptible to coercive psychological interrogation techniques designed for adults, leading to false confessions and undermining the reliability of the fact-finding process. Young children clearly can't defend themselves in adult court, but the rules created to shield adults who aren't "competent" to stand trial don't take kids' unique characteristics into account. Their diminished understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities puts them at great risk in the adult criminal justice system.

Eleven states have no minimum age for trying children as adults: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Some states allow children to be prosecuted as adults at 10, 12, or 13 years old. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.

Each year, judges transfer dozens of children under 14 to adult court. Prosecutors charge other young kids directly in adult court. More than half of the children under 14 transferred to adult court each year are African American or Latino.

Featured Work

EJI challenges abusive treatment of children by providing direct legal representation to hundreds of people across the country. We advocate for clients in parole hearings, provide re-entry services designed for people incarcerated as children, and educate policymakers, decision makers, and the public about the treatment of children in the justice system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Children in Adult Prison | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent. In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up.

# data[].attributes.body
David Davenport-"My concern is if 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on any kind of broad scale, what we’d actually be doing is bringing the least politically informed, the least politically experienced, the least mature in terms of making long-term judgments and trade-offs, directly into and potentially affecting our voter turnout and results.”
source Should the Voting Age be Lowered in the US? Top 3 Pros and Cons (procon.org)
con 2 - The 18-29 age group has extremely low voter turnout numbers, suggesting that people aren't ready to vote until later in life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several U.S. states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger.

Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

Internationally, about a dozen countries allow citizens to vote at age 16, sometimes with conditions such as being employed or married, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil and Ecuador.

A constitutional amendment to lower the U.S. voting age to 16 would require approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 states). Alternatively, state legislatures could pass laws allowing younger people to vote in their states.

Until the 1970s, the voting age in America was 21. A debate over lowering it to 18 began during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreased the military draft age to 18. President Eisenhower called for citizens ages 18 to 21 to be included in the political process in his 1954 State of the Union address. But lawmakers didn't take action until marches and demonstrations drew attention to the fact that young people who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam did not have the ability to vote in most states.

Congress proposed the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1971, which stated, "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." The ratification process, which required approval from 38 states, was completed in about three months, the shortest amount of time of any amendment in U.S. history.

While the push to lower voting age for state and federal elections is still an uphill battle, some smaller jurisdictions are lowering the voting age. A handful of cities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow 16- and 17- year olds to vote in local elections, including school board elections as of Sep. 2023.

Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16?

Pro 1

16-year-olds are just as knowledgeable about civics and have the same ability to make good voting choices as older voters.

A study in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science found, "on measures of civic knowledge, political skills, political efficacy, and tolerance, 16-year-olds, on average, are obtaining scores similar to those of adults... Adolescents in this age range are developmentally ready to vote."

Scientists believe that "cold cognition" skills, those used to make the kind of informed, well-thought out choices needed in voting, are solidly established in 16-year-olds.

Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007. According to Markus Wagner, Social Sciences Professor at the University of Vienna, and his coauthors, studies of elections after the Austrian voting age was lowered show "the quality of these [younger] citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well."
Read More

Pro 2

Lowering the voting age to 16 increases voter turnout and develops lifelong voting habits.

The United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries. A person who votes in one election has a 13% greater probability of voting in a future election. Researchers say that people who participate in elections when they first reach voting age are likely to develop the habit of voting, and those who don't are more likely to remain nonvoters.

16-year-olds are learning about government and civics in high school, and the structured environment would lead to higher turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds as teachers and parents help them overcome typical obstacles for first-time voters, such as the registration process and finding their polling places.

By contrast, many 18-year-olds are in a time of transition, making them less likely to participate in elections.

Involving young people in voting can have a "trickle up" effect that mobilizes their parents and other adults in their households to vote, increasing the overall voter turnout rate. Turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds in Takoma Park, Maryland, the first U.S. municipality to lower the voting age for local elections, was double that of eligible voters 18 and older.
Read More

Pro 3

At age 16, people should have a voice in the laws that affect their lives and a stake in the future of their country.

A U.S. Senate report cited student activism and protests as reasons for lowering the voting age to 18 in the 1970s during the Vietnam War: "We must channel these energies into our political system and give young people the real opportunity to influence our society in a peaceful and constructive manner."

Students today live under threats to their futures such as school shootings and climate change, and they deserve to have influence over their elected officials beyond the protests they've organized.

Sofie Whitney, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, says, "If 16-year-old students are old enough to be affected by the laws, and realize that there is a problem, then they should have the power to help change it."

The age of 16 is when people's relationship with the law changes as they often start driving, working, and paying taxes. Further, in most states, 16-year-olds can be emancipated from their parents and live independently.
Read More

Con 1

Kids under the age of 18 aren't mature enough to participate in elections.

Experts say that 16- and 17-year-olds demonstrate lower interest in politics, have less political knowledge, and lack the experience needed to participate in elections.

Social scientists Tak Wing Chan and Matthew Clayton say that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn't be competent voters because "research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years." They add that the prefrontal cortex is what "enables us to weigh dilemmas, balance trade-offs and, in short, make reasonable decisions in politics."

People under 18 are subject to different labor, contract, and criminal responsibility laws, and aren't allowed to join the military without parental consent or serve on a jury.

Most 16- and 17-year-olds are still living at home and would be influenced by the voting choices of their parents.
Read More

Con 2

The 18-29 age group has extremely low voter turnout numbers, suggesting that people aren't ready to vote until later in life.

Only 12.5% of 18-year-olds participated in the 2014 midterm election, compared to 42% of the general population.

According to the United States Elections Project's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, just 16% of eligible voters ages 18-29 voted in the 2014 election, compared to 30% for ages 30-44, 43% for 45-59, and 55% for age 60 and up. Over the last 30 years, voter turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds has never exceeded 21% in a midterm election.

Only 23% of students scored at or above the "proficient" level on the last National Assessment of Educational Progress test of civics knowledge and skills.

David Davenport, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, says, "My concern is if 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on any kind of broad scale, what we'd actually be doing is bringing the least politically informed, the least politically experienced, the least mature in terms of making long-term judgments and trade-offs, directly into and potentially affecting our voter turnout and results."
Read More

Con 3

The vast majority of Americans of all ages and political views agree that 16-year-olds should not be given the right to vote.

A 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll found that 84% of registered voters opposed lowering the voting age to 16. The poll found every age group was against 16-year-olds voting, with the most support found among those under 35 where still only 39% were in favor.

A different survey found only 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21.

A Twitter poll by WJLA, the ABC news affiliate in Washington, DC, found just 18% support for a proposed bill to lower the voting age to 16 in the District of Columbia, compared to 77% against. The local NBC news affiliate ran a similar poll online in which 83% of participants were against the bill.
Read More
Discussion Questions
1. Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Why or why not?

2. Would lowering the voting age increase voter turnout? Explain your answer?

3. Would lowering the voting age lead to increase civic knowledge and participation? Why or why not?
Take Action
1. Explore the campaign to lower the voting age with Vote16USA.

2. Learn more about the 26th Amendment at the Constitution Center.

3. Explore " Preregistration for Young Voters " at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

4. Consider David Davenport's con argument, including that other laws (governing activities such as driving, drinking, and smoking) have increased ages instead of lowering them based on the immaturity of teenagers.

5. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

6. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

47.

The Hill, "
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Lowering Voting Age to 16," thehill.com, May 3, 2019

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Should the Voting Age be Lowered in the US? Top 3 Pros and Cons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Proponents say teens are knowledgeable enough to vote. Opponents say kids aren't mature enough to vote. Explore both sides of the debate.

# data[].attributes.body
We shouldn't lower the voting age to 16: "researchers generally agree that the brain is still developing until the mid-20s,
with moral reasoning and abstract thought coming later in the cycle than previously thought."
Paragraph 4

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Experts say that 16- and 17-year-olds demonstrate lower interest in politics, have less political knowledge, and lack the experience needed to participate in elections

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several US states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger. Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

Internationally, about a dozen countries allow citizens to vote at age 16, sometimes with conditions such as being employed or married, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil and Ecuador.

A constitutional amendment to lower the US voting age to 16 would require approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 states). Alternatively, state legislatures could pass laws allowing younger people to vote in their states.

Until the 1970s, the voting age in America was 21. A debate over lowering it to 18 began during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreased the military draft age to 18. President Eisenhower called for citizens ages 18 to 21 to be included in the political process in his 1954 State of the Union address. But lawmakers didn't take action until marches and demonstrations drew attention to the fact that young people who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam did not have the ability to vote in most states.

Congress proposed the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1971, which stated, "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." The ratification process, which required approval from 38 states, was completed in about three months, the shortest amount of time of any amendment in US history.

Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16?

Pro 1

16-year-olds are just as knowledgeable about civics and have the same ability to make good voting choices as older voters.

A study in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science found that, "On measures of civic knowledge, political skills, political efficacy, and tolerance, 16-year-olds, on average, are obtaining scores similar to those of adults... Adolescents in this age range are developmentally ready to vote."

Scientists believe that "cold cognition" skills, those used to make the kind of informed, well-thought out choices needed in voting, are solidly established in 16-year-olds.

Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007. According to Markus Wagner, PhD, Social Sciences Professor at the University of Vienna, and coauthors, studies of subsequent elections show "the quality of these [younger] citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well."
Read More

Pro 2

Lowering the voting age to 16 increases voter turnout and develops lifelong voting habits.

The United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries. A person who votes in one election has a 13% greater probability of voting in a future election. Researchers say that people who participate in elections when they first reach voting age are likely to develop the habit of voting, and those who don't are more likely to remain nonvoters.

16-year-olds are learning about government and civics in high school, and the structured environment would lead to higher turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds as teachers and parents help them overcome typical obstacles for first-time voters, such as the registration process and finding their polling places. By contrast, many 18-year-olds are in a time of transition, making them less likely to participate in elections.

Involving young people in voting can have a "trickle up" effect that mobilizes their parents and other adults in their households to vote, increasing the overall voter turnout rate. Turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds in Takoma Park, Maryland, the first US municipality to lower the voting age for local elections, was double that of eligible voters 18 and older.
Read More

Pro 3

At age 16, people should have a voice in the laws that affect their lives and a stake in the future of their country.

A US Senate report cited student activism and protests as reasons for lowering the voting age to 18 in the 1970s during the Vietnam War: "We must channel these energies into our political system and give young people the real opportunity to influence our society in a peaceful and constructive manner."

Students today live under threats to their futures such as school shootings and climate change, and they deserve to have influence over their elected officials beyond the protests they've organized. Sofie Whitney, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, says, "If 16-year-old students are old enough to be affected by the laws, and realize that there is a problem, then they should have the power to help change it."

The age of 16 is when people's relationship with the law changes as they often start driving, working, and paying taxes. Further, in most states, 16-year-olds can be emancipated from their parents and live independently.
Read More

Con 1

Kids under the age of 18 aren't mature enough to participate in elections.

Experts say that 16- and 17-year-olds demonstrate lower interest in politics, have less political knowledge, and lack the experience needed to participate in elections.

Social scientists Tak Wing Chan, PhD, and Matthew Clayton, DPhil, say that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn't be competent voters because "research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years," and added that the prefrontal cortex is what "enables us to weigh dilemmas, balance trade-offs and, in short, make reasonable decisions in politics."

People under 18 are subject to different labor, contract, and criminal responsibility laws, and aren't allowed to join the military without parental consent or serve on a jury. Most are still living at home and would be influenced by the voting choices of their parents.
Read More

Con 2

The 18-29 age group has extremely low voter turnout numbers, suggesting that people aren't ready to vote until later in life.

Only 12.5% of 18-year-olds participated in the 2014 midterm election, compared to 42% of the general population. According to the United States Elections Project's analysis of US Census Bureau data, just 16% of eligible voters ages 18-29 voted in the 2014 election, compared to 30% for ages 30-44, 43% for 45-59, and 55% for age 60 and up. Over the last 30 years, voter turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds has never exceeded 21% in a midterm election.

Only 23% of students scored at or above the "proficient" level on the last National Assessment of Educational Progress test of civics knowledge and skills.

David Davenport, JD, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, said, "My concern is if 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on any kind of broad scale, what we'd actually be doing is bringing the least politically informed, the least politically experienced, the least mature in terms of making long-term judgments and trade-offs, directly into and potentially affecting our voter turnout and results."
Read More

Con 3

The vast majority of Americans of all ages and political views agree that 16-year-olds should not be given the right to vote.

A 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll found that 84% of registered voters opposed lowering the voting age to 16. The poll found every age group was against 16-year-olds voting, with the most support found among those under 35 where still only 39% were in favor.

A different survey found 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21.

A Twitter poll by WJLA, the ABC news affiliate in Washington, DC, found just 18% support for a proposed bill to lower the voting age to 16 in the District of Columbia, compared to 77% against. The local NBC news affiliate ran a similar poll online in which 83% of participants were against the bill.
Read More

Discussion Questions
1. Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Why or why not?

2. Would lowering the voting age increase voter turnout? Explain your answer?

3. Would lowering the voting age lead to increase civic knowledge and participation? Why or why not?
Take Action
1. Explore the campaign to lower the voting age with Vote16USA.

2. Learn more about the 26th Amendment at the Constitution Center.

3. Explore each state's voter registration age requirements at USA.gov.

4. Consider David Davenport's con argument, including that other laws (governing activities such as driving, drinking, and smoking) have increased ages instead of lowering them based on the immaturity of teenagers.

5. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

6. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

47.

The Hill, "
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Lowering Voting Age to 16," thehill.com, May 3, 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Should the Voting Age be Lowered in the US? Top 3 Pros and Cons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several US states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger. Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

# data[].attributes.body
"Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions. Children as young as 15 can be prosecuted as adults in many states without review by a judge or a court hearing." - para. 1
https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2008/juveniles-dont-belong-in-adult-prisons/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions. Children as young as 15 can be prosecuted as adults in many states without review by a judge or a court hearing.

The Campaign for Youth Justice report, "Jailing Juveniles: The Dangers of Incarcerating Youth in Adult Jails in America," released in November 2007, outlines the challenges to keeping children safe in adult jails. It catalogs the numerous jurisdictions throughout the United States where teens are placed in great danger because of the variety of flawed policies and laws governing juvenile incarceration. In 44 states and the District of Columbia, juveniles as young as 14 can be tried in the adult criminal system. Forty states either permit or mandate the jailing of young people in adult facilities before trial.

The report argues that children and teens should not be held to the same standard of accountability for their actions as grown-ups, citing research that shows the developmental differences between adolescents and adults. These findings indicate that the prefrontal cortex, which governs the "executive functions" of reasoning, advanced thinking and impulse control, is one of the last areas of the brain to mature.

In numerous cases, there is no public safety justification for locking up these young people in adult prisons. Juveniles may be held in adult jails for months or even years, although most of them are not charged with a violent crime, and many will not be convicted of any crime. Nevertheless, they languish behind bars with dangerous criminals and are at great risk of being raped and beaten. Many are pushed to attempt suicide.

As in the administration of many laws in this country, Black and Latino children and teens end up in adult facilities in numbers disproportionately higher than their representation in the general population. Nationally, according to the Campaign for Youth Justice report, three out of four young people admitted to adult prison in 2002 were either Black or Latino.

At issue is the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA). When originally enacted, it was designed to prevent young people from going to adult jails and prisons and to separate young people from adults while incarcerated. These protections were called "Sight and Sound Separation"-a young person would be beyond the sight and sound of the adult inmates. Over time, however, these provisions have been eroded and do not apply to young people being tried in the adult criminal system.

Now judges in juvenile courts are often excluded from the decision to prosecute children and teens as adults. In many states, these decisions are made at the discretion of prosecutors, no matter how minor the infraction might be. The JJDPA does not provide a level playing field for Black and Latino youths who are more likely than White youths to end up in adult prisons and jails.

We have an opportunity and responsibility to do better in our country. Placing juveniles in adult jails and prisons is an appalling injustice-and it doesn't work to reduce crime. With the JJDPA set to be reauthorized this year, Congress must amend the Act to ban the placement of children or teens in adult jails or prisons no matter what court hears their case. This is the right and sensible thing to do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"JUVENILES DON'T BELONG IN ADULT PRISONS"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions.

