Blinded by science

The proposition that neuroscience should influence youth justice policy is rather more contentious than it may appear. Not that the Economic and Social Research Council report’s findings are remotely surprising, though the facts reported by UCL, Exeter and Oxford universities are compelling and may well drive another long-awaited debate of the kind that prefaced the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act.

That act, which, among a raft of other reforms, removed approved schools and replaced them with community homes, recognised the relationship between early deprivation, in its various guises, and juvenile delinquency.

This was considered to be demonstrable not from weighing brain chemistry, then beyond even the most polished microscope, but from professional experience and from even the most cursory look at the prison population.  Put at its most fundamental, that damaged children from damaging backgrounds ought to receive care rather than punishment and nurture rather than correction, was the psychodynamic recipe of the era.