SCOTUS ’Decisions on Sentencing Juvenile Offenders: An Examination of Risk and Protective Factors of Juvenile Conduct Disorder and Adult Offending

Abstract

Conduct disorder is one of the most frequently diagnosed mental illnesses in children in the United States today and consequently, is responsible for a great deal of juvenile delinquency. Extant research and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) indicate that juvenile offenders are more easily rehabilitated than adult offenders in that they do not fully appreciate the nature of the crime they have committed due to being psychologically immature. The current study is an examination of secondary data, with the goal of improving the understanding of whether respondents with a history of a potential diagnosis of conduct disorder have an equal likelihood of offending as adults relative to those who society considers “normal delinquent children”.