# data[].attributes.body
“The brain volume, the total volume, doesn’t really change, but we lose about 1% of gray matter starting around
13 and we gain about 1% of white matter at the same time, and that trade off keeps going,” Shatkin said.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YFUgjXLD7VS3dWgNRzzY5u8WKQ_M47_g

# data[].attributes.body
The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing—they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent.

In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up. And so we pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.

But until recently, these legal protections didn't apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children. Kids as young as eight can still be charged as an adult, held in an adult jail, and sentenced to extreme sentences in an adult prison. EJI is working to protect children from abusive treatment in the adult criminal justice system.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where kids as young as 13 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Before the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, 366 people were executed for juvenile offenses. That ban allowed EJI to focus on some 3000 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses committed when they were 17 or younger. Children as young as 13 were among those condemned to die in prison.

Most of these sentences were mandatory-the sentencing judge was not allowed to consider the child's age or life history. Some children were sentenced for crimes where no one was killed or even injured, and many were convicted even though older teens or adults were primarily responsible for the crime. Seventy percent of those 14 or younger who were sentenced to die in prison were children of color.

EJI launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. Three years later, we argued in the Supreme Court that the Constitution forbids sentencing children to die in prison. On May 17, 2010, the Court in Graham v. Florida barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. The Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults have to be considered in sentencing. Since 2010, we have successfully represented children across the country to obtain new sentences.

We went back to the Supreme Court after Graham to argue that sentencing kids to die in prison is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. In 2012, the Court in Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. The ruling affected thousands of people whose sentencers did not consider their age, the details of the offense, or any other mitigating factors. The Court did not ban all juvenile life-without-parole sentences, but held that requiring sentencers to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change" should make such sentences "uncommon."

Some states refused to apply to older cases. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that applies retroactively and requires new sentencing hearings for everyone serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense when they were under 18. Montgomery reaffirmed that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for all but the rare juvenile for whom rehabilitation is impossible.

Over a thousand people who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses have been resentenced because of , and hundreds have been released.

Incarcerating children with adults needlessly puts kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma, and suicide.

4.5K

Some 4,500 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.

9x

Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.

100%

Every state in America has capacity to house juveniles separate from adults but many refuse to do so.

Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma. They often act impulsively, recklessly, and irresponsibly. In an adult jail or prison, this behavior results in more aggressive punishment-which can worsen a child's mental health problems.

Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result.

Some statutes require "sight and sound" separation of children in adult facilities to shield them from physical and sexual violence. But in practice, this often means kids are put in solitary confinement, where they're at risk of significant psychological trauma from isolation.

The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing-they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

Kids' low social status compared to adult interrogators, beliefs about the need to obey authority, greater dependence on adults, and vulnerability to intimidation makes them uniquely susceptible to coercive psychological interrogation techniques designed for adults, leading to false confessions and undermining the reliability of the fact-finding process. Young children clearly can't defend themselves in adult court, but the rules created to shield adults who aren't "competent" to stand trial don't take kids' unique characteristics into account. Their diminished understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities puts them at great risk in the adult criminal justice system.

Eleven states have no minimum age for trying children as adults: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Some states allow children to be prosecuted as adults at 10, 12, or 13 years old. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.

Each year, judges transfer dozens of children under 14 to adult court. Prosecutors charge other young kids directly in adult court. More than half of the children under 14 transferred to adult court each year are African American or Latino.

Featured Work

EJI challenges abusive treatment of children by providing direct legal representation to hundreds of people across the country. We advocate for clients in parole hearings, provide re-entry services designed for people incarcerated as children, and educate policymakers, decision makers, and the public about the treatment of children in the justice system.

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Children in Adult Prison | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent. In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up.

# data[].attributes.headline
dahlia “There is no agreed-on benchmark that, when reached, would allow a neuroscientist to say ‘Aha! This brain isfully developed,’” said Leah Somerville, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, who wrotethe paper. 

# data[].attributes.subject
dahlia “There is no agreed-on benchmark that, when reached, would allow a neuroscientist to say ‘Aha! This brain isfully developed,’” said Leah Somerville, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, who wrotethe paper. 

# data[].attributes.body
dahlia

# data[].attributes.body
Alcohol consumption can interfere with development of the young adult brain’s frontal lobes (essential for emotional regulation, planning, and organization) which can increase the risk for chronic problems such as vulnerability to addiction, dangerous risk-taking, reduced decision-making ability, memory loss, depression, violence, and suicide.- Should the Drinking Age be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age

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"Studies indicate that when the drinking age is 21, those younger than 21 drink less and continue to drink less through their early 20s, and that youth who do not drink until they are 21 tend to drink less as adults."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All 50 US states have set their minimum drinking age to 21 although exceptions do exist on a state-by-state basis for consumption at home, under adult supervision, for medical necessity, and other reasons.

Proponents of lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed underage binge drinking into private and less controlled environments, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens.

Opponents of lowering the MLDA argue that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly, and thus are more likely to harm or even kill themselves and others by drinking prior to 21. They contend that traffic fatalities decreased when the MLDA increased. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

18 is the age of legal majority (adulthood) in the United States.

Americans enjoy a range of new rights, responsibilities, and freedoms when they turn 18 and become an adult in the eyes of the law.

18-year-olds may vote in local, state, and federal elections; may serve on juries; and may be charged as an adult if accused of a crime. 18-year-olds are responsible for any legally binding contracts they enter; are liable for negligence; and may be sued.

18-year-olds must register with the Selective Service if male and may be drafted into service at times of war. However, 17-year-olds may enter US military service.

18-year-olds may get married without parental consent; buy a house; and enjoy new privacy rights including the shielding of medical, academic, and financial information from parents.

However, drinking alcohol remains regulated under a legal age of license. An 18-year-old may legally be responsible children and legally allowed to make life decisions with years of impact, but may not legally drink a beer.

Todd Rutherford, South Carolina State Representative and Democrat House Minority Leader, who filed a bill on Nov. 10, 2021 to lower South Carolina's MLDA to 18, stated: "This is a personal freedom issue. If you are old enough to fight for our country, if you're old enough to vote, if you're old enough to sign on thousands of dollars of students loans for a college education, then you are old enough to have a[n alcoholic] drink."
Read More

Pro 3

MLDA creates a mindset of non-compliance with the law among young adults.

Lowering MLDA from 21 to 18 would diminish the thrill of breaking the law to get a drink. Normalizing alcohol consumption as something to be done responsibly and in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college and the workforce.

High non-compliance with MLDA 21 promotes general disrespect and non-compliance with other areas of US law. MLDA 21 encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents to procure alcohol. It would be better to have fewer fake IDs in circulation and more respect for the law.

Further, MLDA 21 enforcement is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Police are inclined to ignore or under-enforce MLDA 21 because of resource limitations, statutory obstacles, perceptions that punishments are inadequate, and the time and effort required for processing and paperwork. An estimated two of every 1,000 occasions of illegal drinking by youth under 21 results in an arrest.

Combine a lack of consequences with the thrill of breaking the law, and MLDA 21 actually encourages underage drinking and potentially other illegal activities, such as driving while intoxicated and illicit drug use. Lowering the MLDA would make 18- to 20-year-olds subject to the same laws enforced for those 21 and over.
Read More

1. Underage drinking is allowed in some US states if done on private premises with parental consent, for religious purposes, or for educational purposes.

2. Between 1970 and 1976, 30 states lowered their Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) from 21 to 18, 19, or 20.

3. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds.

4. After the repeal of alcohol prohibition by the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933, Illinois (1933-1961) and Oklahoma (1933-1976) set their state drinking age at 21 for men and 18 for women. The 1976 US Supreme Court case Craig v. Boren ruled 7-2 that this age difference violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered in the US? 13 Pros and Cons

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Proponents of a lower drinking age say 18 is the US age of adulthood. Opponents say lowering the age would be medically irresponsible. Research both sides.

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"The report argues that children and teens should not be held to the same standard of accountability for their actions as grown-ups, citing research that shows the developmental differences between adolescents and adults. These findings indicate that the prefrontal cortex, which governs the “executive functions” of reasoning, advanced thinking and impulse control, is one of the last areas of the brain to mature."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions. Children as young as 15 can be prosecuted as adults in many states without review by a judge or a court hearing.

The Campaign for Youth Justice report, "Jailing Juveniles: The Dangers of Incarcerating Youth in Adult Jails in America," released in November 2007, outlines the challenges to keeping children safe in adult jails. It catalogs the numerous jurisdictions throughout the United States where teens are placed in great danger because of the variety of flawed policies and laws governing juvenile incarceration. In 44 states and the District of Columbia, juveniles as young as 14 can be tried in the adult criminal system. Forty states either permit or mandate the jailing of young people in adult facilities before trial.

The report argues that children and teens should not be held to the same standard of accountability for their actions as grown-ups, citing research that shows the developmental differences between adolescents and adults. These findings indicate that the prefrontal cortex, which governs the "executive functions" of reasoning, advanced thinking and impulse control, is one of the last areas of the brain to mature.

In numerous cases, there is no public safety justification for locking up these young people in adult prisons. Juveniles may be held in adult jails for months or even years, although most of them are not charged with a violent crime, and many will not be convicted of any crime. Nevertheless, they languish behind bars with dangerous criminals and are at great risk of being raped and beaten. Many are pushed to attempt suicide.

As in the administration of many laws in this country, Black and Latino children and teens end up in adult facilities in numbers disproportionately higher than their representation in the general population. Nationally, according to the Campaign for Youth Justice report, three out of four young people admitted to adult prison in 2002 were either Black or Latino.

At issue is the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA). When originally enacted, it was designed to prevent young people from going to adult jails and prisons and to separate young people from adults while incarcerated. These protections were called "Sight and Sound Separation"-a young person would be beyond the sight and sound of the adult inmates. Over time, however, these provisions have been eroded and do not apply to young people being tried in the adult criminal system.

Now judges in juvenile courts are often excluded from the decision to prosecute children and teens as adults. In many states, these decisions are made at the discretion of prosecutors, no matter how minor the infraction might be. The JJDPA does not provide a level playing field for Black and Latino youths who are more likely than White youths to end up in adult prisons and jails.

We have an opportunity and responsibility to do better in our country. Placing juveniles in adult jails and prisons is an appalling injustice-and it doesn't work to reduce crime. With the JJDPA set to be reauthorized this year, Congress must amend the Act to ban the placement of children or teens in adult jails or prisons no matter what court hears their case. This is the right and sensible thing to do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"JUVENILES DON'T BELONG IN ADULT PRISONS"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions.

# data[].attributes.body
at about 16 or 17 years of
age, a teenager’s performance on the tasks that measure those abilities is highly dependent on emotional and
social information. - the teen brain in a grown-up world

# data[].attributes.body
"With 18-year olds fighting in Vietnam, it seemed wrong to say they couldn’t vote for their
national leaders until they were 21. In other words, there was some serious and logical reason to make the
change, which doesn’t seem evident here." - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YFUgjXLD7VS3dWgNRzzY5u8WKQ_M47_g paragraph 3

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Shawn would be allowed to leave the facility during the day to attend community college classes, private counseling sessions, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Eventually he was even allowed to go home for meals with his family. -http://ec2-75-101-148-34.compute-1.amazonaws.com/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/four/shawn.html

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On Christmas night 1998, in the affluent neighborhood of Los Altos, California, 16 year-old Shawn attacked his sleeping father, stabbing him repeatedly in the arms, head and neck with a knife. The reason for the attack remains unclear. Though there had been tension in the family over Shawn's marijuana use and expulsion from school, his family says that his relationship with his father had not been a violent one.
Shawn himself claims to have no memory of stabbing his father. His mother describes waking up to her husband screaming; his father remembers being unable to identify his attacker at first, then realizing it was his son and eventually tackling him to the ground. Police and medical help arrived, and both were taken to the hospital. Shawn didn't realize what had happened, he says, until a police officer approached him at the hospital: "The cop . . . said, 'You're gonna get charged with attempted murder, and if he dies, you're gonna get charged with first degree murder.' I said, 'If who dies?' He said, 'Your dad.' And it was then that I knew."

Shawn was charged with attempted murder. Prosecutors filed fitness papers to try Shawn in adult criminal court rather than in the juvenile system. If convicted in adult court of attempted murder, Shawn would have faced a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life .

After much discussion with his parents, Shawn decided to plead guilty to the charges and receive his punishment from the juvenile system, rather than risk the substantial prison sentence. By staying in the juvenile system, he avoided an adult criminal record, and would get a shorter sentence since the juvenile system could only hold him until he was 25.

Prior to this incident, there had been signs that Shawn was troubled. He had been arrested and charged with strong-arm robbery when he and a friend stole money from a smaller boy. Shawn says his drinking had escalated into serious marijuana use, and he was asked to leave two schools. At the juvenile court dispositional hearing which would determine his sentence, it became clear that there were serious problems in the household which had contributed to Shawn's drug use and troubled behavior. His mother had a drinking problem. Shawn told FRONTLINE that it was she who had introduced him to drinking at an early age. His father was often away on business trips, leaving Shawn and his mother alone.

In an effort to understand Shawn's behavior, the court ordered a psychological evaluation. The report found no significant psychiatric disturbances, but instead it proposed that the attack stemmed from "an altered state of consciousness" coming from "a disturbance of sleep." Based on this report, Shawn's public defender Bridgett Jones prepared a stunning new argument in his defense: he was sleep walking when he attacked his father, and therefore did not intend to do it.

At the hearing, attorneys for each side presented sleep research experts. Dr. Rafael Pelayo, of Stanford University's sleep clinic, agreed that "parasomnia" was a plausible explanation for Shawn's behavior. In his interview with FRONTLINE, he noted that family dysfunction often plays a role in parasomnia in children. The prosecution's expert disagreed, saying that parasomnia was not a likely explanation for the attack

Since Shawn's case was so unusual and the testimony in such conflict, Judge Thomas Edwards postponed his determination of Shawn's sentence and sent him for a 90-day evaluation at the California Youth Authority, the state's most restrictive juvenile detention facility. During his first week there, Shawn says he was pressured by a white gang member to force his cellmate to perform oral sex. He says he didn't want to do it, but complied because he was frightened for his own safety.

When Shawn returned, Judge Edwards handed down a sentence that surprised some people in court. After the incident with his cellmate, it seemed likely that Shawn would receive at least some time in the California Youth Authority. However, Judge Edwards ruled that Shawn remain in the Santa Clara County's Juvenile Hall until he turns 19. In addition, Shawn would be allowed to leave the facility during the day to attend community college classes, private counseling sessions, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Eventually he was even allowed to go home for meals with his family.

The prosecutor was surprised, and troubled, by the outcome. He said, "At the end, I think everyone in that courtroom was ready to fall out of their chairs. And I think that it was a tremendous injustice that was done in this case. Not just the fact that we didn't treat this individual the way that he should have been treated - in my opinion - but that we have created the perception in the community that certain people are going to be treated differently in the system, because of where they come from."

He is not the only one. Many of the kids serving time in Juvenile Hall think Shawn got a break, and that had he not been white and from an affluent neighborhood, he would have received a much harsher sentence. Even his attorney Bridgett Jones says that this case reminds her: "There is inequity in the juvenile justice system . . . . There is inequity in terms of race, there is inequity in terms of socioeconomic status. . . . You know it and you see it, but to actually have a case like this, it really brings it to the forefront."

Whether Shawn will take advantage of the break he has been given remains to be seen. At the end of October he got into trouble again--he smoked pot. When he thought his probation officer knew and had proof, he took off. When he was arrested four hours away in another town, he was high and belligerent, and officers had to use force to restrain him. In February Judge Edwards is due to sentence him for the probation violation. He can send him to the California Youth Authority, or sentence him to additional time in a local facility.

manny · shawn · marquese · jose
from both sides of the bench · facts & stats · related report: little criminals
discussion · synopsis · press · tapes & transcripts · credits
FRONTLINE · wgbh · pbs
web site copyright WGBH educational foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Four Kids - Shawn | Juvenile Justice | FRONTLINE | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On Christmas night 1998, in the affluent neighborhood of Los Altos, California, 16 year-old Shawn attacked his sleeping father, stabbing him repeatedly in the arms, head and neck with a knife. The reason for the attack remains unclear.

# data[].attributes.body
"Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent.

In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up. And so we pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.

But until recently, these legal protections didn't apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children. Kids as young as eight can still be charged as an adult, held in an adult jail, and sentenced to extreme sentences in an adult prison. EJI is working to protect children from abusive treatment in the adult criminal justice system.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where kids as young as 13 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Before the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, 366 people were executed for juvenile offenses. That ban allowed EJI to focus on some 3000 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses committed when they were 17 or younger. Children as young as 13 were among those condemned to die in prison.

