What should we do with teens who commit crimes? Two leading scholars in law and adolescent development argue that juvenile justice should be grounded in the best available psychological science, which shows that adolescence is a distinctive state of cognitive and emotional development.

* Introduction: The Challenge of Lionel Tate * The Science of Adolescent Development and Teens' Involvement in Crime * Regulating Children in American Law: The State as Parent and Protector * Why Crime Is Different * Immaturity and Mitigation * Developmental Competence and the Adjudication of Juveniles * Social Welfare and Juvenile Crime Regulation * The Developmental Model and Juvenile Justice Policy for the Twenty-First Century * Is Society Ready for Juvenile Justice Reform? * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index

America's justice system has become increasingly punitive toward our teenagers during past 25 years. Terrifying terms like "super predator," "zero tolerance" and "vicious youth gangs" are part of our everyday speech. But as Scott and Steinberg show, new neuroscientific and psychological evidence challenges the punitive approach. The book combines rigorous science and impeccable legal scholarship, with forceful prose, to argue for a wholesale reform of the juvenile justice system.

America's justice system has become increasingly punitive toward our teenagers during past 25 years. Terrifying terms like "super predator," "zero tolerance" and "vicious youth gangs" are part of our everyday speech. But as Scott and Steinberg show, new neuroscientific and psychological evidence challenges the punitive approach. The book combines rigorous science and impeccable legal scholarship, with forceful prose, to argue for a wholesale reform of the juvenile justice system. -- Terrie Moffitt, Duke University and King's College London Scott and Steinberg, leading figures in juvenile law and adolescent developmental psychology, have joined forces to argue that now is the moment to reconstitute, in a completely original way, how America deals with juvenile crime and juvenile offenders. At once deeply learned and altogether pragmatic, Rethinking Juvenile Justice is one of the most transformative books this field has seen in the past 20 years. -- John Monahan, Shannon Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia The subject of juvenile justice breeds extreme responses. The academic sensibility is extremely lenient, seeing misguided kids who need understanding and help more than punishment. The legal system is mindlessly punitive: juvenile defendants in the US are treated more harshly than adults elsewhere in the Western world. In the midst of this crazy conversation, Scott and Steinberg are voices of sanity. Their wholly novel approach to juvenile crime will make equal sense to judges, juvenile advocates, and urban police forces. This book is a terrific example of what speaking truth to power, effectively, looks like. -- William Stuntz, Harvard Law School