"What were they thinking?"

That's the question being asked about the teenagers who committed the bestial assault on a mother and son in West Palm Beach's Dunbar Village. We want and need to know how possibly 10 teenagers could have agreed to commit such evil mayhem without at least one of them breaking from the pack and seeking some responsible adult to intervene to stop it.

The typical response to that question is: "They weren't thinking. They just acted." And therein lies the crux of this matter. They did think, but with immature brains that think of action only, not about the consequences of those actions.

Before you conclude that this is some apologia for indefensible, atrocious human behavior, hear me out. For some time now, the outrageous nature of adolescent crime has caused us to speculate about whether the culprits should be tried as juveniles or adults. Frequently, when the decision is to opt for the more severe punishment, the accused is an African-American youth. Why that is true is debatable, but that debate must not be allowed to lower legal standards of civil behavior.

Considerations of ethnic identity trigger other sensitivities, such as whether the black youngsters were compelled by raging hormones. Such an indictment would suggest uncontrollable licentiousness that questions the culprits' human identity. So let us set aside sociological theories that point to inadequate parenting, media influence and lack of education. Those negative factors probably skewed the youths' moral perspective but cannot be allowed to mitigate the seriousness of their crimes or justify them.

In the interest of objectivity, let's look beyond sociological theories. Researchers who study the brain tell us that the human brain is not fully developed until age 25. Adolescence, ages 16-25, allowing for different individual growth rates, is a time when there is a mismatch between the emotional and cognitive regulatory modes of thinking.

Teenagers, using a part of the brain known as the superior temporal sulcus, have relatively limited capacity to regulate emotional responses. On the other hand, adults, using the medial prefrontal cortex, think about action and the consequences of actions.

To investigate this phenomenon, British scientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore reported last year on research done with an fMRI scanner to observe blood flow in these two parts of the brain when adolescents think and when adults think. Her documented conclusions reflect those of most brain scientists today: Teenagers don't think like adults because doing so is physically impossible. So where does that leave the criminal justice system in the case of the "Dunbar Village Dunces"?

We are confronted with heinous, multifaceted crimes that cannot be mitigated for any reason or allowed to go unpunished to the maximum degree possible, no matter what circumstances influenced their acts.

Something is at stake here that matters more than considerations of the ages of the three boys who have been indicted. That indispensable something is community sanity. To maintain it, the legal system must inform all citizens, adolescents and adults, that there are limits to what a civilized society will tolerate. Consequently, all perpetrators of the home invasion, sexual assault and subsequent brutality should be tried and punished as adults.

Our current shock and disgust must not be allowed to convince us that these crimes are an aberration unlikely to be repeated. Rather, let us assume that everywhere, there are other misguided, unguided, amoral youths whose life experiences have left them without empathy for others, without respect for themselves or respect for others.

For the most part, those are the children who have failed in school, who daily parent themselves on mean streets without limits of any kind. To leave them unsupported and unsupervised would be to consider their incarceration a solution to a problem influenced by a pathology condition born of societal neglect. Instead, we must commit to pragmatic involvement that requires personal sacrifice of time and resources.

That is our human assignment, should we choose to accept it.

Stebbins Jefferson
21 July 2007

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2007/07/21/a16a_jeffersoncol_0721.html

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