Most of these sentences were mandatory-the sentencing judge was not allowed to consider the child's age or life history. Some children were sentenced for crimes where no one was killed or even injured, and many were convicted even though older teens or adults were primarily responsible for the crime. Seventy percent of those 14 or younger who were sentenced to die in prison were children of color.

EJI launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. Three years later, we argued in the Supreme Court that the Constitution forbids sentencing children to die in prison. On May 17, 2010, the Court in Graham v. Florida barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. The Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults have to be considered in sentencing. Since 2010, we have successfully represented children across the country to obtain new sentences.

We went back to the Supreme Court after Graham to argue that sentencing kids to die in prison is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. In 2012, the Court in Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. The ruling affected thousands of people whose sentencers did not consider their age, the details of the offense, or any other mitigating factors. The Court did not ban all juvenile life-without-parole sentences, but held that requiring sentencers to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change" should make such sentences "uncommon."

Some states refused to apply to older cases. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that applies retroactively and requires new sentencing hearings for everyone serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense when they were under 18. Montgomery reaffirmed that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for all but the rare juvenile for whom rehabilitation is impossible.

Over a thousand people who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses have been resentenced because of , and hundreds have been released.

Incarcerating children with adults needlessly puts kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma, and suicide.

4.5K

Some 4,500 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.

9x

Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.

100%

Every state in America has capacity to house juveniles separate from adults but many refuse to do so.

Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma. They often act impulsively, recklessly, and irresponsibly. In an adult jail or prison, this behavior results in more aggressive punishment-which can worsen a child's mental health problems.

Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result.

Some statutes require "sight and sound" separation of children in adult facilities to shield them from physical and sexual violence. But in practice, this often means kids are put in solitary confinement, where they're at risk of significant psychological trauma from isolation.

The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing-they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

Kids' low social status compared to adult interrogators, beliefs about the need to obey authority, greater dependence on adults, and vulnerability to intimidation makes them uniquely susceptible to coercive psychological interrogation techniques designed for adults, leading to false confessions and undermining the reliability of the fact-finding process. Young children clearly can't defend themselves in adult court, but the rules created to shield adults who aren't "competent" to stand trial don't take kids' unique characteristics into account. Their diminished understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities puts them at great risk in the adult criminal justice system.

Eleven states have no minimum age for trying children as adults: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Some states allow children to be prosecuted as adults at 10, 12, or 13 years old. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.

Each year, judges transfer dozens of children under 14 to adult court. Prosecutors charge other young kids directly in adult court. More than half of the children under 14 transferred to adult court each year are African American or Latino.

Featured Work

EJI challenges abusive treatment of children by providing direct legal representation to hundreds of people across the country. We advocate for clients in parole hearings, provide re-entry services designed for people incarcerated as children, and educate policymakers, decision makers, and the public about the treatment of children in the justice system.

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Children in Adult Prison | Equal Justice Initiative

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Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent. In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up.

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"According to the NSDUH report, about 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 12 and 20 report current alcohol consumption; this represents 15% of this age group for whom alcohol consumption is illegal" ~responsibility.org.

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Though progress is being made, underage drinking remains a persistent problem. According to the 2017 NSDUH, about 7.4 million Americans between the ages of 12 and 20 report current alcohol consumption; this represents nearly 20% of this age group for whom alcohol consumption is illegal. Among 12-20 year olds, reported rates of past month consumption, binge drinking, and heavy alcohol consumption have declined steadily from 2008 to 2017.

According to the 2018 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey, alcohol consumption continues to show significant longer-term declines among the nations' 8th, 10th and 12th graders. For the three grades combined (8th, 10th and 12th) the proportion of students reporting lifetime, annual, past month alcohol consumption, and binge drinking are at the lowest levels since the study began (41 percent, 36 percent and 19 percent, and 9 percent respectively).

For more than 25 years the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility has been leading the fight to eliminate drunk driving and underage drinking. While rates have declined, alcohol consumption among youth under the legal drinking age remains a concern.

The rate of current alcohol consumption increases with increasing age according to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health from less than 1% at age 12 to 16% at age 16, and 46% at age 20.

Eighth Grade Students

Tenth Grade Students

Twelfth Grade Students

College Students

Eighth Grade Students

Tenth Grade Students

Twelfth Grade Students

College Students

Eighth Grade Students

Tenth Grade Students

Twelfth Grade Students

College Students

According to the 2018 Monitoring the Future Survey (MTF), underage drinking among American youth continued a gradual decline in 2018, with nearly six out of ten teens reporting they have never consumed alcohol. For all three grades combined (8th, 10th, and 12th) consumption rates are at record low levels, and reported drinking among 12 th graders in 2018 reached the lowest levels in survey history, with significant decreases in lifetime, past month, and daily consumption as well as binge drinking. The survey data, which is an indicator of the success and progress made to eliminate underage consumption, reports a steady downward trend with prevalence rates remaining at some of the lowest levels recorded among 8 th, 10 th and 12 th grade students since the early 1990s when tracking of this data began.

Three out of four 8 th graders (77 percent) report they have never consumed alcohol, down 66% proportionally from 70% in 1991 to 24% in 2018. Lifetime consumption of alcohol among tenth graders and twelfth graders declined proportionally 49% and 36%, respectively, since 1991.

During this same period, annual consumption rates continued to trend downward reaching a new record low among high school seniors, declining 63% proportionally among 8 th graders, 48% among 10 th graders, and 36% among 12 th graders. About one in five eighth grade students (19%), 38% of tenth graders, and 53% of twelfth graders report they consumed alcohol in the past year.

From 2017 to 2018 the past 30-day prevalence rate decreased among students in grades 10 and 12 and remained stable among students in the 8 th grade.

Eight percent (8%) of 8th graders report consuming alcohol in the past month, down 67% proportionally from 25% in 1991.

Tenth graders' reported monthly consumption rate has been cut in in more than half, down 57% proportionally from 43% in 1991 to 19% in 2018.

Three out of ten (30%) 12th graders report consuming alcohol in the past 30-days, a decrease of 44% proportionally from 54% in 1991.

In 2018, statistically significant decreases were noted in binge drinking among students in 8 th, 10 th, and 12 th combined, and among high school seniors from 2017 to 2018. Since 1991 the prevalence of binge drinking has been reduced by more than 50 percent among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders - down 66 percent, 59 percent, and 54 percent, respectively.

Four percent of 8th grade students (4%) report binge drinking in the past two weeks, but 52% perceive it to be risky behavior and 84% disapprove of binge drinking.

Nine percent of 10th graders (9%) said they engaged in binge drinking, while 52% of 10th graders believe this to be a risky behavior and 80% disapprove of the behavior.

Fourteen percent 12th graders (14%) report consuming five or more drinks in a row; 45% perceive great risk in the behavior of consuming five or more drinks in a row and 76% disapprove of it.

Extreme binge drinking defined as drinking 10 or more drinks, or even 15 or more drinks, in a row during a single occasion in the past two weeks has decreased more than half since its peak, but no significant changes were observed in 2018. (Source: NIDA, National Survey Results on Drug Use from the 2018 Monitoring the Future Study, 2018)

According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), about 7.4 million Americans between the ages of 12 and 20 report current alcohol consumption; this represents nearly 20% of this age group for whom alcohol consumption is illegal.

Over the past decade, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health surveys have shown a decline in the prevalence rates of current, binge, and heavy alcohol consumption among 12 to 20 year olds:

Past month consumption among 12 to 20 year olds has declined proportionally 26 percent from 26.5% in 2008 to 19.7% in 2017. Current consumption rose slightly from 2016 to 2017.

Underage binge drinking rates decreased 11 percent proportionally from 13.4% in 2015 to 11.9% in 2017, reaching a new record low level.

Heavy drinking (five or more drinks on the same occasion on 5 or more days in the past 30 days) also decreased to an all time record low among 12 to 20 year olds during this time, declining 24 percent proportionally from 3.3% in 2015 to 2.5% in 2017. (Source: SAMHSA, 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2018)

According to the 2017 Monitoring the Future Study, the overall trend in heavy drinking (defined as five or more drinks in a row at least once in the past two weeks) among college students continues to show a decline, decreasing 26 percentage points (44% to 33%) since 1980.

Overall, the prevalence of college drinking over the past 27 years, measured as lifetime, annual, and past 30-day consumption rates have all declined. Since 1991, lifetime consumption among college students has declined 16% proportionately, while annual consumption and monthly consumption are down 14% and 17%, respectively.

The Monitoring the Future Survey revealed a continuation of the gradual long-term decline in alcohol consumption among college students. More specifically, from 2016 to 2017 consumption rates among college students remained relatively unchanged. (Source: University of Michigan, Monitoring the Future, 1975-2017: Volume II, College Students and Adults Ages 19-50, 2018)

The Monitoring the Future Study (2005-2017 combined data) revealed during the two weeks prior to the survey one in eight (12%) college students reported they have consumed 10 or more drinks in a row at least once, including one in twenty-five (4%) who reported consuming 15 or more drinks in a row. (Source: University of Michigan, Monitoring the Future, 1975-2017: Volume II, College Students and Adults Ages 19-50, 2018)

According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) nearly 6.6 million 12-20 year old girls reported consuming alcohol in the past year.

In 2017, males and females aged 12 to 20 reported comparatively equal rates of past month alcohol consumption (19.7%), binge drinking (12.0% v. 11.9%, respectively), and heavy alcohol consumption (2.6% males vs. 2.3% females). However, slightly more females aged 12 to 17 reported past month alcohol consumption and binge drinking than their male peers (past month: 11% females vs. 8.8% males; binge drinking: 6.0% v. 4.6%, respectively). (Source: SAMHSA, 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 9/2018)

The 2017 Monitoring the Future Study reports 39% of college males report having consumed five or more drinks in a row during the previous two weeks compared with 29% of their female peers. Extreme levels of binge drinking rates indicate a significantly larger variance by gender for the combined years of 2005-2017 with male college students more likely to engage in these extreme levels of drinking:

21% of male college students compared to 7% of female college students reported having 10 or more drinks in a row.

College males (8.5%) are five times more likely than college females (1.6%) to report consuming 15 or more drinks in a row. (Source: University of Michigan, Monitoring the Future, 1975-2017: Volume II, College Students and Adults Ages 19-50, 2018)

According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) nearly half of current underage drinkers ages 12 to 20, who consumed alcohol in the past month, report the last time they drank alcohol it was either in someone else's house (49%) or their own home (37%). Additionally, 73% of these underage drinkers said they were drinking with more than one other person the last time they drank.

Family and friends continue to be a leading source of alcohol for today's youth. Among current underage drinkers who did not pay for the alcohol they consumed the last time they drank (71%) the most frequently cited source of alcohol was an unrelated person aged 21 or older (32%). Fifty-four percent of current underage drinkers reported family and friends as their source for the alcohol they consumed - parents/guardians/other adult family member (27%), another underage person (17%), took from home (7%), took from someone else's home (3%).

Influence of Parents

Despite being identified by youth as one of their primary sources of alcohol, hands down, parents are the most influential person or thing in a child's decision not to drink at all or not to drink on occasion.

Additional research from the Centers for Disease Control's 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported that 44% of students who reported past-month consumption said that they usually obtained the alcohol they drank by someone giving it to them; the prevalence of having someone give them alcohol was higher among females (48%) than males (38%).

Regardless of the source of alcohol, youth report access to alcohol is easy. According to the 2017 Monitoring the Future survey 87% of 12th graders, 72% of 10th graders, and 53% of 8th graders say it be "fairly easy" or "very easy" for them to get alcohol. On a positive note, despite reported ease of obtaining alcohol disapproval of binge drinking continues to remain high among all three grade levels (8th, 85%; 10th, 80%; 12 th, 73%).

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Though progress is being made, underage drinking remains a persistent problem. According to the 2017 NSDUH, about 7.4 million Americans between the ages of 12 and 20 report current alcohol consumption; this represents nearly 20% of this age group for whom alcohol consumption is illegal.

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"We see that teenagers have strong cognitive skills, where they’re up to adult [cognition] levels around 16 years of age. And they can make good decisions. In fact, they can often
make good decisions much more quickly than you or I could when it’s not an emotionally charged moment..."-"The Teen Brain in a Grown-Up World"

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Alexander Wagenaar: "lowering the legal limit to 18 would only mean pushing the drinking problem further down to 16- and 17- year-olds."
Source: What is the age of respondsibility paragraph 18

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A person who votes in one election has a 13% greater probability of voting in a future election. [19] Researchers say that people who participate in elections when they first reach voting age are likely to develop the habit of voting, and those who don’t are more likely to remain nonvoters.

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From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several US states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger. Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

Internationally, about a dozen countries allow citizens to vote at age 16, sometimes with conditions such as being employed or married, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil and Ecuador.

A constitutional amendment to lower the US voting age to 16 would require approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 states). Alternatively, state legislatures could pass laws allowing younger people to vote in their states.

Until the 1970s, the voting age in America was 21. A debate over lowering it to 18 began during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreased the military draft age to 18. President Eisenhower called for citizens ages 18 to 21 to be included in the political process in his 1954 State of the Union address. But lawmakers didn't take action until marches and demonstrations drew attention to the fact that young people who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam did not have the ability to vote in most states.

Congress proposed the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1971, which stated, "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." The ratification process, which required approval from 38 states, was completed in about three months, the shortest amount of time of any amendment in US history.

Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16?

Pro 1

16-year-olds are just as knowledgeable about civics and have the same ability to make good voting choices as older voters.

A study in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science found that, "On measures of civic knowledge, political skills, political efficacy, and tolerance, 16-year-olds, on average, are obtaining scores similar to those of adults... Adolescents in this age range are developmentally ready to vote."

Scientists believe that "cold cognition" skills, those used to make the kind of informed, well-thought out choices needed in voting, are solidly established in 16-year-olds.

Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007. According to Markus Wagner, PhD, Social Sciences Professor at the University of Vienna, and coauthors, studies of subsequent elections show "the quality of these [younger] citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well."
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Pro 2

Lowering the voting age to 16 increases voter turnout and develops lifelong voting habits.

The United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries. A person who votes in one election has a 13% greater probability of voting in a future election. Researchers say that people who participate in elections when they first reach voting age are likely to develop the habit of voting, and those who don't are more likely to remain nonvoters.

16-year-olds are learning about government and civics in high school, and the structured environment would lead to higher turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds as teachers and parents help them overcome typical obstacles for first-time voters, such as the registration process and finding their polling places. By contrast, many 18-year-olds are in a time of transition, making them less likely to participate in elections.

Involving young people in voting can have a "trickle up" effect that mobilizes their parents and other adults in their households to vote, increasing the overall voter turnout rate. Turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds in Takoma Park, Maryland, the first US municipality to lower the voting age for local elections, was double that of eligible voters 18 and older.
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Pro 3

At age 16, people should have a voice in the laws that affect their lives and a stake in the future of their country.

A US Senate report cited student activism and protests as reasons for lowering the voting age to 18 in the 1970s during the Vietnam War: "We must channel these energies into our political system and give young people the real opportunity to influence our society in a peaceful and constructive manner."

Students today live under threats to their futures such as school shootings and climate change, and they deserve to have influence over their elected officials beyond the protests they've organized. Sofie Whitney, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, says, "If 16-year-old students are old enough to be affected by the laws, and realize that there is a problem, then they should have the power to help change it."

The age of 16 is when people's relationship with the law changes as they often start driving, working, and paying taxes. Further, in most states, 16-year-olds can be emancipated from their parents and live independently.
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Con 1

Kids under the age of 18 aren't mature enough to participate in elections.

Experts say that 16- and 17-year-olds demonstrate lower interest in politics, have less political knowledge, and lack the experience needed to participate in elections.

Social scientists Tak Wing Chan, PhD, and Matthew Clayton, DPhil, say that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn't be competent voters because "research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years," and added that the prefrontal cortex is what "enables us to weigh dilemmas, balance trade-offs and, in short, make reasonable decisions in politics."

People under 18 are subject to different labor, contract, and criminal responsibility laws, and aren't allowed to join the military without parental consent or serve on a jury. Most are still living at home and would be influenced by the voting choices of their parents.
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Con 2

The 18-29 age group has extremely low voter turnout numbers, suggesting that people aren't ready to vote until later in life.

