Not long ago, a Pittsburgh teenager decided to plead guilty to a felony, which resulted in a criminal record that he will drag with him like a ball and chain to every job interview for the rest of his life.
Ignoring his attorney's insistence that they try to move the case to juvenile court, where the record could be erased, he opted instead for probation and immediate release from jail, mainly because it was a Friday and he wanted to go to a party.
In every way, he appeared to be an adult, tall and bearded, deep-voiced and big-footed.
But, if he's like others his age, the similarities were only skin deep. Just beneath the surface, particularly in the gray matter at the front of the brain, adolescents are not like adults.
Ongoing studies on adolescent brain development are explaining the biology behind what parents have always known: Even the healthiest teenage brain doesn't recognize risks or understand long-term consequences the way most adult brains do.
Some of the same research is being used by child development experts across the country to challenge social policy, particularly the politically popular trend to sentence juvenile criminals to adult time for adult crime.
Though a felony may be an "adult crime," the adolescent who committed it is not. His brain, like a watery omelet, isn't done developing, and that raises questions about his culpability as an adult, says developmental psychologist Elizabeth Cauffman, an assistant professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.
"The brain is like a dirt road that turns into a superhighway as people mature," Cauffman said. "During adolescence, that is still going on."
In many ways, society recognizes that adolescents aren't as capable as adults. Laws prohibit them from buying alcohol or cigarettes until 21. They can't drive until 16, and even then, not late at night. They can't get their ears pierced or sign a contract without a parent's consent.
For Cauffman, the most incongruous example of governmental thinking about adolescents is that some states forbid tattooing until age 18 but permit execution at age 16.
The teen who chose a party instead of a clean record frustrated his lawyer, who afterward asked the question that parents of adolescents repeat daily, "What was he thinking?"
He was thinking something different from what his adult lawyer thought. That could be because the neural connections in the front of an adolescent's brain are not done forming.
The front lobe is where high level decisions are made --- such as whether to party or study, whether to punch a hole in the wall when angry or restrain that fist, whether to complete that summer job application or let it slide until long after the deadline.
The connections between parts of the brain are incomplete in teens, and recent research suggests they may not be complete until around age 20, said Marie Banich, a neuropsychologist and professor at the University of Colorado who is using MRIs to compare adult and adolescent brains.
The quirkiness of adolescent thinking is apparent every day to the staff of YouthPlaces, an agency that provides after-school programs for 4,000 teens at 17 sites across Allegheny County.
Director Lori Schaller recalls, for example, the teen who attended YouthPlaces' academic enrichment program faithfully for three weeks, then dropped out after getting bad grades. He didn't see that more tutoring might get him a better report card.
Then there are the teens who quit their after-school jobs. One said he left because the employer wouldn't give him additional hours. Of course, quitting left him with no hours. One girl said she resigned because she broke a fingernail. Another said she had to leave because she didn't like the required shoes.
Schaller said teens who skip school didn't see the relationship between missed days and bad grades.
"It's like there's a connector missing. Sometimes they do not see the correlation from A to B," she said.
The inability of teens to see that correlation is why some experts believe adolescents who commit serious crimes should not automatically be punished as if they were capable of adult premeditation.
They think the teens should be sent to juvenile court, a view that puts them at odds with the trend nationally to get tougher on young criminals. In the 1990s, virtually every state in the nation passed laws sending more adolescents directly to criminal court for trial. As a result, thousands go to prison for punishment instead of reform school for rehabilitation.
About six years ago, experts concerned about this trend began to study the issue with the help of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Directed by Laurence Steinberg, a nationally renowned expert in adolescent psychology, they're called the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice.
The network's 15 members from across the country include two from Pittsburgh -- Cauffman and Edward Mulvey, a professor of psychiatry at Pitt and an expert in violence and mental illness.
Earlier this month, the group released a study showing juveniles are less likely to be competent to stand trial than young adults.
That study of 1,400 young people age 11 to 24 from four states -- Pennsylvania, California, Virginia and Florida -- showed that the younger the adolescent, the less likely he or she was to be competent.
They used a test routinely administered on mentally ill adults to determine competency to stand trial, the definition of which would include the ability of a person to understand the legal proceedings and help a lawyer prepare a defense to allegations. The researchers found youngsters age 11 to 13 were three times as likely to be incompetent as the young adults age 18 to 24. And the teens age 14 and 15 were twice as likely to be incompetent.
Cauffman said that, as a result of the research, lawyers representing teens sent directly to criminal court for trial should consider having them tested to determine competency. One of the MacArthur network members is developing a test now that could be used for that purpose.
In another study supported by MacArthur, some of the same experts are trying to find out what causes young people to stop committing crimes. They know that the vast majority of delinquents become law-abiding citizens by about age 25, but they don't know what factors contribute to that.
"There has been a lot of research on what gets kids to commit crime. This is what gets kids to stop," Cauffman said. The first results from this major study of 1,200 youths from Pennsylvania and Arizona should be available next year.
Caufmann also is studying psychopaths -- calculating, remorseless, emotionless, manipulative criminals -- because she's not sure it's appropriate to label a teen as a psychopath before his brain is done developing.
The test used on adolescents to determine if they are psychopaths was developed for adults, and among the traits it uses to diagnose the disorder are those that are typical teen behaviors, such as poor impulse control, lack of goals, sensation seeking and irresponsibility. This study, also supported by MacArthur, will be conducted exclusively on Pennsylvania youths.
The focus of the studies, Steinberg said, is to give policymakers and politicians up-to-date information on which to base decisions.
The group's research provides proof for the assumptions made by social reformers who created the first juvenile court in the world in Chicago a little more than 100 years ago.
The reformers believed delinquents should be treated differently because they were immature, and thus more malleable and more easily reformed, than adult criminals.
While Cauffman, as a scientist, knows the importance of studies providing concrete evidence that adolescents are less mature than adults, she also noted that, in some ways, "It's sad that it takes research to find that."
Barbara White Stack can be reached at bwhitestack@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1878.
