Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, Van­dana Siew Sankar-Ali, has warned that try­ing chil­dren as adults in a court of law can back­fire on the coun­try.

She was re­act­ing to the Sun­day Guardian’s front-page sto­ry yes­ter­day in which Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said it may be time for the na­tion to con­sid­er try­ing chil­dren as adults.

His state­ment came af­ter a 13-year-old boy was one of two ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with an at­tempt to smug­gle con­tra­band in­to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca last Fri­day. A num­ber of stu­dents from sec­ondary schools have al­so been ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of cannabis.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day, Sankar-Ali said the de­ci­sion must be care­ful­ly weighed against the re­al­i­ty of such a move. She told Guardian Me­dia, “Tak­ing that ap­proach over­looks the crit­i­cal de­vel­op­men­tal dif­fer­ences be­tween child of­fend­ers and adult of­fend­ers. When we look at how chil­dren and ado­les­cents are de­vel­op­ing, they are still un­der­go­ing sig­nif­i­cant brain de­vel­op­ment—emo­tion­al, so­cial, and moral de­vel­op­ment. As some of us may know, the brain is still de­vel­op­ing way in­to your mid-20s. So, that means that chil­dren are not as much in con­trol of their im­puls­es, their judge­ment, ra­tio­nal de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and so they are more prone to im­pul­sive be­hav­iour, to hav­ing a re­duced ca­pac­i­ty to fore­see the con­se­quences of their be­hav­iour.”

Sankar-Ali said hold­ing chil­dren to the same stan­dards of cul­pa­bil­i­ty as adults re­al­ly fails to take in­to ac­count de­vel­op­men­tal lim­i­ta­tions.

She said such a de­ci­sion is tak­ing a puni­tive, ret­ri­bu­tion-type of ap­proach as op­posed to a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ap­proach.

In ac­knowl­edg­ing that the idea is not nov­el and it is in­sti­tut­ed in some states in the Unit­ed States, Eng­land, Wales, and Ja­maica, she said da­ta has shown that it does not al­ways make a so­ci­ety safer.

She added, “I can say that the re­search that has gone in­to ju­ve­nile jus­tice for decades has shown that this type of ap­proach does not de­ter crime or in­crease pub­lic safe­ty. In fact, tak­ing this ap­proach has been found to in­crease re­cidi­vism or re-of­fend­ing, where­by the ex­po­sure of the youth to pro-crim­i­nal at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iours, to big­ger crim­i­nals than them­selves, re­al­ly deep­ens the sense of re­sent­ment, bit­ter­ness, anger, and all of the men­tal health is­sues that may be de­vel­op­ing, which gives room for cre­at­ing vi­o­lent crim­i­nals in adult life.”

She went fur­ther in ex­plain­ing that this type of re­search has led to the de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al treaties and guide­lines on ju­ve­nile jus­tice that have rec­om­mend­ed sep­a­rate sys­tems for the treat­ment of child of­fend­ers from adult of­fend­ers.

Sankar-Ali con­clud­ed by say­ing, “Trinidad and To­ba­go has been a sig­na­to­ry and has abid­ed by those laws and guide­lines for a long time now, and to do the op­po­site would re­al­ly be go­ing back on a lot of pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ments that not just Trinidad and To­ba­go, but the world has made.”