Saving Black boys through Policy
Policy briefs are how we move from survival to structural change. As a nonprofit, we don’t just serve—we intervene at the root. These briefs let us speak policy in the language of data, history, and harm. They’re our way of legislating the truth.
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Joint Venture Reform in Massachusetts
A Developmental Justice Policy Brief
Prepared by: J.L. Smith Suicide Prevention Center for Young Black Boys Inc.
Date: July 2025
Executive Summary
This policy brief calls for urgent reform of Massachusetts’ Joint Venture doctrine as it applies to youth firearm cases, especially those involving Black boys. Under current law, prosecutors in the Commonwealth can charge minors with the same crimes as a primary perpetrator—up to and including first-degree murder—based solely on proximity, perceived affiliation, or passive presence. In practice, this allows the state to equate association with intent, criminalizing a child’s environment more than their actual behavior.
Data from the Massachusetts Trial Court (2022) reveals that Black youth make up just over 8% of the state’s adolescent population but represent 32% of youth firearm indictments. In Suffolk County, more than 70% of joint venture charges involving firearms are brought against youth of color, many of whom were not armed, did not fire a weapon, and were often unaware a violent act would occur. Prosecutors are invoking a doctrine rooted in adult accountability against children whose brains—and lives—are still under construction. ¹
Developmental science invalidates this approach. Decades of research from Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child and the National Institutes of Mental Health confirm that the amygdala, which governs emotional responses like fear, anger, and impulsivity, is not fully developed in adolescents. Neither is the prefrontal cortex, responsible for judgment, moral reasoning, and forethought. ² Black boys growing up without consistent paternal figures—due to incarceration, systemic neglect, homicide, or forced separation—face additional barriers to emotional regulation and identity formation. These boys are raised inside stress-saturated environments where trauma becomes normalized, and executive function is compromised. In essence, we are punishing Black boys for not having what the system itself stripped away.
This is where the Suicide by System framework becomes essential. Developed by John Smith-St. Cyere, founder of the J.L. Smith Suicide Prevention Center for Young Black Boys Inc., Suicide by System is a theoretical model that examines how structural conditions—over-policing, underfunded schools, intergenerational incarceration, paternal erasure, and judicial overreach—create a pipeline where Black boys are not simply criminalized but biologically and socially conditioned toward early death. The application of joint venture charges in these contexts is not a legal technicality, it is a public health crisis masquerading as justice.
Our nonprofit has launched a two-year pilot rooted in this theory, targeting systemic risk factors beginning in the womb, when cortisol, inflammation, and absence start encodingvulnerability. That same framework extends into adolescence, where proximity-based prosecution becomes a legal mechanism accelerating early mortality. In many of these cases, a boy is being sentenced not just for being present at the scene—but for being born into conditions that the law refuses to acknowledge.
This brief proposes statutory guardrails and policy interventions grounded in neuroscience, racial justice, and developmental accountability. We must stop criminalizing Black boyhood by association. We must end punishment for proximity. And we must build a system that sees these boys not as accomplices—but as children navigating abandonment engineered by the state.
Legal Framework
Massachusetts General Law does not differentiate between adult and youth culpability when applying joint venture and aiding and abetting statutes. This blanket application allows the Commonwealth to hold children legally accountable for crimes they did not commit, based solely on their presence or association with individuals who did.
In practice, prosecutors do not need to prove that a young person physically committed an act of violence—only that they were “present and willing.” ³ This opens the door to vague and speculative reasoning where passive presence, social affiliation, or community proximity become enough to construct intent. Without mandatory developmental review or age-specific thresholds, the law is weaponized against youth from high-surveillance, over-criminalized neighborhoods—disproportionately Black and Latino.
Furthermore, the absence of statutory protection for minors ignores fundamental neuroscience. Adolescents do not have the same cognitive or emotional capacity to weigh consequences, resist peer pressure, or foresee outcomes. This is not just theory, it is legal fact in many states that now differentiate juvenile from adult intent standards. ⁴
Massachusetts, however, has not implemented any binding requirements for courts to integrate neuroscience into charging decisions involving youth in joint venture cases. This gap enables prosecutors to apply adult-level consequences to biologically immature children, punishing proximity as participation. Black boys are especially vulnerable due to layers of systemic exposure: they are more likely to have an incarcerated or deceased father, more likely to be placed in under-resourced schools, and more likely to be living in high-trauma environments. Each of these factors contributes to emotional dysregulation and increases the chance that a young person will be physically present when a violent act occurs, without necessarily understanding or endorsing it.
