Hall Dilemma in Categorizing Youth as "Adolescents:" Protecting Youth or Depriving Youth of Their Rights?

            With the onset of the Progressive Era and as new disciplines in the social sciences emerged in the early 1900s, the American society perceived its youth as “dependents” (of their parents and the state) and as new objects of study. Stanley Hall’s study of youth also reflects this time period in which he classified “adolescence” as a social category in between childhood and adulthood. Hall’s study of adolescents contributed significantly to the understanding of youth undergoing puberty. Throughout his research, Hall explained how youth is different from adults, how male youth differs from the female counterpart, and common “symptoms” of being an adolescent. Stanley Hall’s study of adolescents also led to various disciplines studying youth, such as neuroscience in its recent research that discovered how adolescent brain is less developed than an adult’s. However, with growing understanding and distinct categorization of the youth comes also the move away from youth as the same rights holders as adults to youth as forever dependent, not quite adults, and therefore not deserving the full rights as adults.

            Throughout his research, Hall emphasizes how distinct youth is from adults through the coining of the term “adolescence,” as well as specific characteristics that compose who youth is. In his book, “The Psychology of Adolescence,” Hall describes youth as a distinct age group in which they lack self-control and are almost animal-like because they are prone to follow their instincts more so than logical reasoning (339). Among female adolescents, such lack of self-control manifests in their underhanded methods of expressing envy, jealousy, rivalry, and hatred (355). The male adolescents are at greater risk to fight with their peers at puberty, as well as engage in activities like teasing and bullying (356). Overall, these young offenders see themselves as “an enemy of society” (340) and self-fulfill this identity through their actions. More than anyone in his time period (as well as ours), Hall studied the youth and understood their state of mind as they underwent biological and psychological development. Through his study, the society became more aware of who youth is, what it is that they go through as youth, and how the society can be a positive influence in this difficult period for the adolescents.

This view of youth even pervades our society today. According to Science Today at the University of California, adolescents’ brain, especially the decision-making frontal cortex, is not yet fully developed. Such study reveals that youth does have diminished mental capacity and thus calls for a special treatment. For example, according to the Miller case, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life without parole for a teenager convicted of murder is still a cruel punishment that violates the 8^th amendment. Although this may seem like protection of youth from harsh society, this reasoning also implies that youth is different from adults and therefore do not deserve the same set of rights as adults do.

Hall’s scientific study of youth to better understand this uncertain stage of life contributed perhaps to resolving a few misconceptions about youth in our society today. However, Hall’s study also backfired as we witness how this distinction of the youth may unintentionally lead to deprivation of youth of their rights.

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Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, 
Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. New York: D. Appleton, 1904. Print. 

Science Today at the University of California. "The Adolescent Brain."

Stanley Hall and Concepts of Youth

Stanley Hall portrays youth as a time of moral instability, undisciplined passions, and physiological weakness. These innate attributes coupled with unsupportive environments formed around a weak education system and a lack of national identity are proposed causes of youth crime. Hall wrote this article when youth were most characterized as objects-of-saving-and-studying. While he does study youth and promotes attempts to save them, this article struck me as also supporting the concepts of youth-as-dangerous-class and youth being psychologically different to adults.

Consistent with the youth-as-dangerous-class paradigm that intensified in the 1980s Hall branded adolescence as ‘the criminal age’. Hall further establishes youth-as-a-dangerous-class by listing heinous crimes committed by children as young as nine, including murder for amusement.  In 1904 Hall warned that juvenile crime was increasing and youth were becoming criminals at younger ages. One reason he cites for this youth crime phenomenon is that before adulthood “reason, true morality…are but very slightly developed”. By comparing adult criminals to “overgrown children” Hall reinforces the idea that the irrational nature of criminals is inherent to the period of youth. Hall’s suggestion of a genetic influence on crime could have far-reaching legal as well as social consequences. As eugenics fell out of popularity after the association with Nazism, Hall’s theory seems dangerous today as the profiling of ‘hereditary criminals’ could be used to support controversial eugenics practices such as sterilizing inmates. However, other sociologists in the late 19^th and early 18^th centuries, such as Richard L. Dugdale conducted studies on families with many incarceration members that also suggested that criminality was hereditary. This idea promotes the ‘youth-as-a-dangerous-class’ paradigm by insinuating that juvenile criminals are genetically different to ‘normal’ people, which fuels the fear of ‘super-predators’; an almost distinct race of uncontrollable, dangerous people. It is interesting that Hall wrote this article before such concepts had summited in popular consciousness and the media.

