Neuroscience and the juvenile
legislation

MEDICAL SPECIALISATION
NEUROLOGY
Scientific evidence suggests that the parts of the brain
responsible for impulse control, decision-making, judgment and emotions, and
crucial when fixing culpability in case of juvenile delinquency, keep
developing into the twenties.
Earlier
this week, the Rajya Sabha cleared the Juvenile Justice (Amendment) Bill that
allows juveniles between ages 16 and 18 years who are charged with heinous
offences to be tried as adults.
Neuroscience
was conspicuously absent from this debate. Globally, juvenile justice policies
are increasingly informed by developments in brain science thatprobe questions
of culpability and “blameworthiness” of adolescent offenders. “Capacities
relevant to criminal responsibility are still developing when you’re 16 or 17
years old,” psychologist Laurence Steinberg of the American Psychological
Association had said while supporting Christopher Simmons, who, as an
adolescent, had been convicted of murder — a case that became a landmark
judgment in forensic psychiatry, and relied on neuroscience while convicting
the juvenile offender.
Much
like the juvenile involved in the December 16, 2012 gang rape in New Delhi,
Simmons was 17 years old in 1993 when he robbed a woman, tied her up with
electrical cable and duct tape, and tossed her over a bridge. When the case
went to trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death by a Missouri court in
1994. By 2004, the Simmons case had worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court
and a year later, in a landmark decision, the court said that it was
unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed under the
age of 18. The decision relied on neurobiology, developments in brain research
to define the “age of understanding”. So, what does science have to say about
the Indian government’s decision to allow 16-18 year olds to be tried and
sentenced as adults? To put it simply — science does not back the decision.
Age of understanding
As per
India’s Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2000, the age
of understanding is fixed at 18 years. And so, legally, any individual beyond
that age could be held fully responsible for his actions. However,
neuro-scientific developments in the past decade prove that brain development
continues till the person is well into his twenties.
In
2007, a study conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
U.S., scanned the brains of nearly 1,000 healthy children between ages 3 and
18. Child and adolescent psychiatrist Jay Giedd, who conducted the Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans and followed the actual physical changes in the
adolescent brain, believes that brain maturation peaks around the age of 25. In
a 2005 paper on “Adolescence, Brain Development and Legal Culpability”, Dr.
Giedd was quoted as saying, “Part of the brain that is helping organisation,
planning and strategising is not done being built yet… It’s sort of unfair to
expect [adolescents] to have adult levels of organisational skills or decision-making
before their brain is finished being built.”
According
to available neuro-scientific data, the frontal lobe, especially the prefrontal
cortex, is among the last parts of the brain to fully mature. The frontal lobes
are responsible for impulse control, in charge of decision-making, judgment and
emotions — and therefore crucial when fixing “culpability” in the case of
juvenile delinquency. Further, we now know conclusively that teenagers tend to
be impulsive and prone to mood swings because the limbic system — which
processes emotions — is still developing.
Preeti
Jacob, assistant professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at
the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Bengaluru, says there
is no valid, magic age which can work as a marker to define individuals as
juveniles or adults. “Neuroscience has shown that the brain continues to
develop well into the third decade of life. The 18 years cut-off is in itself
an arbitrary number. Lowering this age further does not have its basis in
current science,” she says.
According
to experts, adolescents get involved in risk-seeking behaviour without thinking
of long-term consequences, which leads them to actually overstate rewards
without fully evaluating the risks. This is because the level of dopamine
production changes during adolescence. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter — a
chemical produced by the brain that helps link actions to rewards and/or
punishments.
In defence of leniency
Sumantra
Chattarji is a professor of neurobiology at National Centre for Biological
Sciences and head of the Centre for Brain Development and Repair at The
Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, in Bengaluru. His
work has established that under conditions of chronic and severe stress in
rats, the prefrontal cortex can shrink by up to 40 per cent resulting in brain
cells in this area losing their capacity to process information properly. The
hippocampus, which is crucial for forming memories of daily facts and events,
is also damaged in a similar fashion.
Thus,
the parts of the brain that are crucial for processing information about
specific events, and making careful decisions based on them — such as applying
the brakes on high-risk behaviour — are severely compromised. On the other
hand, the same stress pushes the amygdala, the emotional hub of the brain that
is involved in fear, anxiety and aggression, in the opposite direction by
making its neurons grow bigger and stronger. Strikingly, MRI imaging shows that
similar changes take place in the brains of individuals suffering from stress
disorders.
“What
this means is that a stressed and damaged brain may lose its ability to control
impulsive and risk-seeking behaviour because of a lack of balance between the
prefrontal cortex and brain areas it is supposed to control. The ability to
remember and reason is also curtailed,” says Dr. Chattarji.
This
may be relevant in light of reports that a significant proportion of juveniles
committing crimes in India come from economically and socially deprived
backgrounds.
In the
Indian context, Dr. Rajat Mitra, clinical psychologist and director of
Swanchetan — a non-governmental organistaion based in New Delhi providing
support to juvenile delinquents among others — says that “complete
rehabilitation is very rare”. “It is almost next to nil. Rehabilitation is a
well-defined scientific process. The idea is to help the convict gain back his
original psychological, physical and social capacity which is impaired as a
result of the crime committed,” he says.
Juveniles
in conflict with the law are more capable of change given the fact that their
brains are still learning. Honest efforts made towards rehabilitation —
including visits by a mental health professional three-four times a month —
will have a significant positive impact on them. Unfortunately, there is no
psychiatric screening in Indian prisons. No mental health professional has met
the juvenile convicted in the gang-rape case yet; neither when he was in a
reform home for three years nor after release. He was given a one-time
financial grant of Rs.10,000 and a sewing machine because the rehabilitation
manual says that. “That’s no way to look at rehabilitation,” says Dr. Mitra.
(with
inputs from Afshan Yasmeen)
mohit.m@thehindu.co.in
vidya.krishnan@thehindu.co.in
yasmeen.afshan@thehindu.co.in
