Reforming Juvenile Justice State by State
Date Posted: May 21, 2012
Forensic psychiatry and psychology—disciplines in which scientific and clinical expertise are applied to legal issues—are essential in the juvenile justice system. “Get tough” laws that were passed by every state during the 1980s and 1990s, allowing juvenile offenders to be tried as adults, are being challenged by neuroscientific and behavioral research showing that adolescent offenders are not like adult offenders because their brains are still developing,
Today, the pendulum in the U.S. juvenile justice system is swinging back from punishment to treatment and rehabilitation as major reforms are underway in more and more states. “We’ve been very much a part of that,” said Thomas Grisso, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Law and Psychiatry Program. “We develop tools, we test tools that already exist and we do the translation on the ground. We’re working in detention centers and in juvenile probation settings across the country.”
Read the full article:
http://www.umassmed.edu/news/2012/research/law-psychiatry-reforming-juvenile-justice.aspx