Only 12.5% of 18-year-olds participated in the 2014 midterm election, compared to 42% of the general population. According to the United States Elections Project's analysis of US Census Bureau data, just 16% of eligible voters ages 18-29 voted in the 2014 election, compared to 30% for ages 30-44, 43% for 45-59, and 55% for age 60 and up. Over the last 30 years, voter turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds has never exceeded 21% in a midterm election.

Only 23% of students scored at or above the "proficient" level on the last National Assessment of Educational Progress test of civics knowledge and skills.

David Davenport, JD, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, said, "My concern is if 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on any kind of broad scale, what we'd actually be doing is bringing the least politically informed, the least politically experienced, the least mature in terms of making long-term judgments and trade-offs, directly into and potentially affecting our voter turnout and results."
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Con 3

The vast majority of Americans of all ages and political views agree that 16-year-olds should not be given the right to vote.

A 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll found that 84% of registered voters opposed lowering the voting age to 16. The poll found every age group was against 16-year-olds voting, with the most support found among those under 35 where still only 39% were in favor.

A different survey found 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21.

A Twitter poll by WJLA, the ABC news affiliate in Washington, DC, found just 18% support for a proposed bill to lower the voting age to 16 in the District of Columbia, compared to 77% against. The local NBC news affiliate ran a similar poll online in which 83% of participants were against the bill.
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Discussion Questions
1. Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Why or why not?

2. Would lowering the voting age increase voter turnout? Explain your answer?

3. Would lowering the voting age lead to increase civic knowledge and participation? Why or why not?
Take Action
1. Explore the campaign to lower the voting age with Vote16USA.

2. Learn more about the 26th Amendment at the Constitution Center.

3. Explore each state's voter registration age requirements at USA.gov.

4. Consider David Davenport's con argument, including that other laws (governing activities such as driving, drinking, and smoking) have increased ages instead of lowering them based on the immaturity of teenagers.

5. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

6. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

47.

The Hill, "
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Lowering Voting Age to 16," thehill.com, May 3, 2019

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Should the Voting Age be Lowered in the US? Top 3 Pros and Cons

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From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several US states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger. Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

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Combine a lack of consequences with the thrill of breaking the law, and MLDA 21 actually encourages underage drinking and potentially other illegal activities, such as driving while intoxicated and illicit drug use. Lowering the MLDA would make 18- to 20-year-olds subject to the same laws enforced for those 21 and over.

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All 50 US states have set their minimum drinking age to 21 although exceptions do exist on a state-by-state basis for consumption at home, under adult supervision, for medical necessity, and other reasons.

Proponents of lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed underage binge drinking into private and less controlled environments, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens.

Opponents of lowering the MLDA argue that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly, and thus are more likely to harm or even kill themselves and others by drinking prior to 21. They contend that traffic fatalities decreased when the MLDA increased. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

18 is the age of legal majority (adulthood) in the United States.

Americans enjoy a range of new rights, responsibilities, and freedoms when they turn 18 and become an adult in the eyes of the law.

18-year-olds may vote in local, state, and federal elections; may serve on juries; and may be charged as an adult if accused of a crime. 18-year-olds are responsible for any legally binding contracts they enter; are liable for negligence; and may be sued.

18-year-olds must register with the Selective Service if male and may be drafted into service at times of war. However, 17-year-olds may enter US military service.

18-year-olds may get married without parental consent; buy a house; and enjoy new privacy rights including the shielding of medical, academic, and financial information from parents.

However, drinking alcohol remains regulated under a legal age of license. An 18-year-old may legally be responsible children and legally allowed to make life decisions with years of impact, but may not legally drink a beer.

Todd Rutherford, South Carolina State Representative and Democrat House Minority Leader, who filed a bill on Nov. 10, 2021 to lower South Carolina's MLDA to 18, stated: "This is a personal freedom issue. If you are old enough to fight for our country, if you're old enough to vote, if you're old enough to sign on thousands of dollars of students loans for a college education, then you are old enough to have a[n alcoholic] drink."
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Pro 3

MLDA creates a mindset of non-compliance with the law among young adults.

Lowering MLDA from 21 to 18 would diminish the thrill of breaking the law to get a drink. Normalizing alcohol consumption as something to be done responsibly and in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college and the workforce.

High non-compliance with MLDA 21 promotes general disrespect and non-compliance with other areas of US law. MLDA 21 encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents to procure alcohol. It would be better to have fewer fake IDs in circulation and more respect for the law.

Further, MLDA 21 enforcement is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Police are inclined to ignore or under-enforce MLDA 21 because of resource limitations, statutory obstacles, perceptions that punishments are inadequate, and the time and effort required for processing and paperwork. An estimated two of every 1,000 occasions of illegal drinking by youth under 21 results in an arrest.

Combine a lack of consequences with the thrill of breaking the law, and MLDA 21 actually encourages underage drinking and potentially other illegal activities, such as driving while intoxicated and illicit drug use. Lowering the MLDA would make 18- to 20-year-olds subject to the same laws enforced for those 21 and over.
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1. Underage drinking is allowed in some US states if done on private premises with parental consent, for religious purposes, or for educational purposes.

2. Between 1970 and 1976, 30 states lowered their Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) from 21 to 18, 19, or 20.

3. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds.

4. After the repeal of alcohol prohibition by the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933, Illinois (1933-1961) and Oklahoma (1933-1976) set their state drinking age at 21 for men and 18 for women. The 1976 US Supreme Court case Craig v. Boren ruled 7-2 that this age difference violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered in the US? 13 Pros and Cons

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Proponents of a lower drinking age say 18 is the US age of adulthood. Opponents say lowering the age would be medically irresponsible. Research both sides.

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"A 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll found that 84% of registered voters opposed lowering the voting age to 16. The poll found every age group was against 16-year-olds voting, with the most support found among those under 35 where still only 39% were in favor."-Procon.org "Lowering the Voting Age"

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From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several U.S. states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger.

Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

Internationally, about a dozen countries allow citizens to vote at age 16, sometimes with conditions such as being employed or married, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil and Ecuador.

A constitutional amendment to lower the U.S. voting age to 16 would require approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 states). Alternatively, state legislatures could pass laws allowing younger people to vote in their states.

Until the 1970s, the voting age in America was 21. A debate over lowering it to 18 began during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreased the military draft age to 18. President Eisenhower called for citizens ages 18 to 21 to be included in the political process in his 1954 State of the Union address. But lawmakers didn't take action until marches and demonstrations drew attention to the fact that young people who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam did not have the ability to vote in most states.

Congress proposed the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1971, which stated, "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." The ratification process, which required approval from 38 states, was completed in about three months, the shortest amount of time of any amendment in U.S. history.

While the push to lower voting age for state and federal elections is still an uphill battle, some smaller jurisdictions are lowering the voting age. A handful of cities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow 16- and 17- year olds to vote in local elections, including school board elections as of Sep. 2023.

Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16?

Pro 1

16-year-olds are just as knowledgeable about civics and have the same ability to make good voting choices as older voters.

A study in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science found, "on measures of civic knowledge, political skills, political efficacy, and tolerance, 16-year-olds, on average, are obtaining scores similar to those of adults... Adolescents in this age range are developmentally ready to vote."

Scientists believe that "cold cognition" skills, those used to make the kind of informed, well-thought out choices needed in voting, are solidly established in 16-year-olds.

Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007. According to Markus Wagner, Social Sciences Professor at the University of Vienna, and his coauthors, studies of elections after the Austrian voting age was lowered show "the quality of these [younger] citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well."
Read More

Pro 2

Lowering the voting age to 16 increases voter turnout and develops lifelong voting habits.

The United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries. A person who votes in one election has a 13% greater probability of voting in a future election. Researchers say that people who participate in elections when they first reach voting age are likely to develop the habit of voting, and those who don't are more likely to remain nonvoters.

16-year-olds are learning about government and civics in high school, and the structured environment would lead to higher turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds as teachers and parents help them overcome typical obstacles for first-time voters, such as the registration process and finding their polling places.

By contrast, many 18-year-olds are in a time of transition, making them less likely to participate in elections.

Involving young people in voting can have a "trickle up" effect that mobilizes their parents and other adults in their households to vote, increasing the overall voter turnout rate. Turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds in Takoma Park, Maryland, the first U.S. municipality to lower the voting age for local elections, was double that of eligible voters 18 and older.
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Pro 3

At age 16, people should have a voice in the laws that affect their lives and a stake in the future of their country.

A U.S. Senate report cited student activism and protests as reasons for lowering the voting age to 18 in the 1970s during the Vietnam War: "We must channel these energies into our political system and give young people the real opportunity to influence our society in a peaceful and constructive manner."

Students today live under threats to their futures such as school shootings and climate change, and they deserve to have influence over their elected officials beyond the protests they've organized.

Sofie Whitney, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, says, "If 16-year-old students are old enough to be affected by the laws, and realize that there is a problem, then they should have the power to help change it."

The age of 16 is when people's relationship with the law changes as they often start driving, working, and paying taxes. Further, in most states, 16-year-olds can be emancipated from their parents and live independently.
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Con 1

Kids under the age of 18 aren't mature enough to participate in elections.

Experts say that 16- and 17-year-olds demonstrate lower interest in politics, have less political knowledge, and lack the experience needed to participate in elections.

Social scientists Tak Wing Chan and Matthew Clayton say that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn't be competent voters because "research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years." They add that the prefrontal cortex is what "enables us to weigh dilemmas, balance trade-offs and, in short, make reasonable decisions in politics."

People under 18 are subject to different labor, contract, and criminal responsibility laws, and aren't allowed to join the military without parental consent or serve on a jury.

Most 16- and 17-year-olds are still living at home and would be influenced by the voting choices of their parents.
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Con 2

The 18-29 age group has extremely low voter turnout numbers, suggesting that people aren't ready to vote until later in life.

Only 12.5% of 18-year-olds participated in the 2014 midterm election, compared to 42% of the general population.

According to the United States Elections Project's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, just 16% of eligible voters ages 18-29 voted in the 2014 election, compared to 30% for ages 30-44, 43% for 45-59, and 55% for age 60 and up. Over the last 30 years, voter turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds has never exceeded 21% in a midterm election.

Only 23% of students scored at or above the "proficient" level on the last National Assessment of Educational Progress test of civics knowledge and skills.

David Davenport, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, says, "My concern is if 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on any kind of broad scale, what we'd actually be doing is bringing the least politically informed, the least politically experienced, the least mature in terms of making long-term judgments and trade-offs, directly into and potentially affecting our voter turnout and results."
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Con 3

The vast majority of Americans of all ages and political views agree that 16-year-olds should not be given the right to vote.

A 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll found that 84% of registered voters opposed lowering the voting age to 16. The poll found every age group was against 16-year-olds voting, with the most support found among those under 35 where still only 39% were in favor.

A different survey found only 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21.

A Twitter poll by WJLA, the ABC news affiliate in Washington, DC, found just 18% support for a proposed bill to lower the voting age to 16 in the District of Columbia, compared to 77% against. The local NBC news affiliate ran a similar poll online in which 83% of participants were against the bill.
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Discussion Questions
1. Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Why or why not?

2. Would lowering the voting age increase voter turnout? Explain your answer?

3. Would lowering the voting age lead to increase civic knowledge and participation? Why or why not?
Take Action
1. Explore the campaign to lower the voting age with Vote16USA.

2. Learn more about the 26th Amendment at the Constitution Center.

3. Explore " Preregistration for Young Voters " at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

4. Consider David Davenport's con argument, including that other laws (governing activities such as driving, drinking, and smoking) have increased ages instead of lowering them based on the immaturity of teenagers.

5. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

6. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

47.

The Hill, "
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Lowering Voting Age to 16," thehill.com, May 3, 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Should the Voting Age be Lowered in the US? Top 3 Pros and Cons

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Proponents say teens are knowledgeable enough to vote. Opponents say kids aren't mature enough to vote. Explore both sides of the debate.

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"In neurobiology, maturity is perceived to be complex because the brain's temporal development process is not uniform across all its regions. ...recent studies have specifically shown that the frontal lobe finishes maturing at ~30 years of age, later than the other regions...this has important consequences for adolescents' behavior" ~ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

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Abstract

In this article, we analyze the contributions of neuroscience to the development of the adolescent brain and shed additional light on the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the context of Latin America. In neurobiology, maturity is perceived to be complex because the brain's temporal development process is not uniform across all its regions. This has important consequences for adolescents' behavior; in their search for the acceptance of their peers, they are more vulnerable to pressure and more sensitive to stress than adults. Their affectivity is more unstable, and they show signs of low tolerance to frustration and important emotional reactivity, with a decrease in the capacity to self-regulate. Consequently, risky behavior presents itself more frequently during adolescence, and behaviors that transgress norms and social conventions typically peak between the ages of 17 and 19 years. However, only a small percentage of young offenders escalate their behavior to committing crimes during adulthood. In comparative law, there are considerable differences in Latin American countries' legal dispositions regarding the minimum age of criminal responsibility; Brazil, Costa Rica, and Ecuador regard the age of criminal responsibility to be 12 years, while Argentina accepts this to be 16 years. From a legal viewpoint, however, the debate about the minimum age of criminal responsibility is connected to other circumstances that, because they are still at a developmental stage, are attributed to adolescents' rights in their decision-making and understanding of autonomy (e.g., the minimum ages for voting, alcohol consumption, and medical consent). We argue that research on the development of the adolescent brain does not provide definitive answers about the exact age required for different juridical purposes. Nonetheless, the current state of knowledge does allow for reflection on the development and maturation of adolescents and the implications for considering them criminally responsible. It also validates demands for a system that provides adolescents with greater protection and that favors their healthy integral development. In any case, although a specific minimum age is not evident, this study is disposed not to recommend lowering the age of criminal responsibility, but rather increasing it.

Keywords: neurolaw, juvenile criminal behavior, juvenile criminal law, adolescent brain, legal responsibility

Introduction

Studies of human development often define adolescence as a complex transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. However, from a neuroscientific point of view, it is not easy to define or delimit this age group; if we take into account the fact that cognitive abilities and different brain regions do not develop uniformly or simultaneously, this is even more the case. Moreover, the complex processes of brain and cognitive development are intimately influenced by culture and environment.

This complexity has also influenced the law, as is evidenced by the variety of legislation, which considers differences in the minimum age of responsibility according to various types of activities or decisions and which could also have civil and penal consequences in adulthood.

The difficulty in defining adolescence has recently been identified by the United Nations Committe on the Rights of the Child [CRC] (2016), in General Comment No. 20. This observation centers on the temporal concept of childhood, "from 10 years until the 18th birthday" ( United Nations Committe on the Rights of the Child [CRC], 2016, para. 5). In the same manner, it gives perspective to the complexity of this definition, which, among other reasons, lies in the difficulty of identifying an exact age from a biological point of view. In particular, the observation notes that "different brain functions mature at different times" ( United Nations Committe on the Rights of the Child [CRC], 2016, para. 5).

Following this line of thought, we can observe a great interest in the development of the adolescent brain, which forms the focus of a variety of studies that specialize in adolescence and human rights. Such is the case with UNICEF's recent reports on adolescence in Argentina ( UNICEF, 2017) and on lowering the age of criminal responsibility in Uruguay ( UNICEF, 2014). At the same time, research efforts have been strengthened by projects such as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study1 ( Feldstein Ewing et al., 2018), which follows 10,000 children between the ages of 9 and 10 years over the course of a decade, utilizing neuroimaging studies, neuropsychological evaluations, and various non-specific health investigations.

This area of knowledge, together with the development of modern neuroimaging techniques, has begun to influence different legal systems, particularly those of the Anglosphere tradition, where neuroscientific arguments have been presented in different penal cases during the last decade ( Farahany, 2015; Altimus, 2017). Specifically, knowledge of how the brain grows, matures, and develops during adolescence, and its relationship with behavior, has started to influence the law ( Mercurio, 2012; Steinberg, 2013; Cohen and Casey, 2014; Jones et al., 2014). For example, the Supreme Court of the United States has used arguments based on neuroscience to inform decisions about penal cases in which adolescents have been involved; this can be seen in the cases Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), and Miller v. Alabama (2012).

In this article, we analyze the contributions of neuroscience to knowledge of the development of the adolescent brain and shed additional light on the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the Latin American context.

