“Kids are Kids”: Benevolent Ignorance and the Omission of Race in Developmental Justice Reform

Abstract

The criminal culpability of juvenile offenders remains a controversial and contested issue in the legal and public arenas in the United States. Since the mid-2000s, juvenile crime has been reframed by SCOTUS as a problem of brain immaturity. This article interrogates the omission of race from this new discourse of immaturity. First, I show that an alliance of learned societies, scholars, policy experts, legal professionals, and philanthropic foundations, which I call the new child savers, strategically sowed doubt about the criminological evidence of “high-risk” offenders to ensure the success of this new discourse of immaturity. I introduce the concept of benevolent ignorance to explain how they strategically concealed this inconvenient knowledge to achieve the socially valued goal of “saving children” from harsh sentences, and to escape public controversies over the racial overtones of risk assessment tools. Second, using Mills’ s concept of white ignorance, I argue that progressive elites and scholars involved in juvenile justice reform have historically ignored the lived experiences of juveniles of color. Finally, I discuss how the discourse of brain immaturity perpetuates and reinforces a colorblind explanation of juvenile crime that ignores the role of race in young people's encounters with the justice system.