I agree that having more of a supervised learning period would be a good idea.
This is more of a stereotype than a universal constant, and you could just as easily say things like "younger people have faster reflexes and better eyesight" etc.
The question isn't whether some group in the aggregate has different statistical properties, it's whether we're willing to discriminate against an entire class of people, including the ones who aren't the cause of it, because of that statistical correlation.
Which is the same reason people saying things like "people over 65 should have their license taken away" are just as wrong.
It's a well-known fact.
You may also observe how prisons are full of young people. Brains that are still developing are far more likely to make really stupid decisions without regard for consequences.
If I were to pick qualities for a driver, and had to choose between 'Makes good decisions' versus 'Faster reflexes', I'd pick the former any day.
Note that we don't let 12 year-olds drive. We have arbitrary age cutoffs that have nothing to do with quantifiable capability.
It's a well-known fact that different people mature at different rates.
> You may also observe how prisons are full of young people.
The bulk of prison inmates are in their 30s and 40s:
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_age.j...
> Brains that are still developing are far more likely to make really stupid decisions without regard for consequences.
Then how come there are so many more 40 year olds in prison than 20 year olds?
> If I were to pick qualities for a driver, and had to choose between 'Makes good decisions' versus 'Faster reflexes', I'd pick the former any day.
But now we're back to experience, and you have to be allowed to do the thing before you can get that.
> Note that we don't let 12 year-olds drive. We have arbitrary age cutoffs that have nothing to do with quantifiable capability.
We do, but we shouldn't. If a 12-year-old can pass the driver's test then either that 12-year-old is competent to drive or your driver's test is inadequate in testing drivers.
You'd want to look at the age at which someone committed the crime for which they are imprisoned, not their current age, to assess the affect of age on crime-related statistics. Also, the juvenile justice system typically lets people out at 18 or 20, unless they were charged as an adult. So you don't have the same buildup of late teenagers being imprisoned at 20 as you do for people who are older.
It is factually the case that brain development continues until around age 25. The impulsive areas of the brain develop/myelinate earlier than than the prefrontal cortex, for example, which exercises executive function and impulse control.
No, its factually the case that brain development continues for most of life, with different capacities peaking at wildly different ages on average (with some peaking after others have gone into significant decline), and considerable variation between individuals in each capacity, with executive function, specifically, reaching a plateau starting around the mid-20s on average (but again with considerable variation among individuals.)
Because age demographics of prison are very distant from age demographics of people committing crimes at the time they commit them for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that imprisonment happens after conviction which happens after the crime. But also because of both discretionary leniency to first time offenders (which younger criminals are more likely to be) and younger criminals even apart from whether they are first time offenders, and because of formal enhancements to punishment for repeat offenders, which combined mean that, for otherwise similar immediate predicate offenses, older criminals are more likely to be imprisoned at all and likely to be imprisoned longer.