AP Psychology is the only reason I'm good at debate

By Guest-Blogger Bri Castellini

Jim has granted me the privilege of occasionally guest blogging on the topics of LD, so to build myself up as an authority on the subject, I thought I'd just introduce myself a bit. My name is Bri, and I am a college freshman. I debated in both Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas during high school for the two years I competed, and am now a college IPDA debater. I went to Nationals in Kansas City last summer as the tournament champion for Congress (blah, I know), and qualified as well in Public Forum, but due to partner issues we forfeited to the next team. I also competed in poetry, and am now learning informative speaking, prose, and duo. But I've always been foremost a debate person, so don't worry.

For my first blog post on the subject of the latest topic, (Resolved: In the United States, juveniles charged with violent felonies ought to be treated as adults in the criminal justice system), I thought I'd examine the psychological implications. This will be a strongly Neg-sided post, but not to worry, I'll get to AFF points in other posts (and Jim has already discussed them as well).

The first thing we need to talk about is the frontal lobe of your brain, specifically the pre-frontal cortex. This part of your brain “allows us to prioritize thoughts, imagine, think in the abstract, anticipate consequences, plan, and control impulses.” (American Bar Association, January 2004) Basically, it controls our judgments and decision-making processes.

The pre-frontal cortex is the last part of our brains to fully develop, sometimes lasting into our early 20s. It's for this reason that you're not considered mature enough to consume alcohol, vote, and watch inappropriate movies before certain ages. So why not extend this to juvenile violent felony charges?

“Just because they're physically mature, they may not appreciate the consequences or weigh information the same way as adults do. So, [although] somebody looks physically mature, their brain may in fact not be mature.”- Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, PhD (She's part of the Harvard University Medical School, and she has a PhD. I love those sources, don't you??)

So from just this brain perspective, you could argue that it's as morally unfair to treat a minor as an adult as it is to treat a mentally handicapped person as one. The fact is, their mental faculties aren't fully developed yet, so how can we blame them from acting upon impulses they can't fully understand or control yet?

But let's move on to hormones, everyone's favorite middle school memory. Testosterone, the hormone connected to aggression (and most violent crimes), increases tenfold in adolescent boys. Ouch. Even taking certain womanly changes into account, I'd rather not have to deal with an overabundance of aggressive hormones forcing their way to the surface in a very small length of time. I'm violent enough as it is. Add this to the mood-swings associated with both genders during puberty, and you've got a full fledged biological battle going on within just about every adolescent. They can't be held responsible for their actions, at least not entirely. Treating them as adults will just solidify their growing (and entirely natural) contempt for authority.

Essentially, what you can take away from this is that contrary to really anything AFF will say, juveniles DO NOT have the biological or the psychological faculties to make informed, rational, and competent decisions, consistently, especially when they're under stress or are having an internal hormone war.

Sources
www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/Adolescence.pdf
http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm
http://brainconnection.positscience.com/topics/?main=news-in-rev/teen-frontal

Bri Castellini blogs frequently at Bri's Own World, and posts way too frequently on Twitter.