The Brain and Adolescence

It is evident that young people and adolescents are different from adults. Research articles in the field of neuroscience have shown that it is possible to ascertain, in terms of neurobiology, the reasons for these differences. The growth and development of the brain obey the interaction between genetics and the environment (nature and nurture), modeled by the characteristics of the different evolutionary stages of human development. While in the prenatal stage genes play a key role in the formation of the different brain circuits, during the stages following birth it is experiences and interaction with the environment that influences these circuits ( Pascual Urzúa, 2014).

The complex demands of the environment during development require the modification of the brain's connections. On this subject, Churchland (2012) indicates that human beings are born with immature brains and that this is actually an evolutionary advantage as it makes it possible to obtain a greater benefit from interactions with the environment, while also allowing for adaptation to the complex physical and social world. Synaptic connections (formed through synaptogenesis) are modified during different evolutionary stages, and depending on the region of the brain, they reach their maximum expansion between 2 and 7 years of age. This is followed by a process of the elimination of connections (synaptic pruning), which is widely accepted to last until the end of adolescence in the prefrontal region. There is concrete evidence to show that synaptic pruning in the prefrontal cortex also occurs between 20 and 30 years of age ( Petanjek et al., 2011). Thus, it can be said that the process of expansion occurs during childhood, whereas the process of contraction and the elimination of connections occurs during adolescence and beyond and is followed by stabilization during adulthood ( Giedd et al., 1999; Gogtay et al., 2004; Pascual Urzúa, 2014). The actual hypothesis about this process is that the large neuronal expansion of the connections during childhood allows children to have a broad connection with their physical, cultural, and social environment. After this time, the most requested and strengthened connections will prevail, whereas those that are less needed will be eliminated ( Pascual Urzúa, 2014).

In neurobiology, maturity is perceived to be complex because the brain's temporal development process is not uniform across all its regions. Regions related to sensory and motor activities show a pattern unlike those related to cognitive and complex affective functions, such as the executive functions (these functions are called "the most human functions of men" by Luria) or those related to the socioemotional process (e.g., empathy). In this sense, recent studies have specifically shown that the frontal lobe finishes maturing at ~30 years of age, later than the other regions ( Østby et al., 2009; Tamnes et al., 2010; Petanjek et al., 2011). This has important consequences for adolescents' behavior.

On this point, Dahl (2004) notes the existence of a paradox in adolescents' health; while we see increased physical growth, the strengthening of the immune system, and overall better cognitive abilities compared to childhood, morbidity and mortality increase by 200% over the same period. This is connected to the difficulties associated with adolescents having to control their behavior and manage their emotions ( Kelley et al., 2004; García-López and Mercurio, 2019), which makes them more vulnerable to risky behavior ( Steinberg, 2004; Gardner and Steinberg, 2005; Barbalat et al., 2009; Pfeifer et al., 2011). Clear examples of this are reckless driving, alcohol and drug consumption, and violence, while such behavior may also lead to accidents, suicide, depression, eating disorders, and risky sexual behaviors ( Dahl, 2004; Eaton et al., 2008). Adolescence is therefore seen as a period of great opportunity but, at the same time, great vulnerability ( García-López, 2004).

This paradox is understandable because of scientific evidence from studies about the relationship between brain development and the manifestation of risk behaviors in adolescence. This is explained in the following subsections.

Maturity Gap

As we noted above, during adolescence, the brain and cognitive abilities do not develop at the same rate. Regions that seek reward are more active and mature earlier than the regions controlling impulses. This model is known as the "dual system" or "maturational imbalance model" ( Casey et al., 2008; Steinberg, 2008). Based on analyses of more than 900 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30 years, Steinberg et al. (2009a) observed that cognitive capacity, for example, logical reasoning and memory, matures by age 16 years. Nevertheless, psychosocial maturity - self-control and future orientation, especially in the presence of peers and social contexts - does not fully mature until the person is in his/her 20s. In a large sample ( N = 5,404), which contained individuals between the ages of 10 and 30 years in 11 countries, Icenogle et al. (2019) found that during adulthood, individuals' sensation seeking declined, and their impulse control, future orientation, and resistance to peer influence increased. This study suggests adolescents achieve the same cognitive abilities as adults at age 16 years, but their psychosocial maturity is not developed until their 20s. These results are similar to those of previous studies ( Steinberg et al., 2009a, b; Chein et al., 2011; Quinn and Harden, 2013; Shulman et al., 2014). This "maturity gap" between cognitive and psychosocial development is a window of opportunity to increase the chances of making risky decisions, leading to risky behaviors during adolescence.

Reward-Based Behavior

The evidence about the behavior incentive process has allowed researchers to identify different brain circuitry and the important role of dopamine in these circuits. In accordance with what was explained in the subsection discussing the maturity gap during adolescence, an imbalance has been found between the reward and the regulatory circuitry.

This imbalance explains the increased reward-seeking behavior in this period, which includes monetary, novel, and social rewards, as well as the dopamine system's sensitivity to rewards ( Galvan, 2010).

Considering Galvan's review, the dopamine system is hyperresponsive or overcommitted in its response to rewards during adolescence. This increases the tendency to seek novelty and sensations ( Dahl, 2004).

Several studies have found an important availability and function of dopamine during adolescence, which can be explained by the dopamine system's high sensitivity to reward, the search for reward, and sensation-seeking behaviors ( Luna et al., 2013). In addition, this situation increases the susceptibility of adolescents to the motivational properties of substance abuse ( Casey and Jones, 2010). Studies, such as the one by Casey et al. (2008), have found that risk behaviors have a neurobiological correlation with the responses to rewards. Specifically, they have found that adolescents who have sexual escapades, drink excessively, practice high-impact sports, and engage in similar activities show greater activity in the nucleus accumbens-frontal cortex, especially when they play to earn money.

Luna et al. (2013) investigated the relationship between rewards and inhibitory control using incentives based on task performance. In this study, the younger participants, children and adolescents, showed more problems with inhibiting their responses compared to adults. The adolescents took longer to complete the task, but they showed high activation in the brain regions of the reward system. This supports the idea that these behaviors lead to acquiring some reward.

In another study, Palminteri et al. (2016) compared how both adults and adolescents learn to make choices based on the information they have available. The results of their research showed that teenagers focus on rewards and find it difficult to learn to avoid punishment or consider the consequences of their actions. The volunteers had to choose symbols associated with either a reward or punishment or a symbol without a consequence. After the choice was made in each task, the participants received feedback on their performance. Adults learned faster from their experience and modified their responses. They also avoided the symbols associated with punishment and learned from the feedback to make better decisions, while teenagers had more trouble doing so.

It is important to note that the evidence about reward-based behavior is most evident in contexts of heightened arousal. For example, McKewen et al. (2019) found that adolescents who had greater behavioral arousal during a task in which they argued with their parents showed a lower regulatory ability with a lower heart rate variability rate than those who had low behavioral arousal.

Peer Pressure and Reward Sensitivity

During adolescence, peer pressure plays a key role in behavior ( Currie et al., 2004; Prinstein et al., 2011). Adolescents engage in riskier behaviors when they are with their peers than when they are alone. This is known as the "peer effect" ( Gardner and Steinberg, 2005; Albert and Steinberg, 2011; Albert et al., 2013; Smith et al., 2014). The "peer effect" and reward sensitivity are interrelated and have a powerful influence on adolescent risk taking. In adolescence, a social context increases activity in reward brain regions and leads to changes in the processing of rewards, which leads to risky behaviors ( Chein et al., 2011; Ciranka and van den Bos, 2019). In an experimental study, Gardner and Steinberg (2005) reported that early and late adolescents took more risks on a computerized driving task when they were with their peers, although adults showed no difference in the amount of risky driving related to the social context. Somerville et al. (2011) found that adolescents are particularly sensitive to the reward-sensitizing effects of social stimuli, but they stated that this sensitization may affect their inhibitory control. Chein et al. (2011) employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a video driving task and suggested that, in the presence of peers, adolescents had increased activation in their reward brain regions and evidenced higher levels of risky driving. In a recent article, Smith et al. (2018) used probabilistic gambling and go/no-go tasks while 28 adolescents (aged 15-17 years) were in an fMRI. They found an activation of the striatum and anterior insula when adolescents made risky decisions in the presence of peers, but this presence "had minimal impact on the engagement of typical cognitive control regions." The authors state that these results support the conclusion that when adolescents are with their peers they recruit reward-processing regions. This increases their reward sensitivity and thus leads to risky decision-making, although their capacity to engage in self-control does not diminish.

Different studies have highlighted the importance of peers and peer groups in the initiation of alcohol and drug consumption ( Spear, 2000; Dishion and Tipsord, 2011; Trucco et al., 2011). In their search for the acceptance of their peers, adolescents are more vulnerable to pressure and more sensitive to stress than adults. Their affectivity is more unstable, and they show signs of a low tolerance for frustration and important emotional reactivity with a decrease in their capacity for self-regulation. These characteristics affirm that adolescents lack the same level of emotional, cognitive, or behavioral maturity as adults. Adolescents make decisions differently than mature people ( Kambam and Thompson, 2009), and they overestimate short-term benefits.

Using a rodent model, Logue et al. (2014) found that juvenile mice, but not adults, increased their consumption of alcohol when their peers were present. These results suggest that during adolescence the presence of peers increases reward sensitivity, and this mechanism has been conserved among mammalian species ( Trezza et al., 2011; Logue et al., 2014).

Risky Decision-Making

During adolescence, there is an important increase in behaviors that transgress norms and social conventions, peaking between the ages of 17 and 19 years ( Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2003; Loeber et al., 2011). In general, adolescents commit antisocial behaviors in peer groups, and adults do so alone ( Albert et al., 2013). However, only a small percentage of young offenders escalate their behavior to committing crimes during adulthood ( Loeber et al., 2011).

Why does risky behavior present itself more frequently during adolescence? At present, there is important scientific evidence showing that frontal brain regions, which are related to organization, planning, and inhibitory control, are not fully developed until the end of adolescence (the third decade of life), and these regions are the last to mature ( Spear, 2000; Galvan et al., 2006; Tamnes et al., 2010; Spear, 2013; Hartley and Somerville, 2015). On the other hand, regions that are reward-sensitive and regions connected to emotions are shown to be more active ( Spear, 2000; Sowell et al., 2004; Toga et al., 2006; Giedd, 2008; Hartley and Somerville, 2015) and to have greater emotional reactivity ( Guyer et al., 2016). This greater activity could be related to a sensitivity to focusing on possible gains in the short term, despite the negative consequences this might bring in the future. This way, the temporal distance between the maturation of both rational and emotional systems and their fragile communication generate a period of high vulnerability to risky behavior ( Steinberg et al., 2009a; Icenogle et al., 2019). Different articles ( Casey et al., 2008; Steinberg, 2008; Luna and Wright, 2016) know this framework as "dual systems" or "maturational imbalance." This model states that the difference in the development of sensation-seeking behaviors and self-control leads to a preference for behaviors that seek reward, novelty, and risk ( Smith et al., 2018).

Exposure to risky behaviors (such as unprotected sexual intercourse, the consumption of toxic substances, or, most critically, the antisocial behaviors that tend to occur with greater intensity during adolescence) indicates that adolescents have less behavioral capability to prevent damage, despite the presence of more developed cognitive abilities. How is this possible? Can adolescents know the theoretical consequences of their actions but still fail to effectively inhibit them? The answer is related to the interaction among environmental factors, cerebral immaturity, and a marked decrease in activity in the prefrontal regions and their neural connections. There is also a smaller response to aversive stimuli and an increase in activity registered in regions related to the reward circuit and emotional reactivity.

Not only do structural and functional modifications in the prefrontal region improve self-control, but they also improve connections in areas related to emotions, such as the limbic system, allowing for an improvement in the interaction between cognition and emotions ( Steinberg, 2008). Past studies reported the areas that regulate the processing of rewards, social information, and emotions are more sensitive and more easily aroused around middle adolescence ( Giedd, 2004, 2008; Blakemore and Choudhury, 2006; Poon, 2018). This effective coordination between cortical and subcortical regions and the cognition-emotion interface encourage the modulation of activations sparked by social and affective stimuli, thus allowing deliberate reasoning. Likewise, this process is bidirectional, modulating the excessively deliberate decision-making with social and emotional information ( Steinberg, 2008). As noted by Steinberg (2008), these modifications put a stop to the impulsive search for sensations and give a greater resistance to peer influence. These two factors together should decrease risk-taking; this usually occurs during adulthood.

The Minimum Age of Legal Responsibility in Latin America

The described conditions, common of development during adolescence, have been acknowledged in the international regulatory framework through different judicial documents. For example, the Convention on the Rights of the Child ( United Nations General Assembly [UNGA], 1989) indicates that "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care" and promulgates the importance of contributing to the enforcement of children's rights to survival and healthy development.

Furthermore, Principle 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child states that:

The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity ( United Nations General Assembly [UNGA], 1959).

Similarly, Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every measure taken by any public or private institution of social welfare, courthouse, government authority, or regulatory body that relates to children must consider the best interests of the child. The same criterion is used for any general commentaries made by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and for the advisory opinions made in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

In the preamble of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is established that children require "special care," and in Article 19 of the American Convention on Human Rights ( Organization of American States [OAS], 1969), it is indicated that they ought to receive "measures of protection." In the case of children responsible for committing crimes, the universal system of human rights has developed the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (also known as the Beijing Rules), the United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines), and the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty. All of these highlight the need to adopt measures of specific care for minors, always taking into account their vulnerable situation as a result of their immaturity, inexperience, and mid-development status.

However, from a legal point of view, full agreement regarding the ages at which the concept of childhood is applicable has yet to be reached. For example, the Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes in Article 1 that: "For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier." In this sense, international regulations establish the importance of different treatment for children and adults, suggesting 18 years old as an appropriate age to make the distinction, but offering flexibility regarding the establishment of the age of jurisdiction according to different countries' legislation. There is general agreement on the difference between children and adults but not on the age range that distinguishes one from the other. In paragraph 3 of Article 40 of the Convention, it is asserted that participating states must try to promote, among other things, the establishment of a minimum age, so that children under that age can be presumed not to have the capacity to disobey the penal law, but a concrete minimum age is not mentioned.

From a legal viewpoint, the debate about the minimum age of criminal responsibility is connected to other circumstances that, because they are still at a developmental stage, are attributed to adolescents' rights in their decision-making and understanding of autonomy, such as the minimum ages for voting, buying cigarettes, consuming alcohol, medical consent, and accessing contraception. It is as if, on the one hand, adolescents' capacity to make decisions and to take responsibility for their own actions is recognized, while, on the other hand, when convenient, this is not acknowledged.

This is evident in the application of certain public policies where, for example, the legal smoking and drinking age is established at 18 years old and the legal age for accessing contraception is 14 years. In that sense, countries like the United States set a high drinking age - 21 years old - while, as shown by a recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the range for the legal smoking age is recommended to be between 18 and 21 years old2.

These differences can also be seen in different Latin American countries, as shown in Table 1 .

For example, the Argentine Civil and Commercial Code (CCyC) ( Ministry of Justice and Human Rights Argentina, 2014) holds the definition of child to be those who have not yet turned 13 years old and that of adolescent to be youngsters who are between 13 and 18 years of age (CCyC, art. 25); it also includes the concept of "progressive capabilities" (CCyC, art. 117). For decisions relating to health, it states that adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 years can decide for themselves when it comes to health treatments that are either non-invasive or that present no risk to their health or lives (CCyC, art. 26). Adolescents older than 16 years are considered to be adults for decisions that relate to the care of their bodies (CCyC, art. 26). From the age of 13 upward, even if their parents oppose, adolescents can file a lawsuit if they have judicial authorization and provided that they have legal assistance during the process (CCyC, art. 678). They can also acknowledge paternity (CCyC, art. 680).

The Argentine Civil and Commercial Code establishes an interesting distinction between adolescents when it comes to types of decision-making. As shown in different publications, the same age does not necessarily mean the same capacity to perform all the acts of civic life. Progressive capacities show that while a 14-year-old adolescent has the competence to request contraception, he/she does not have it to consent to a surgical intervention ( Herrera et al., 2015). In the same way, the voting age is 16 years, while the drinking and smoking age is 18 years, and the differences in the driving age depend on whether it is for motorbikes, cars, or public transportation (16, 17, and 21 years of age, respectively).

