Youth as Moral Opportunity

Abstract

Minors should not be punished as harshly as adults for any given crimes they commit. The most common explanation of why is that youths have diminished responsibility-relevant capacities. Recently, Gideon Yaffe has defended the revisionist view that the reason to give juvenile offenders a break in sentencing derives from their political disempowerment. Here, I defend a third alternative: youth is a developmental stage between legal infancy and adulthood during which people are owed special opportunities to cultivate their moral capacities and otherwise fortify themselves against engaging in criminal wrongdoing. Given that minors have not yet received all those opportunities they are owed, they have a claim to mitigated punishment on account of lacking a fully fair opportunity to protect themselves against criminal liability and punishment. They also have distinctive grounds to object to any punishment that would thwart their continued receipt of the developmental opportunity they are owed as youths.