TABLE 5.

Life Course Health Development Conceptualization of Canada’s Youth Justice Minimum Age Law Related to Plasticity

LCHD Child Justice Principle: Justice Involvement of Children is Inappropriate Because it Fails to Recognize Children’s Developmental Adaptability and Malleability
Salient Ideas	Exemplar Quotes
Neurologic context	“Our brains develop well into our 20s. Especially the parts that deal with judgement, dealing with... peer pressure, cost benefit analysis, or the assessment of long-term consequences of your actions. It’s not just that kids have less life experience by definition. They’re not as physiologically developed as adults. It’s not really fair... to treat them that way.” Prosecutor
Punitive justice model ignores children’s plasticity	“It’s developmentally inappropriate to impose this really punitive model of rehabilitation on children. They’re so elastic, their development issues are so front and center. And partly because there’s just so many opportunities to change things outside of the criminal justice system.” Legal youth advocate
Community-based programs emphasize neurologic development in children	“[High-risk youth] who came into the program were processing more from that ventral fight or flight or freeze part of the brain, not much in that thoughtful executive functioning. In 13 weeks, they started to see decreases in [the ventral] part of the brain and increases [in the frontal lobes]… [These] kids had fewer criminal convictions.” Community service provider

“Plasticity” indicates health development phenotypes that are systematically malleable, enabled, and constrained by evolution to enhance adaptability to diverse environments.¹⁸