But how is it possible to reconcile the fact that adolescents are mature enough to, for example, ask for contraceptives while being younger than 18 years, or to consent to surgery and vote at 16 years, but not to smoke until 18 years or - in the area of criminal law - to be punished if they are below the age of 16 years?

In this regard, knowledge based on neuroscience explains the fact that the decision-making process depends on the type of decision, the environment, and the context in which adolescents find themselves. In other words, it can be asserted that adolescents are mature enough to make certain decisions in determinate circumstances, but not to make others.

This debate arose in the United States as a result of two cases that reached the Supreme Court; they centered on reports made by the American Psychological Association (APA), also known as the APA ( Steinberg et al., 2009a). In the first case, Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), the discussion was over an adolescent's right to interrupt her pregnancy without previously notifying both of her parents. The APA argued that, taking into account the scientific evidence available, adolescents between the ages of 14 and 15 years showed no differences compared to adults, either in quality or in quantity, regarding logical reasoning in the comprehension of medically informed decisions ( American Psychological Association, 1990). That is to say, it maintained the criterion of adolescents' maturity to make medically informed decisions.

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the death penalty for adolescents was abolished, and the American Psychological Association (2005) asserted that the immaturity that leads to the lesser culpability of adolescents is grounded in three aspects:

1.

a lack of development of the sense of responsibility, which makes it difficult to control impulses;

2.

a high vulnerability to peer pressure;

3.

adolescents' personality not yet being completely formed, causing their personality traits to be more transitory than fixed.

In this case, the APA continued to support the criterion that asserts adolescents' immaturity as a reason to not convict them as if they were adults.

This apparent contradiction was highlighted in the Roper case, to which the APA responded by pointing out that both cases dealt with very different issues; the first regarded adolescents' competence to consent to medically informed treatments, whereas the second related to adolescents' culpability in criminal law, and whether they can be convicted in the same manner as adults.

As previously mentioned, in the last few years there has been an increase in evidence of the different ages at which cognitive and psychosocial abilities develop and mature in adolescents; these abilities evolve and mature in different ways. That is to say, there is a temporal gap between the development of the cognitive abilities for information processing, the prefrontal cortex, which is mostly matured by the age of 16 years, and the development of the abilities that are required for coordination between affection and cognition - cortical and subcortical connections - the maturation of which is completed at a later time ( Steinberg, 2008; Icenogle et al., 2019).

The performance of intellectual and cognitive abilities will therefore not show significant improvement beyond the age of 16 years ( Steinberg et al., 2009a). Meanwhile, psychosocial maturity, which is related to impulsivity, risk perception, sensation seeking, future orientation, and resistance to peer pressure, requires an effective coordination between emotions and cognition, and this occurs from the age of 20 years onward ( Steinberg, 2008; Steinberg et al., 2009a). In neurobiological terms, cognitive tasks that require adequate interaction and coordination between multiple brain regions reach their development and maturity after the age of 16 years ( Steinberg, 2009; Icenogle et al., 2019).

The improvement in connectivity between cortical and subcortical areas is related to the modification of susceptibility to peer pressure, which also influences risk-taking ( Steinberg, 2008). Adolescents show socioemotional network activation when in the presence of their peers; this activation brings with it a decrease in self-control regulation and a greater exposure to risky behavior. This mechanism, in which peer pressure brings a greater exposure to risk-taking, occurs in the period between the ages of 19 and 20 years ( Gardner and Steinberg, 2005; Steinberg and Monahan, 2007). Therefore, behavior in adolescents will differ depending on whether they are alone or with company, or if they are emotionally activated. In early adolescence, if the socioemotional circuit is not activated - for example, when adolescents are alone or in the company of an adult - there is bound to be greater cognitive control, which allows them to avoid exposure to risky situations. However, if they are accompanied by peers, or under certain conditions such as emotional activation, the socioemotional circuit is activated, which lowers their effective regulation of cognitive control. During adolescence, these circuits of cognitive control mature in such a way that, even though high socioemotional activation conditions may still be experienced during adulthood, inclinations toward risky behavior can be modulated ( Steinberg, 2008).

Following this chain of ideas, in contexts where adolescents are not emotionally activated and do have time to make a decision, meaning they are "cold thinking," although cognitive control is still in development, it is sufficient to control impulses and promote more deliberate actions ( Botdorf et al., 2017). Under these conditions, risk-taking is also like that of adults; informed medical decision-making and voting come under this context. On the other hand, in contexts where adolescents are emotionally activated, or when they are with their peers and do not have time to make a decision, meaning they are "hot thinking," adolescents find themselves in risky situations more frequently than adults ( Burnett et al., 2010; Paulsen et al., 2011). Poon (2018) found a bell-shaped development curve in hot executive functions during adolescence with a peak at the ages of 14 and 15 years. The author stated that the sensitivity to reward and the risk-taking propensity were highest during this period.

In making decisions related to health, it is not only possible to consult with different doctors, but also with other specialists or parents; generally, medical decisions are not made under strict time constraints. These are the arguments put forward by the APA in the Hodgson case; when an adolescent contemplates the option of interrupting a pregnancy, she is taking time to think about her decision. During that time, she can consult with people she trusts or with different professionals ( Steinberg et al., 2009a).

Some authors extend these arguments to other judicial contexts, such as the capacity to be on trial ( Grisso et al., 2003), pointing out that the abilities that a person needs to be able to be tried include an understanding of the different stages of the process, the roles of each of the actors, and the meaning of the allegations, along with the ability to reason this information. They argue that, when it comes to these abilities, differences exist between adults and adolescents younger than 15 years, but not adolescents of 16 years of age.

In "hot thinking" contexts where adolescents are under pressure from their peers, under stress, and without adult supervision, the decisions they make and their behaviors are risky and reckless ( Botdorf et al., 2017). In these contexts, they are less influenced by their theoretical knowledge about potentially negative consequences and so are more willing to take risks to potentially obtain short-term rewards ( Hartley and Somerville, 2015). As previously shown, when adolescents are around their peers, their behavior becomes more impulsive, and the decisions they make become riskier ( Hartley and Somerville, 2015). Smith et al. (2014) examined the influence of peers on adolescent risk-taking under a gambling task and found "that the presence of peers increases risky decision-making during adolescence even when explicit information about the probability of negative outcomes is provided, and even (perhaps especially) when these negative outcomes are portrayed as highly likely." These results suggest that when adolescents are in the presence of peers, providing adolescents with information about the likelihood of negative outcomes may not be as effective as expected.

Further Remarks on Latin American Legislation

The difficulty in the consideration of the legal responsibility of adolescents is evident when we look at cases in different countries. For example, in the case of the United States, Farahany explains:

In a triology [ sic] of cases [i.e., Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama], the United States Supreme Court has cited to evidence about the developing juvenile brain to find it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution to executive juveniles, to impose life without the possibility of parole for non-homicidal offenders, or to have a mandatory scheme of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Since the latest of these cases, Miller v. Alabama, there is considerable confusion and debate by lower courts about the meaning of that ruling and the extent to which a judge must consider neuroscience when sentencing a juvenile offender ( Farahany, 2015).

Regarding the United Kingdom, Catley and Claydon (2015) state that it is "unlikely that neuroscientific advances in understanding the brains of adolescents relevant to the age of criminal responsibility would appear in English case law." The Netherlands is another interesting case:

The measure of "Placement in an Institution for Juveniles" ("Plaatsing in Inrichting Jeugdigen," PIJ, art 77s Criminal Code) can be imposed by the court for 3 years, and can thereafter be continued by the court to a maximum of 7 years. PIJ is intended for criminal juveniles with a developmental disorder or psychological/psychiatric problems. The aim of the PIJ-measure is reintegration into society by resocialization. In the Netherlands, juveniles of 12-18 years in principle fall under juvenile criminal law. Juveniles of 16 or 17 may be sentenced according to adult criminal law. Since the new "Adolescent Criminal Law" came into effect, Apr. 1, 2014, adolescents of 18-23 years old may be sentenced according to juvenile criminal law ( de Kogel and Westgeest, 2015).

In Latin America, there are numerous human rights treaties that have been ratified by the different states and that govern this matter. With this in mind, and in consonance with Article 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights, the principle of equality must be understood to be the obligation to treat equals in the same way. It also means, however, that those not under equal conditions must not receive the same legal treatment. This is one of the reasons why children, adolescents, and adults should not be treated in the same way: as has already been explained, their cognitive abilities are not the same.

That said, rights and obligations must be implemented according to their context and the consequences that they carry with them. From this point of view, the objective of the Argentinean legislation mentioned earlier, which holds that those exercises of rights that might imply a long-term consequence for children and adolescents are the last rights to be acquired, appears appropriate. If these types of decisions were made in the context of peer pressure, or any other context of "hot thinking," it could bring legal consequences for those in this age group. Legal limitations that demand consent from the responsible adult, or a judicial decision (if the former does not give consent), allow for the protection of adolescents' integrity and development and force them to deliberately consider or debate their decisions. At the same time, the adolescent is treated as a "subject of rights" (and not "object of rights"): if their decision is not unreasonable or does not put them into a risky situation, they can do as they will.

This does not generate conflict as long as we are referring to the exercising of rights (such as the right to vote or to have control over one's own body) that carry inherent responsibilities. However, when we enter the realm of legal responsibilities, there are bigger differences in the legal dispositions in comparative law: Brazil, Costa Rica, and Ecuador regard 12 as the age of criminal responsibility, whereas Argentina views this age to be 16 years.

As has been noted, adolescents' brain development is not linear, and therefore it is not (yet) possible, from a neuroscientific perspective, to define the exact moment from which a person can act with absolute cognitive capacity (or at least a capacity appropriate to criminal responsibility). While this is true, it does not detract from the fact that recent studies have indicated that the development of the brain's executive functions is completed after the age of 21 years. Legislative debates on increasing the age of criminal responsibility are therefore needed, so that a person between the ages of 18 and 21 years will not receive the same treatment as an older adult, and so that they will not be seen as being over the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

As such, allowing a 12-year-old child to potentially be considered as criminally responsible presents a clear contradiction to the neuroscientific advances that have been made in recent decades. At the same time, this also constitutes a violation of the principle of equality as a 12-year-old child cannot receive the same legal treatment as a 16-year-old, because they are at different stages of cognitive development.

It would be wrong, however, to consider the determination of the minimum age of criminal responsibility to be the only relation between neuroscientific advances and juvenile criminal law. The increased cognitive development, the comparative decrease in the executive functions, the greater weight of peer pressure, and the underestimation of risk must also directly influence the principle of culpability and, consequently, the criminal response that an adolescent who is considered to be criminally responsible for a crime receives.

Taking this into consideration, in Latin American comparative law, it can be observed that a wide variety of socioeducational measures are considered as appropriate criminal consequences, including admonition, fines, community service, the obligation to finish schooling, apologies to victims, damage repair, and rehabilitation, among others (e.g., Chile: art. 6 from Law 20084; Colombia: art. 177 from Law 1098; Costa Rica: art. 121 from Law 7576; Ecuador: art. 378 from Law 100; Guatemala: art. 238 from Decree 27/2003; Honduras: art. 195 from Decree 73/96).

In this sense, it is necessary to highlight Law 287 of Nicaragua. In Article 95, it is stated that a person who was between the ages of 13 and 15 years at the moment of action and who was found to be criminally responsible for committing a crime will be sentenced with the application of socioeducational measures that do not involve the deprivation of freedom, whereas those who are 12 years of age or under are exempted from any criminal responsibility. At the same time, it imposes a maximum penalty of 6 years' imprisonment for adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 years who are criminally convicted. This legislation is in harmony not only with the supranational legislation of human rights, but also with advances in neuroscience. Indeed, through legislation of this kind, the link between the gradual increase of criminal responsibility and the development of the adolescent brain can be demonstrated. It can therefore be cited as a very good example. On the contrary, Argentinian juvenile criminal law is considered to be incompatible with the region's current human rights treaties3.

Discussion

In recent decades (1984-2017), interest in the applications of neuroscience to law, and particularly criminal law, has increased notably ( Farahany, 2015). For example, in juvenile criminal law, research on the maturation, growth, and development of the adolescent brain has had a big impact on the decisions taken by the Supreme Court of the United States ( Graham v. Florida, 2010; Jackson v. Hobbs, 2012; Mercurio, 2012, 2014; Miller v. Alabama, 2012; Escobar et al., 2014).

There is much scientific evidence to show that adolescents' inherent characteristics are based on their brains' immaturity, the result of the interactions between the different cognitive functions - still in development - environmental demands, and the context in which these present themselves. Adolescent brains do not mature homogeneously and linearly, but instead develop according to cognitive and psychosocial abilities. This explains why adolescents might show developed abilities in certain contexts or scenarios, but not in others.

In scenarios where tasks are mainly cognitive - where there is time to make decisions, it is possible to consult an adult or evaluate the different choices and alternatives, and the level of stress is low - adolescents show competence levels similar to those of an adult (cognitive maturity) ( Steinberg, 2009). More complex contexts - with high stress and emotional activation, pressure from peers, or little time to think - require coordination between affectivity and cognition (psychosocial maturity), which is still immature at the age of 16.

This temporal gap between the maturity of different abilities has generated legal debates, but it also establishes the different progressive capacities of adolescents under the law. In this sense, these different capacities establish the grounds as to why adolescents can make sanitary decisions and vote at 16 years, but cannot buy alcohol or cigarettes until later.

As Steinberg (2009) has pointed out, the cognitive maturity required for decision-making needs logical reasoning and the capacity for the comprehension and processing of relevant information. Following this line of thought, it can be seen that maturity in certain aspects of judgment develops between the ages of 11 and 16 years, arising from an improvement in abstraction, deliberation, and methods of induction. These cognitive abilities, which mature between the end of childhood and the middle of adolescence, reach a peak at the age of 16 years. That is to say, in "cold thinking" contexts, there is no significant difference in the capacity to comprehend and reason information in order to make decisions between middle adolescence and adulthood. As has been mentioned, this could lay the groundwork for the argument that the age of competence to make medical decisions should be 16 years.

However, it must be highlighted that only certain aspects of judgment mature around the age of 16 years, whereas some other cognitive-intellectual aspects are influenced by the affective sphere. In that sense, connections between the brain regions that integrate cognition and emotion are still immature during middle adolescence (16 years of age). This explains why adolescents show a less developed ability to exercise effective judgment in contexts where they find themselves influenced by emotional and social variables, despite their cognitive capacities.

Most antisocial behaviors in adolescents appear within the peer group ( Piquero et al., 2003). They are mostly impulsive behaviors and are not premeditated. When adolescents are with a group of peers, unsupervised, and emotionally activated, they are more sensitive to focusing on short-term rewards and less able to think about negative consequences, which debilitates their competence to make reasonable decisions ( Steinberg et al., 2009a). The influence of peer pressure is therefore more intense during adolescence than during adulthood ( Gardner and Steinberg, 2005).

These characteristics, which are common signs of adolescents' immaturity, must be (and are) taken into account for the construction of public policies; there are, for example, special regulations that stipulate the age under which the sale of cigarettes and alcohol is prohibited, the minimum age for driving, and the age at which contraceptives can be accessed ( Steinberg et al., 2009a). These policies can be improved in line with new scientific evidence. It has recently been recommended that the minimum age required for smoking should be raised ( Farber et al., 2015), while other measures to prohibit adolescent drivers younger than 18 years from carrying passengers, or to limit their ability to do so according to the time of day, have also been suggested4.

When the context allows time for adolescents to decide, consult, or obtain objective information about the risks, benefits, and alternative options, or when the influence of emotions and peers can be minimized, adolescents older than 16 years are bound to be able to make more deliberate and reasonable decisions in a similar capacity to adults ( Steinberg et al., 2009a). Making decisions about health, giving medical consent to take part in an investigative project, voting, and making decisions with juridical consequences are examples of such scenarios.

Taking into account the diminished responses that adolescents have to aversive stimuli, public policies of containment should be developed to act over adolescents who experiment with risk in negative situations, given that it is less probable that they would attribute any negative results to the way that they behave ( Reyna and Farley, 2006).

Differences between adolescence and adulthood are also rooted in the maturation process, and in brain, cognitive, and psychological development, while also presenting ground for new arguments that discuss a differentiated criminal treatment with less culpability for adolescents, and which take their immaturity into account.

