Child Evidence
All claims

adolescent personality development / desistance

Adolescent personality and character are still forming and are not reliable indicators of fixed adult character; most adolescents who engage in antisocial behavior, including serious offending, desist as they mature, so adolescent conduct is a poor predictor of irretrievable depravity.

Evidence strength: HighScientific consensus: Established

Bottom line

There is broad agreement that most adolescents, even serious offenders, desist as they mature, and that adolescent character is not yet settled. The unresolved problem is prediction — science cannot reliably tell in advance which individual belongs to the small persistent subgroup.

What this claim does not say

  • Does not claim every adolescent offender will desist, or that any individual is guaranteed to change.
  • Does not claim adolescents bear no responsibility because their character is unformed.
  • Does not claim science can predict, for a particular adolescent, whether they will reoffend or reform.
  • Does not deny that a small subgroup shows persistent antisocial behavior across the life course.
  • Does not claim malleability means treatment always succeeds, or that risk is zero.

Scope — where it holds

A developmental generalization grounded in longitudinal desistance research. It holds most strongly for the typical (adolescence-limited) pattern of offending, which is far more common than the persistent pattern; a small subgroup shows continuity into adulthood. Predictions are probabilistic at the group level and cannot identify which individual will desist or persist.

Export cited PDFLast reviewed June 18, 2026

Full dossier

Following more than a thousand serious adolescent offenders for years after court involvement, most reduced their offending substantially, with only a small "persister" group continuing — and persistence tracked deficits in psychosocial maturity rather than a fixed criminal character. This fits the long-standing taxonomy distinguishing common, adolescence-limited offending from rare, life-course-persistent offending. The legal upshot, adopted in Roper, Graham, and Miller, is that a juvenile's crime is less likely than an adult's to reflect irretrievable depravity, which bears on both culpability and the constitutionality of the harshest, permanent sentences.

Seminal

  • Monahan, K. C., Steinberg, L., Cauffman, E., & Mulvey, E. P (2009). Trajectories of antisocial behavior and psychosocial maturity from adolescence to young adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 45(6), 1654-1668.

    Longitudinal · adolescence to young adulthood

    Youth whose antisocial behavior persists into adulthood show lower and arrested development of psychosocial maturity, indicating that persistent offending reflects maturational deficits rather than fixed character.

    Bearing on this claim: Longitudinal: persistent offending tracks arrested psychosocial maturation, not fixed character.

    doi.org/10.1037/a0015862

Supporting

  • Mulvey, E. P., Steinberg, L., Piquero, A. R., Besana, M., Fagan, J., Schubert, C., & Cauffman, E (2010). Trajectories of desistance and continuity in antisocial behavior following court adjudication among serious adolescent offenders. Development and Psychopathology, 22(2), 453-475.

    Longitudinal · N = 1,119 · serious adolescent offenders

    Following 1,119 serious adolescent offenders, growth-mixture models identified five trajectories; only a small persister group (~8.7%) continued offending, while most reduced antisocial behavior over time.

    Bearing on this claim: 1,119 serious offenders followed; most desist, only a small persister group continues.

    doi.org/10.1017/S0954579410000179

  • Moffitt, T. E (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Psychological Review, 100(4), 674-701.

    Review

    Proposes that delinquency comprises a small life-course-persistent group antisocial at every stage and a much larger adolescence-limited group antisocial only during adolescence, accounting for the ~10-fold adolescent rise in prevalence.

    Bearing on this claim: Dual-taxonomy framework: most adolescent offending is adolescence-limited and transient.

    doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.4.674

Relied on by

  • Roper v. Simmons — 543 U.S. 551 (2005)

    Roper v. Simmons (2005): "the character of a juvenile is not as well formed as that of an adult. The personality traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed."

  • Graham v. Florida — 560 U.S. 48 (2010)

    Graham v. Florida (2010): a life-without-parole sentence "cannot be justified by the goal of rehabilitation" and is "not appropriate in light of a juvenile nonhomicide offender's capacity for change and limited moral culpability."

  • Miller v. Alabama — 567 U.S. 460 (2012)

    Miller v. Alabama (2012): given "children's diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change... appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon."

  • Montgomery v. Louisiana — 577 U.S. 190 (2016)

    Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016): Miller "rendered life without parole an unconstitutional penalty for a class of defendants because of their status -- juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect the transient immaturity of youth," as opposed to "the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption."

Limited by

  • Jones v. Mississippi — 593 U.S. 98 (2021)

    Jones v. Mississippi (2021): though the science of capacity for change underlies Miller, the Eighth Amendment does not require a separate finding of permanent incorrigibility -- a discretionary sentence that can weigh youth suffices. Narrows the procedural force of the claim without disturbing Miller or Montgomery.