The lack of nourishment of youth by education and religion, and the country’s novel history are other suggested causes of youth crime. Hall prefigures the increasingly popular idea of the USA being a multicultural mosaic and suggests that this heterogeneous heritage created an environment where youth grow up too fast.  However, youth crime seems to be a global phenomenon; Hall claims in one study that 45% of German thieves were less than twenty-one years old. Failures of religion and education to ‘moral instruct’ youth are other possible causes of youth crime.

Regardless of the cause of youth criminality, Hall suggests that youth are a stratum psychologically different to adults. The Supreme Court’s opinion in the court cases of Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012) echo Hall’s assertions in 1904 that youth lack the same self-control and decision-making skills that adults possess. Even before advanced scientific methods proved that youth’s brains were chemically and structurally different to mature adults Hall recognized and propagated the idea of youth needing to be treated differently to adult criminals by society (and in turn law) due to biological differences.

Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. New York: D. Appleton, 1904. Print.

Christianson, Scott. Bad Seed or Bad Science?. New York Times, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/arts/bad-seed-or-bad-science.html

Adolescents = Natural born criminals?

Stanley Hall’s describes the ways he perceives youth to be at risk of falling prey to criminality as well as some of the traits of different types of youth and possible solutions to youth criminality from a “youth-as-an-object-of-study-and-savior” and “youth-as-a dangerous-class” lens.

He sets the stage by describing the context of the environment American youth are raised in today. America’s lack of a “youth” period as a country as well as the influence of urban culture and poverty partly responsible for the way that youth are developing in addition to their biological nature.

Learning to harness self-control is one of the most important and difficult endeavors children have to face as they become adolescent. This is an example of youth as having diminished capacity. Only once they have control over it are they perceived as mature and part of the adult world. This inability for self-control is precisely the characteristic that puts youth at higher risk of criminality than adults and why so many do become are criminals.

Both normal and degenerate youth face this issue although degenerate youth come with a whole other set of complicated attributes. According to Demoor: “The degenerate condition is not attained by simply going backward down the line of ascent, but is a new departure, and retrogression is therefore a somewhat misleading term.” Due to this “evolution” they tend to have physical abnormalities such as body parts too big or too body small in comparison to the entire body, atypical muscle or nerve development and furthermore have paranoid, anxious, and obsessive, and highly sexual behaviors. Clouston goes as far as saying that facial asymmetry may be associated with signs of immorality. Interestingly, their heightened interest in poetry and art is perceived as an aspect of their degenerative condition unlike Rousseau’s outlook that embellished this aspect of youth.

Hall offers interesting solutions to the problem of youth criminality, which propose to find new ways to “harness” the skills and energy of criminal youth for something more productive and positive for our society - Using youth’s vitality and growth for reform. This viewpoint offers a way to work with what he perceives as innate traits of youth to benefit society. Rather than trying to change their biological functions, find ways to use them for moral causes.  This reminds me of the use of youth’s energy for the state’s interest in the early 1900’s.

There is a consistent tone of “youth-as-object-of-study-and-saving” and a flavor of “youth-as-dangerous-class” throughout his text from description of the youth to solutions to reduce criminality. Though the words “super predators” were not used to describe youth I felt that the article made them out to be that. Youth are perceived as dangerous and lacking self-control that may cause harm (most likely property at first and quickly moving on to persons) simply because of their age, regardless of whether or not they have actually committed a crime. And continuing to use an adult centered perspective, the belief that society’s guidance and punishment is the only way to transform their criminal nature. 

Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. New York: D. Appleton, 1904. Print.

Adolescence and Crime

Stanley Hall approaches the crimes of adolescence from a physiological standpoint in order to investigate the hypothetical correlation of criminal behavior to young age.  The early parts of Hall’s chapter provide statistics demonstrating frequencies in which crime occurs across various age groups in various countries. Certain crimes tend to show up in certain age groups, such as “Crimes against property” appearing from ages 12 to 20 and “crimes against persons” appearing from ages 21 to 25. Hall also examines environmental factors as a potential cause for criminality such as the transitions to urban and industrial lifestyle, and the effects of poverty on the tendency of crime.

