Many questions have been raised relating to key legal and human rights concepts.
Key themes
Advances in developmental neuroscience clearly provide the opportunity to investigate and address issues of policy relating to (compulsory) treatment and youth incarceration and social justice.
Many socio-economic advantages could be gained by achieving better long term outcomes through earlier intervention for such children. However, at the same time, many questions are raised relating to key legal and human rights concepts such as free will, individual choice, personal autonomy etc. For example how should issues such as individual choice be conceptualised in light of the knowledge that the brain's ability for sophisticated levels of understanding and generating coherent decisions is compromised, not just immediately but in the long term?
Addressing issues of policy at the EU level is even more challenging since EU laws are diverse, multi-layered and multi-lingual and the understanding of key principles such as personal autonomy can differ considerably across languages and legal societies.
Key themes emerging from the ESRC seminar series on Social Developmental Neuroscience, Ethics and the Law include:
- Brain Development
- Traumatic Brain Injury in Children
- Effective Participation: Forensic Linguistics (language in the judicial process – do children understand?)
- Age of Criminal Responsibility
