different than adults.5 In particular, this research finds that the
process of brain maturation does not end until the early 20s and helps
explain behaviors commonly associated with teenagers, including
impulsivity, risk-taking, and susceptibility to peer pressure.6 Another
area of emerging research has been in the field of childhood trauma,
including an exploration of the relationship among trauma,
delinquent behavior, and rehabilitative potential.7
In their new book, Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and
Practice, editors Francine Sherman and Francine Jacobs have
assembled a series of articles that build on these areas of research and
their implications for changes in juvenile justice law, policy, and
practice. The editors used Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems
theory8 as the organizing principle for the volume, situating the
5 See, e.g., Ruben C. Gur, Brain Maturation and its Relevance to Understanding
Criminal Culpability of Juveniles, 7 CURRENT PSYCHIATRY REP. 292 (2005)
(describing research into brain anatomy that indicates an inability for people to
form full criminal intent until adulthood).
6 See id.; see also Jay D. Aronson, Neuroscience and Juvenile Justice, 42 AKRON
L. REV. 917, 919 (2009) (tracing the evolution of brain development studies over
the course of the 20th century and discussing diverse opinions on the use of brain
science by courts in legal proceedings).
7 See CHRISTINE B. SIEGFRIED, SUSAN J. KO & ANN KELLEY, NAT’L CHILD
TRAUMATIC STRESS NETWORK, VICTIMIZATION AND JUVENILE OFFENDING (2004),
http://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/assets/pdfs/victimization_juvenile_offendin
g.pdf (providing an overview of research connecting childhood trauma to
adolescent violence and other juvenile offenses). See also TRAUMA AND JUVENILE
DELINQUENCY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND INTERVENTIONS (Ricky Greenwald ed.,
2002) (detailing possible connections between childhood trauma and delinquency,
as well as potential treatments and interventions).
8 Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory views human development in terms
of five “layers” of environment, including the microsystem (an individual’s
immediate environment), the masosystem (defining the relationships between
individual microsystems), the exosystem (defining the relationships between an
individual’s microsystem and other systems in which the individual is not directly
involved), the macrosystem (the culture in which an individual lives), and the
chronosystem (describing the way in which environmental effects develop and
transition over time). Ecological Theory of Bronfenbrenner, N. AM. CMTY. FOR