We understand that there are some aspects that it has not been possible to explore to their fullest in this medium. One such aspect concerns the cognitive abilities required to be subjected to a full criminal trial, and how these change across different ages ( Kivisto et al., 2011). From a legal point of view, and based on the progressive capacities of adolescents, from the age of 16 years onward, adolescents can make decisions about their health in the same way as an adult. Studies about adolescents' capacity to be put on trial show that a large proportion of those who are younger than 16 years experience difficulties with specific tasks of legal reasoning ( Ficke et al., 2006) and in completely comprehending their rights and how to apply them. Likewise, their capacities are influenced by stress, suggestibility, and their intellectual level ( Kassin, 2008). There is strong evidence that supports the idea that youngsters who are 12 years or younger have a less developed ability to comprehend and reason juridical information when compared to adolescents who are older than 16 years or adults with no psychological alteration ( Ficke et al., 2006). To this effect, research has shown that 20% of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 15 years show deficient capacities comparable to adults who have no capacity to face trial for mental health reasons ( Grisso et al., 2003).

When analyzing the development and maturation of adolescents, it is also important to consider the interaction between the biological and environmental aspects; examples include the impact of different factors such as poverty, stress, and traumatic situations ( Auyero and Berti, 2013). Socioeconomic status is a relevant environmental factor that affects the functioning of the adolescent brain. In a recent systematic review of studies conducted with individuals between the ages of 13 and 25 years, Buckley et al. (2019) have presented evidence that socioeconomic status influences neural activation related to the processing of emotional and social stimuli. For example, negative experiences lead to a greater degree of responses, observable through the activation of the frontal cortex, in individuals with a lower socioeconomic status. Simultaneously, this review clarified that individuals with different socioeconomic statuses can show different behavioral responses even though their corresponding patterns of neural activation are similar. In any case, the manner in which socioeconomic status affects the functioning of the adolescent brain can be influenced by other factors. In this regard, a previous study has shown "that positive maternal parenting might ameliorate the negative effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on frontal lobe development (with implications for functioning) during adolescence" ( Whittle et al., 2017).

In conclusion, we argue that research on the development of the adolescent brain does not provide definitive answers about the exact age required for different juridical purposes. Nonetheless, the current state of knowledge does allow for reflection on the development and maturation of adolescents and the implications for considering them criminally responsible. It also validates demands for a system that provides adolescents with greater protection and that favors their healthy integral development. In any case, although a specific minimum age is not evident, this study is disposed not to recommend lowering the age of criminal responsibility, but rather the opposite.

The relevance of building bridges of effective communication between scientific studies of human behavior, the law, and justice systems must be emphasized; this particular case concerns the relation between neuroscience and the justice system for adolescents. It is not possible to continue along parallel pathways when the issues that demand solutions are convergent. We also consider it necessary for neuroscientific analysis to be taken into consideration by jurists, and for relevant breakthroughs in other disciplines to be included in their studies. As time passes, it is important - even essential - to increase the multidisciplinary collaborations that lead to legislative approaches based on evidence and public policies with measurable indicators (e.g., through the use of neuroimaging). In other words, an ongoing connection between neuroscientific advances and the answers to social problems that have previously been addressed through the application of the law is urgently needed.

Author Contributions

This article is an updated, extended version of a manuscript originally published in Spanish in the journal Boletín Mexicano de Derecho Comparado and authored by EM, EG-L, and LM-Q (see Mercurio et al., 2018; permission was granted by the journal). NL, JÁM, and JMM contributed new perspectives and material. All the listed authors amended the article and approved the final version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

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Adolescent Brain Development and Progressive Legal Responsibility in the Latin American Context

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In this article, we analyze the contributions of neuroscience to the development of the adolescent brain and shed additional light on the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the context of Latin America. In neurobiology, maturity is perceived to ...

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'But until recently, these legal protections didn’t apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children.'- Children in Adult Prison

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"In numerous cases, there is no public safety justification for locking up these young people in adult prisons. Juveniles may be held in adult jails for months or even years, although most of them are not charged with a violent crime, and many will not be convicted of any crime. Nevertheless, they languish behind bars with dangerous criminals and are at great risk of being raped and beaten. Many are pushed to attempt suicide"  “JUVENILES DON’T BELONG IN ADULT PRISONS” Paragraph 4

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"In numerous cases, there is no public safety justification for locking up these young people in adult prisons. Juveniles may be held in adult jails for months or even years, although most of them are not charged with a violent crime, and many will not be convicted of any crime. Nevertheless, they languish behind bars with dangerous criminals and are at great risk of being raped and beaten. Many are pushed to attempt suicide"  “JUVENILES DON’T BELONG IN ADULT PRISONS” Paragraph 4

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"Some
institutions-say, a law school financial aid office-dictate that a young person is expected to lean on her parents

financially until age 30. Others— say, a health insurance company—say that no, a young person is actually
expected to stand on her own two feet at age 19." -https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YFUgjXLD7VS3dWgNRzzY5u8WKQ_M47_g Paragraph 11

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He is not hopeful about his chances of remaining out of prison for life. He says, "It might as well be a done deal. Two strikes. . . . I am only 18 years old. I plan to live until I am 50, I'm not perfect. I don't know, I don't think I'm going to make it, you know? I don't think I'm going to stay out for good."

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In the fall of 1999, when he was 17, Manny and two other gang members attacked a family in his neighborhood. One of the victims was six months pregnant. The prosecution says she was hit repeatedly in the stomach with a baseball bat. Four men were assaulted, two of them stabbed. Manny was arrested and brought to court on four counts of attempted murder.
Manny comes from one of San Jose's roughest neighborhoods, and is a member of the Hispanic Norteño gang. His childhood was difficult; he grew up without his father and started running the streets and fighting in fourth grade. He has adopted the ethos of the streets, and believes that violence is sometimes necessary to achieve the respect of his peers. He says, "If someone hits you, you got to defend yourself . . . By just sitting there and turning the other cheek , you don't stick up for yourself, you just get rolled on, you don't have no self pride for yourself."

The 1999 attack was his second violent felony; at 14 he pled guilty to rape in juvenile court. Given this history, the District Attorney believed that he had all the hallmarks of a kid who belongs in the adult system, and petitioned the court to try him as an adult. In criminal court, Manny could receive more than 20 years in prison if convicted as charged.

Under California law, there are five criteria the juvenile court must consider when determining whether to certify a child up to the adult system: the level of the offender's criminal sophistication, whether he can be rehabilitated within the time the juvenile court has to work with the minor, previous delinquent history, the success of prior attempts at rehabilitation, and, finally, the seriousness and gravity of the crime.

A Santa Clara County probation officer, working independently of the prosecution and defense, prepared a fitness report for the court based on the five criteria. He found Manny to be fit for the juvenile system on the first four counts. He believed that the system could have done a better job of rehabilitating Manny after the rape incident. He served only 56 days at the Juvenile Ranch because of good behavior, and did not receive any sexual offender counseling while serving his sentence or when he returned home. Given this, the probation officer found Manny fit under the criteria of previous attempts to rehabilitate him. He did find him unfit on the criterion regarding the seriousness of the crime, however.

Ultimately, the court agreed. Despite evidence that Manny had not been the one to hit the pregnant woman, Judge LaDoris Cordell found him unfit on the final criterion, the seriousness of the crime. In her ruling, she said, "There is no evidence of any circumstances that would tend to mitigate the gravity of the offense. It was clearly under any kind of reading a vicious attack." Under California law, since Manny was 17, he must be sent to adult court if found unfit on any of the five criteria. His one reprieve was being allowed to stay in Juvenile Hall pending the outcome of his adult trial.

In the summer of 2000, Manny pled guilty to seven counts of assault with a deadly weapon. He now has two adult violent felony convictions or "strikes." If he commits another felony--violent or nonviolent -- he could be sentenced to life in prison under California's "three strikes" law. He is not hopeful about his chances of remaining out of prison for life. He says, "It might as well be a done deal. Two strikes. . . . I am only 18 years old. I plan to live until I am 50, I'm not perfect. I don't know, I don't think I'm going to make it, you know? I don't think I'm going to stay out for good." On January 22, 2001, Manny was sentenced to nine years at state prison.

manny · shawn · marquese · jose
from both sides of the bench · facts & stats · related report: little criminals
discussion · synopsis · press · tapes & transcripts · credits
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Four Kids - Manny | Juvenile Justice | FRONTLINE | PBS

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In the fall of 1999, when he was 17, Manny and two other gang members attacked a family in his neighborhood. One of the victims was six months pregnant. The prosecution says she was hit repeatedly in the stomach with a baseball bat. Four men were assaulted, two of them stabbed.

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McCardell- "Lowering the legal limit to 18 would only mean pushing the drinking problem further down to 16- and 17- year-olds. He believes that lowering the drinking age would be disastrous. After states set the age at 21, he says, teen highway deaths immediately dropped by 15 to 20 percent. "
Source: what is the age of responsibility
paragraph 18

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"Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities" ~ eji.org

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Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent.

In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up. And so we pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.

But until recently, these legal protections didn't apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children. Kids as young as eight can still be charged as an adult, held in an adult jail, and sentenced to extreme sentences in an adult prison. EJI is working to protect children from abusive treatment in the adult criminal justice system.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where kids as young as 13 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Before the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, 366 people were executed for juvenile offenses. That ban allowed EJI to focus on some 3000 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses committed when they were 17 or younger. Children as young as 13 were among those condemned to die in prison.

Most of these sentences were mandatory-the sentencing judge was not allowed to consider the child's age or life history. Some children were sentenced for crimes where no one was killed or even injured, and many were convicted even though older teens or adults were primarily responsible for the crime. Seventy percent of those 14 or younger who were sentenced to die in prison were children of color.

EJI launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. Three years later, we argued in the Supreme Court that the Constitution forbids sentencing children to die in prison. On May 17, 2010, the Court in Graham v. Florida barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. The Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults have to be considered in sentencing. Since 2010, we have successfully represented children across the country to obtain new sentences.

We went back to the Supreme Court after Graham to argue that sentencing kids to die in prison is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. In 2012, the Court in Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. The ruling affected thousands of people whose sentencers did not consider their age, the details of the offense, or any other mitigating factors. The Court did not ban all juvenile life-without-parole sentences, but held that requiring sentencers to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change" should make such sentences "uncommon."

Some states refused to apply to older cases. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that applies retroactively and requires new sentencing hearings for everyone serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense when they were under 18. Montgomery reaffirmed that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for all but the rare juvenile for whom rehabilitation is impossible.

Over a thousand people who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses have been resentenced because of , and hundreds have been released.

Incarcerating children with adults needlessly puts kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma, and suicide.

4.5K

Some 4,500 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.

9x

Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.

100%

Every state in America has capacity to house juveniles separate from adults but many refuse to do so.

Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma. They often act impulsively, recklessly, and irresponsibly. In an adult jail or prison, this behavior results in more aggressive punishment-which can worsen a child's mental health problems.

Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result.

Some statutes require "sight and sound" separation of children in adult facilities to shield them from physical and sexual violence. But in practice, this often means kids are put in solitary confinement, where they're at risk of significant psychological trauma from isolation.

The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing-they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

Kids' low social status compared to adult interrogators, beliefs about the need to obey authority, greater dependence on adults, and vulnerability to intimidation makes them uniquely susceptible to coercive psychological interrogation techniques designed for adults, leading to false confessions and undermining the reliability of the fact-finding process. Young children clearly can't defend themselves in adult court, but the rules created to shield adults who aren't "competent" to stand trial don't take kids' unique characteristics into account. Their diminished understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities puts them at great risk in the adult criminal justice system.

Eleven states have no minimum age for trying children as adults: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Some states allow children to be prosecuted as adults at 10, 12, or 13 years old. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.

Each year, judges transfer dozens of children under 14 to adult court. Prosecutors charge other young kids directly in adult court. More than half of the children under 14 transferred to adult court each year are African American or Latino.

Featured Work

EJI challenges abusive treatment of children by providing direct legal representation to hundreds of people across the country. We advocate for clients in parole hearings, provide re-entry services designed for people incarcerated as children, and educate policymakers, decision makers, and the public about the treatment of children in the justice system.

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Children in Adult Prison | Equal Justice Initiative

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Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent. In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up.

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Proponents of lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed underage binge drinking into private and less controlled environments, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens.
-https://drinkingage.procon.org/

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All 50 US states have set their minimum drinking age to 21 although exceptions do exist on a state-by-state basis for consumption at home, under adult supervision, for medical necessity, and other reasons.

Proponents of lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed underage binge drinking into private and less controlled environments, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens.

Opponents of lowering the MLDA argue that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly, and thus are more likely to harm or even kill themselves and others by drinking prior to 21. They contend that traffic fatalities decreased when the MLDA increased. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

18 is the age of legal majority (adulthood) in the United States.

Americans enjoy a range of new rights, responsibilities, and freedoms when they turn 18 and become an adult in the eyes of the law.

18-year-olds may vote in local, state, and federal elections; may serve on juries; and may be charged as an adult if accused of a crime. 18-year-olds are responsible for any legally binding contracts they enter; are liable for negligence; and may be sued.

18-year-olds must register with the Selective Service if male and may be drafted into service at times of war. However, 17-year-olds may enter US military service.

18-year-olds may get married without parental consent; buy a house; and enjoy new privacy rights including the shielding of medical, academic, and financial information from parents.

However, drinking alcohol remains regulated under a legal age of license. An 18-year-old may legally be responsible children and legally allowed to make life decisions with years of impact, but may not legally drink a beer.

Todd Rutherford, South Carolina State Representative and Democrat House Minority Leader, who filed a bill on Nov. 10, 2021 to lower South Carolina's MLDA to 18, stated: "This is a personal freedom issue. If you are old enough to fight for our country, if you're old enough to vote, if you're old enough to sign on thousands of dollars of students loans for a college education, then you are old enough to have a[n alcoholic] drink."
Read More

Pro 3

MLDA creates a mindset of non-compliance with the law among young adults.

Lowering MLDA from 21 to 18 would diminish the thrill of breaking the law to get a drink. Normalizing alcohol consumption as something to be done responsibly and in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college and the workforce.

High non-compliance with MLDA 21 promotes general disrespect and non-compliance with other areas of US law. MLDA 21 encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents to procure alcohol. It would be better to have fewer fake IDs in circulation and more respect for the law.

Further, MLDA 21 enforcement is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Police are inclined to ignore or under-enforce MLDA 21 because of resource limitations, statutory obstacles, perceptions that punishments are inadequate, and the time and effort required for processing and paperwork. An estimated two of every 1,000 occasions of illegal drinking by youth under 21 results in an arrest.

Combine a lack of consequences with the thrill of breaking the law, and MLDA 21 actually encourages underage drinking and potentially other illegal activities, such as driving while intoxicated and illicit drug use. Lowering the MLDA would make 18- to 20-year-olds subject to the same laws enforced for those 21 and over.
Read More

1. Underage drinking is allowed in some US states if done on private premises with parental consent, for religious purposes, or for educational purposes.

2. Between 1970 and 1976, 30 states lowered their Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) from 21 to 18, 19, or 20.

3. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds.

4. After the repeal of alcohol prohibition by the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933, Illinois (1933-1961) and Oklahoma (1933-1976) set their state drinking age at 21 for men and 18 for women. The 1976 US Supreme Court case Craig v. Boren ruled 7-2 that this age difference violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered in the US? 13 Pros and Cons

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Proponents of a lower drinking age say 18 is the US age of adulthood. Opponents say lowering the age would be medically irresponsible. Research both sides.

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"Although tried as an adult, [Jose] served his sentence in Juvenile Hall, and by all accounts has turned his life around."- Frontline PBS, "Four Kids, Four Crimes"

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Four Kids, Four Crimes | Juvenile Justice | FRONTLINE | PBS

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He brutally attacked his own father, stabbing him repeatedly with a knife, and pled guilty to charges of attempted murder in juvenile court in order to avoid being tried as an adult. Some observers questioned whether Shawn's sentence from the juvenile court judge was too lenient, and whether it showed that the system treats white offenders differently than those of other races.

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Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions. Children as young as 15 can be prosecuted as adults in many states without review by a judge or a court hearing.

The Campaign for Youth Justice report, "Jailing Juveniles: The Dangers of Incarcerating Youth in Adult Jails in America," released in November 2007, outlines the challenges to keeping children safe in adult jails. It catalogs the numerous jurisdictions throughout the United States where teens are placed in great danger because of the variety of flawed policies and laws governing juvenile incarceration. In 44 states and the District of Columbia, juveniles as young as 14 can be tried in the adult criminal system. Forty states either permit or mandate the jailing of young people in adult facilities before trial.

