[ExI] supreme court and juveniles

[William Flynn Wallace]

In the news: justices seem likely to alter past rulings about life in
prison sentences without parole for juveniles.  The death penalty has
already been banned for them.

Murderers should be punished and thoroughly.  But consider:  a person under
25 is not the same person as one whose forebrain, and its mature
decision-making abilities, judgment, and ability to suppress emotional
actions, has developed fully.

I think that given the same situations in which they, as juveniles, killed
someone, as mature adults they would very likely not do so.

'Permanent incorrigibility' is a term that is used in these court cases.
There, of course, is no such term in psychology, and the very idea that
something about a person is permanently fixed by the teen years is just
absurd.  Genetics can be strong, but changes in personality via life
experiences cannot be dismissed.  Not at all.  I might have to make an
exception for the total psychopath (and no, we have no test to determine
such).

Is it out of the question that in future years, courts will order
sophisticated brain scans designed to determine if a person' ability to
restrain actions is mature?  And if it is not, then incarcerating the
person until such time as the brain is mature and then decide what to do
with him?

Prison for life deprives the person of a useful life and deprives society
of a potentially useful citizen, not even regarding the enormous costs of
keeping a person in prison for many decades.  Some lifers request death as
they face these decades.  Would it benefit society if we agreed to these
requests?

bill w
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