Much of Hall’s reasoning that is provided for adolescence criminal behavior points to biological and natural causes, such as certain traits indicating the likeliness that criminal behavior will occur (Lack of pity, smaller brains, larger jaws, etc) as well as the idea that these processes are triggered biologically and are natural. This gives the idea that the trait of criminality may be detectable and correlates to the application of social sciences to society to promote social welfare, which we spoke of in section and lecture as the dominant ideal in the era of “Youth-as-objects-of-saving-and-study”.

Another important point made by Hall is the influence of peer groups and rivalry.  This concept relates the actions of youth to those of their peers as a source of motivation for action such as envy or jealously. Hall attributes reactions of rage among males and underhanded tactics among females to be common ways of reacting to a stressful situation, which ultimately leads to the assumption that adolescents are simply morally undeveloped and can be helped to develop in the correct way (youth-as-dependents).  To this light, Hall compares criminals to overgrown children due to being “egotistic, foppish, impulsive, gluttonous, and blind to the rights of others.” This relates back to the earlier point of crimes showing up in certain age groups, as one becomes more “Morally developed” and older, crimes shift from against “property” to against “persons”.

The idea of youth criminality as a biological phenomenon fits well with the dominant ideal of “Youth-as-dependent” of Hall’s time and nicely works towards the transition or shift to “Youth-as-objects-of-saving-and-study” that arises as social sciences advancements are made and looked upon as vessels of social welfare. One can assume that by studying what makes criminals, future criminals can be prevented or at least reduced.

Striking points made by Stanley Hall

Stanley Hall brings up interesting points about crime in youth in his attempt at understanding and explaining the phenomena. I want to share some of the points that hit home with me, and hopefully these ideas will hit home with you as well.

In the preface, Hall brings up the fact that America is a young country; he was not exaggerating when he said American literature, etiquette, fashion and taste, institutions, system of justice, and even our way of believing in God were in a sense “copy-and-pasted” from distinguished nations like Holland, Rome, England, and Palestine. Essentially, if America were a tree, its roots would be thin and brittle, without history or precedence to claim as its own. It is in this background that youths are expected to mature; so according to Hall, it was no wonder that they matured in leaps. In their exposure to modern society with all its “material civilizations”, American youths have found school, and even church a source of shortcomings in accommodating their period of “stress and storm.” The educational system failed to acknowledge the value of romance, activity, and freedom and instead pushed for tedious studying of theories and other things children could not care less about; and the church seemed brimming with hypocrisy and ignorance, making sure their charities and missions were in fruition while slums in close proximity abounded. Hall makes his point by saying that youth had to face these challenges amidst their adolescent struggles.  

After his thorough account of the situation that serves as the background for criminal youths, Hall goes into characterizing them in many different ways, in which I will discuss the physical characteristic. The physical attributes were tightly intervened with environment, for Hall could not dare say that criminal intents were due to physical attributes alone. He observed (which still applies today) that certain physical features and poverty (environment) together made a criminal. Some of the features include lighter weight, small heads, defects of sight and hearing, and parts of the body not in proportion to the rest. I think this might be the result of malnutrition in the child’s development.

Another aspect he introduced was that the physical attributes of youths are one of the things that hampered more serious crimes, such as a brutal murder, from happening. While such a feat might be possible for a grown man, a child who lack in physical strength would not be able to accomplish the task. So here we have two different points: one might go as far as to help us identify future criminals by listing out the common physical traits, while the other implies that youth are less dangerous because of those physical traits.

Throughout it all, he seems to state that the essence of criminality is animal, savage, unimpressed by “social norms”—and childish. Actually, he explicitly states this when he says, “Criminals are much like overgrown children—egoistic, impulsive, gluttonous, blind to the rights of others, and our passions tend to bring us to childish stages.” This means that children are closest to our violent, criminal nature, which is strikingly opposite to the theory Rousseau had. While Rousseau claimed children were purest before being corrupted by society, Hall seems to emphasize the importance of society’s role in disciplining them and teaching them self-control. However, this also is ironic because Hall opens up his book by pointing out the inherent weakness in American society, unstable and without thick roots. So I hope you understand that there were many points that I found both striking and ironic.

Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. New York: D. Appleton, 1904. Print.