The report argues that children and teens should not be held to the same standard of accountability for their actions as grown-ups, citing research that shows the developmental differences between adolescents and adults. These findings indicate that the prefrontal cortex, which governs the "executive functions" of reasoning, advanced thinking and impulse control, is one of the last areas of the brain to mature.

In numerous cases, there is no public safety justification for locking up these young people in adult prisons. Juveniles may be held in adult jails for months or even years, although most of them are not charged with a violent crime, and many will not be convicted of any crime. Nevertheless, they languish behind bars with dangerous criminals and are at great risk of being raped and beaten. Many are pushed to attempt suicide.

As in the administration of many laws in this country, Black and Latino children and teens end up in adult facilities in numbers disproportionately higher than their representation in the general population. Nationally, according to the Campaign for Youth Justice report, three out of four young people admitted to adult prison in 2002 were either Black or Latino.

At issue is the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA). When originally enacted, it was designed to prevent young people from going to adult jails and prisons and to separate young people from adults while incarcerated. These protections were called "Sight and Sound Separation"-a young person would be beyond the sight and sound of the adult inmates. Over time, however, these provisions have been eroded and do not apply to young people being tried in the adult criminal system.

Now judges in juvenile courts are often excluded from the decision to prosecute children and teens as adults. In many states, these decisions are made at the discretion of prosecutors, no matter how minor the infraction might be. The JJDPA does not provide a level playing field for Black and Latino youths who are more likely than White youths to end up in adult prisons and jails.

We have an opportunity and responsibility to do better in our country. Placing juveniles in adult jails and prisons is an appalling injustice-and it doesn't work to reduce crime. With the JJDPA set to be reauthorized this year, Congress must amend the Act to ban the placement of children or teens in adult jails or prisons no matter what court hears their case. This is the right and sensible thing to do.

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"JUVENILES DON'T BELONG IN ADULT PRISONS"

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Jails and prisons are dangerous places for anybody, but especially for children and teens. Many of these institutions house vicious predators who have been locked up for brutal violent crimes. Yet on any given day, approximately 9,500 juveniles under the age of 18 are locked up in adult penal institutions.

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“When adolescents did the test with the knowledge that their friends were able to see them, it activated the
brain’s reward centers and they tended to go through those yellow lights much more often. We didn’t see the
same behaviors or such activation in adults,”
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YFUgjXLD7VS3dWgNRzzY5u8WKQ_M47_g - paragraph 3 in "A Brain 'Imbalance'"

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Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent.

In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up. And so we pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.

But until recently, these legal protections didn't apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children. Kids as young as eight can still be charged as an adult, held in an adult jail, and sentenced to extreme sentences in an adult prison. EJI is working to protect children from abusive treatment in the adult criminal justice system.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where kids as young as 13 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Before the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, 366 people were executed for juvenile offenses. That ban allowed EJI to focus on some 3000 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses committed when they were 17 or younger. Children as young as 13 were among those condemned to die in prison.

Most of these sentences were mandatory-the sentencing judge was not allowed to consider the child's age or life history. Some children were sentenced for crimes where no one was killed or even injured, and many were convicted even though older teens or adults were primarily responsible for the crime. Seventy percent of those 14 or younger who were sentenced to die in prison were children of color.

EJI launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. Three years later, we argued in the Supreme Court that the Constitution forbids sentencing children to die in prison. On May 17, 2010, the Court in Graham v. Florida barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. The Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults have to be considered in sentencing. Since 2010, we have successfully represented children across the country to obtain new sentences.

We went back to the Supreme Court after Graham to argue that sentencing kids to die in prison is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. In 2012, the Court in Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. The ruling affected thousands of people whose sentencers did not consider their age, the details of the offense, or any other mitigating factors. The Court did not ban all juvenile life-without-parole sentences, but held that requiring sentencers to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change" should make such sentences "uncommon."

Some states refused to apply to older cases. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that applies retroactively and requires new sentencing hearings for everyone serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense when they were under 18. Montgomery reaffirmed that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for all but the rare juvenile for whom rehabilitation is impossible.

Over a thousand people who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses have been resentenced because of , and hundreds have been released.

Incarcerating children with adults needlessly puts kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma, and suicide.

4.5K

Some 4,500 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.

9x

Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.

100%

Every state in America has capacity to house juveniles separate from adults but many refuse to do so.

Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma. They often act impulsively, recklessly, and irresponsibly. In an adult jail or prison, this behavior results in more aggressive punishment-which can worsen a child's mental health problems.

Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result.

Some statutes require "sight and sound" separation of children in adult facilities to shield them from physical and sexual violence. But in practice, this often means kids are put in solitary confinement, where they're at risk of significant psychological trauma from isolation.

The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing-they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

Kids' low social status compared to adult interrogators, beliefs about the need to obey authority, greater dependence on adults, and vulnerability to intimidation makes them uniquely susceptible to coercive psychological interrogation techniques designed for adults, leading to false confessions and undermining the reliability of the fact-finding process. Young children clearly can't defend themselves in adult court, but the rules created to shield adults who aren't "competent" to stand trial don't take kids' unique characteristics into account. Their diminished understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities puts them at great risk in the adult criminal justice system.

Eleven states have no minimum age for trying children as adults: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Some states allow children to be prosecuted as adults at 10, 12, or 13 years old. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.

Each year, judges transfer dozens of children under 14 to adult court. Prosecutors charge other young kids directly in adult court. More than half of the children under 14 transferred to adult court each year are African American or Latino.

Featured Work

EJI challenges abusive treatment of children by providing direct legal representation to hundreds of people across the country. We advocate for clients in parole hearings, provide re-entry services designed for people incarcerated as children, and educate policymakers, decision makers, and the public about the treatment of children in the justice system.

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Children in Adult Prison | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent. In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up.

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David Davenport: The last time the voting age was changed nationally was in 1971, with the adoption of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. With 18-year olds fighting in Vietnam, it seemed wrong to say they couldn’t vote for their national leaders until they were 21.
Source: No We Should not lower the voting age

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Four Kids, Four Crimes | Juvenile Justice | FRONTLINE | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
He brutally attacked his own father, stabbing him repeatedly with a knife, and pled guilty to charges of attempted murder in juvenile court in order to avoid being tried as an adult. Some observers questioned whether Shawn's sentence from the juvenile court judge was too lenient, and whether it showed that the system treats white offenders differently than those of other races.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All 50 US states have set their minimum drinking age to 21 although exceptions do exist on a state-by-state basis for consumption at home, under adult supervision, for medical necessity, and other reasons.

Proponents of lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed underage binge drinking into private and less controlled environments, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens.

Opponents of lowering the MLDA argue that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly, and thus are more likely to harm or even kill themselves and others by drinking prior to 21. They contend that traffic fatalities decreased when the MLDA increased. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

18 is the age of legal majority (adulthood) in the United States.

Americans enjoy a range of new rights, responsibilities, and freedoms when they turn 18 and become an adult in the eyes of the law.

18-year-olds may vote in local, state, and federal elections; may serve on juries; and may be charged as an adult if accused of a crime. 18-year-olds are responsible for any legally binding contracts they enter; are liable for negligence; and may be sued.

18-year-olds must register with the Selective Service if male and may be drafted into service at times of war. However, 17-year-olds may enter US military service.

18-year-olds may get married without parental consent; buy a house; and enjoy new privacy rights including the shielding of medical, academic, and financial information from parents.

However, drinking alcohol remains regulated under a legal age of license. An 18-year-old may legally be responsible children and legally allowed to make life decisions with years of impact, but may not legally drink a beer.

Todd Rutherford, South Carolina State Representative and Democrat House Minority Leader, who filed a bill on Nov. 10, 2021 to lower South Carolina's MLDA to 18, stated: "This is a personal freedom issue. If you are old enough to fight for our country, if you're old enough to vote, if you're old enough to sign on thousands of dollars of students loans for a college education, then you are old enough to have a[n alcoholic] drink."
Read More

Pro 3

MLDA creates a mindset of non-compliance with the law among young adults.

Lowering MLDA from 21 to 18 would diminish the thrill of breaking the law to get a drink. Normalizing alcohol consumption as something to be done responsibly and in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college and the workforce.

High non-compliance with MLDA 21 promotes general disrespect and non-compliance with other areas of US law. MLDA 21 encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents to procure alcohol. It would be better to have fewer fake IDs in circulation and more respect for the law.

Further, MLDA 21 enforcement is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Police are inclined to ignore or under-enforce MLDA 21 because of resource limitations, statutory obstacles, perceptions that punishments are inadequate, and the time and effort required for processing and paperwork. An estimated two of every 1,000 occasions of illegal drinking by youth under 21 results in an arrest.

Combine a lack of consequences with the thrill of breaking the law, and MLDA 21 actually encourages underage drinking and potentially other illegal activities, such as driving while intoxicated and illicit drug use. Lowering the MLDA would make 18- to 20-year-olds subject to the same laws enforced for those 21 and over.
Read More

1. Underage drinking is allowed in some US states if done on private premises with parental consent, for religious purposes, or for educational purposes.

2. Between 1970 and 1976, 30 states lowered their Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) from 21 to 18, 19, or 20.

3. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds.

4. After the repeal of alcohol prohibition by the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933, Illinois (1933-1961) and Oklahoma (1933-1976) set their state drinking age at 21 for men and 18 for women. The 1976 US Supreme Court case Craig v. Boren ruled 7-2 that this age difference violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered in the US? 13 Pros and Cons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Proponents of a lower drinking age say 18 is the US age of adulthood. Opponents say lowering the age would be medically irresponsible. Research both sides.

# data[].attributes.headline
"In the 30 years since MLDA 21 was introduced, drunk driving fatalities decreased by a third. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that MLDA 21 has saved 31,417 lives from 1975-2016. Lowering the MLDA would surely increase traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths" Con 1, paragraph 2

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"In the 30 years since MLDA 21 was introduced, drunk driving fatalities decreased by a third. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that MLDA 21 has saved 31,417 lives from 1975-2016. Lowering the MLDA would surely increase traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths" Con 1, paragraph 2

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From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several U.S. states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger.

Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the debate about letting younger people vote in elections.

Internationally, about a dozen countries allow citizens to vote at age 16, sometimes with conditions such as being employed or married, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil and Ecuador.

A constitutional amendment to lower the U.S. voting age to 16 would require approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 states). Alternatively, state legislatures could pass laws allowing younger people to vote in their states.

Until the 1970s, the voting age in America was 21. A debate over lowering it to 18 began during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreased the military draft age to 18. President Eisenhower called for citizens ages 18 to 21 to be included in the political process in his 1954 State of the Union address. But lawmakers didn't take action until marches and demonstrations drew attention to the fact that young people who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam did not have the ability to vote in most states.

Congress proposed the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1971, which stated, "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." The ratification process, which required approval from 38 states, was completed in about three months, the shortest amount of time of any amendment in U.S. history.

While the push to lower voting age for state and federal elections is still an uphill battle, some smaller jurisdictions are lowering the voting age. A handful of cities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow 16- and 17- year olds to vote in local elections, including school board elections as of Sep. 2023.

Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16?

Pro 1

16-year-olds are just as knowledgeable about civics and have the same ability to make good voting choices as older voters.

A study in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science found, "on measures of civic knowledge, political skills, political efficacy, and tolerance, 16-year-olds, on average, are obtaining scores similar to those of adults... Adolescents in this age range are developmentally ready to vote."

Scientists believe that "cold cognition" skills, those used to make the kind of informed, well-thought out choices needed in voting, are solidly established in 16-year-olds.

Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007. According to Markus Wagner, Social Sciences Professor at the University of Vienna, and his coauthors, studies of elections after the Austrian voting age was lowered show "the quality of these [younger] citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well."
Read More

Pro 2

Lowering the voting age to 16 increases voter turnout and develops lifelong voting habits.

The United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries. A person who votes in one election has a 13% greater probability of voting in a future election. Researchers say that people who participate in elections when they first reach voting age are likely to develop the habit of voting, and those who don't are more likely to remain nonvoters.

16-year-olds are learning about government and civics in high school, and the structured environment would lead to higher turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds as teachers and parents help them overcome typical obstacles for first-time voters, such as the registration process and finding their polling places.

By contrast, many 18-year-olds are in a time of transition, making them less likely to participate in elections.

Involving young people in voting can have a "trickle up" effect that mobilizes their parents and other adults in their households to vote, increasing the overall voter turnout rate. Turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds in Takoma Park, Maryland, the first U.S. municipality to lower the voting age for local elections, was double that of eligible voters 18 and older.
Read More

Pro 3

At age 16, people should have a voice in the laws that affect their lives and a stake in the future of their country.

A U.S. Senate report cited student activism and protests as reasons for lowering the voting age to 18 in the 1970s during the Vietnam War: "We must channel these energies into our political system and give young people the real opportunity to influence our society in a peaceful and constructive manner."

Students today live under threats to their futures such as school shootings and climate change, and they deserve to have influence over their elected officials beyond the protests they've organized.

Sofie Whitney, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, says, "If 16-year-old students are old enough to be affected by the laws, and realize that there is a problem, then they should have the power to help change it."

The age of 16 is when people's relationship with the law changes as they often start driving, working, and paying taxes. Further, in most states, 16-year-olds can be emancipated from their parents and live independently.
Read More

Con 1

Kids under the age of 18 aren't mature enough to participate in elections.

Experts say that 16- and 17-year-olds demonstrate lower interest in politics, have less political knowledge, and lack the experience needed to participate in elections.

Social scientists Tak Wing Chan and Matthew Clayton say that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn't be competent voters because "research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years." They add that the prefrontal cortex is what "enables us to weigh dilemmas, balance trade-offs and, in short, make reasonable decisions in politics."

People under 18 are subject to different labor, contract, and criminal responsibility laws, and aren't allowed to join the military without parental consent or serve on a jury.

Most 16- and 17-year-olds are still living at home and would be influenced by the voting choices of their parents.
Read More

Con 2

The 18-29 age group has extremely low voter turnout numbers, suggesting that people aren't ready to vote until later in life.

Only 12.5% of 18-year-olds participated in the 2014 midterm election, compared to 42% of the general population.

According to the United States Elections Project's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, just 16% of eligible voters ages 18-29 voted in the 2014 election, compared to 30% for ages 30-44, 43% for 45-59, and 55% for age 60 and up. Over the last 30 years, voter turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds has never exceeded 21% in a midterm election.

Only 23% of students scored at or above the "proficient" level on the last National Assessment of Educational Progress test of civics knowledge and skills.

David Davenport, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, says, "My concern is if 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on any kind of broad scale, what we'd actually be doing is bringing the least politically informed, the least politically experienced, the least mature in terms of making long-term judgments and trade-offs, directly into and potentially affecting our voter turnout and results."
Read More

Con 3

The vast majority of Americans of all ages and political views agree that 16-year-olds should not be given the right to vote.

A 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll found that 84% of registered voters opposed lowering the voting age to 16. The poll found every age group was against 16-year-olds voting, with the most support found among those under 35 where still only 39% were in favor.

A different survey found only 8% support for lowering the voting age to 16; 45% want to keep it at 18; and 46% would like to raise it back to age 21.

A Twitter poll by WJLA, the ABC news affiliate in Washington, DC, found just 18% support for a proposed bill to lower the voting age to 16 in the District of Columbia, compared to 77% against. The local NBC news affiliate ran a similar poll online in which 83% of participants were against the bill.
Read More
Discussion Questions
1. Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Why or why not?

2. Would lowering the voting age increase voter turnout? Explain your answer?

3. Would lowering the voting age lead to increase civic knowledge and participation? Why or why not?
Take Action
1. Explore the campaign to lower the voting age with Vote16USA.

2. Learn more about the 26th Amendment at the Constitution Center.

3. Explore " Preregistration for Young Voters " at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

4. Consider David Davenport's con argument, including that other laws (governing activities such as driving, drinking, and smoking) have increased ages instead of lowering them based on the immaturity of teenagers.

5. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

6. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

47.

The Hill, "
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Lowering Voting Age to 16," thehill.com, May 3, 2019

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Should the Voting Age be Lowered in the US? Top 3 Pros and Cons

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Proponents say teens are knowledgeable enough to vote. Opponents say kids aren't mature enough to vote. Explore both sides of the debate.