1.3 Impact of Human Development on Mental State of Juvenile

Why development is criminal law's business: (1) diminished responsibility — the immature prefrontal control means poorer impulse-regulation, higher risk-preference, and discounted futures (the science beneath the age-ladder of liability); (2) heightened suggestibility — the interrogation's dangers (false confessions — the juvenile's classic vulnerability; the safeguards of Unit 6's child-friendly inquiry); (3) peer susceptibility — the adolescent's audience-brain (risk- taking in company — the group-offence patterns); (4) identity's plasticity — the stigmatising label can become the self ("I am a criminal" — labeling theory's home terrain, Unit 2.3); and (5) the reform window — the same plasticity that risks also heals: the malleability that makes juveniles both more salvageable and more vulnerable — the juvenile justice system's founding wager.