In short, the legal framework as it stands does not recognize the intersection of biology, environment, and structural harm. It reduces complex trauma to criminal complicity—and that is legally and morally indefensible.
Suicide by System
The Suicide by System framework names what traditional policy fails to confront: Black boys are dying not just by gunfire, but by legislative neglect. Their nervous systems are taxed before birth by maternal stress and inflammation. Their childhoods are shaped by loss, criminalization, and surveillance. Their adolescence is governed by legal frameworks designed to punish them before they ever had the tools to self-regulate.
When a 15-year-old Black boy—fatherless, hyper-surveilled, unarmed—is charged with first-degree murder because he stood on the same street corner as the shooter, the system is not protecting the public. It is confirming his disposability. This is not a metaphor. This is policy-assisted extinction. The amygdala, which governs fear and impulse, is still developing. The prefrontal cortex, which manages judgment, is incomplete. The boy is still becoming. But the law is already finished with him.
Suicide by System model identifies this process as a form of institutionalized euthanasia—where society no longer invests in keeping a child alive, whole, or free. Instead, it accelerates death across dimensions: social, spiritual, legal, and physical. Joint venture prosecutions are one such accelerant.
To reverse this, we must redesign our legal systems around preservation, not punishment. Around context, not convenience. Around science, not stigma. Black boys are not ticking time bombs—they are abandoned blueprints. And our laws should not be designed to bury what we refuse to build.
Policy Recommendations with Roadmap
1. Statutory Prohibition of Joint Venture Charges for Youth Underage 21
– Amend state law to prohibit JV charges for youth under 21 unless affirmative evidence of premeditated intent exists
– Require pretrial hearings with developmental review
– Rationale: Brain regions for foresight and impulse control mature after age 21
2. Presumption Against Joint Venture Liability in Firearm Cases
– Create legal presumption of non-liability unless direct participation is proven
– Judges must provide written rationale when presumption is overridden
– Rationale: Presence alone cannot substitute for intent
3. Mandatory Developmental Science Review Prior to Charging
– Require clinical review before JV charges are filed against minors
– Review must assess neurological, emotional, and trauma-related factors
– Rationale: Align charges with individual developmental capacity. Trauma-Informed Diversion Infrastructure
– Fund culturally competent diversion programs in impacted communities
– Mandate access for youth charged under proximity-based indictments
– Rationale: Diversion reduces recidivism and racial disparities
5. Public Data Transparency by County
– Require DAs to release annual JV case data by race, age, and outcome
– Noncompliance results in funding penalties
– Rationale: Data transparency enables oversight and reform
6. Bar JV Enhancements When Youth Were Unarmed and Did Not Flee
– Codify exclusions when a youth was unarmed and remained at the scene
– Defense can file for dismissal of enhancement based on criteria
– Rationale: Non-flight and non-arming indicate confusion, not complicity
Conclusion
Massachusetts cannot simultaneously promote equity and prosecute children with doctrines that disregard developmental science, community context, and racial disproportionality. The joint venture law, as currently applied, functions not as a mechanism for justice—but as an instrument of structural abandonment. When we apply adult logic to adolescent behavior, we ignore everything neuroscience has taught us about brain development. We ignore the fact that judgment and foresight are among the last faculties to mature. We ignore that proximity is not proof. And most damning of all—we ignore that these boys are not just defendants in a courtroom, but survivors of a system that failed them long before any crime occurred.
To criminalize presence is to criminalize poverty. To assign intent by association is to declare war on community. To charge a boy as a man is to declare him unworthy of becoming one. This is not just overreach—it is annihilation masked as legality.
This brief does not ask for leniency. It demands alignment with truth. It demands that our legal code reflects the science we already know and the children we claim to serve. A society that understands trauma, biology, and justice cannot continue to treat childhood proximity like adult participation. We do not protect communities by prosecuting their children to extinction. We protect them by building systems that see the full child, the full context, and the full possibility of transformation.