One chapter explores the logic for a proportionately different legal response to youths' transgressions than that provided to adults. The historical legal notion of culpability is discussed, and the chapter introduces the social and psychological rationale for a system of justice that recognizes youths' reduced culpability as a matter of law and policy. This logic is continued in another chapter, which more closely examines the developmental and psychological characteristics of adolescence that can inform policy regarding reduced culpability when adolescents are accused of offenses. A third chapter examines relevant research and describes additional research that will be needed to provide a solid foundation for society's decisions concerning whether to punish youths in a manner that presumes their culpability to be adultlike. The remaining two chapters in this section consider issues of culpability from specific theoretical perspectives derived from developmental psychology, social psychology, and sociology. Taken together, all of the chapters in this section explore the developmental and social psychological foundation upon which a legal policy of reduced culpability could be based, and they identify what more must be known in order to complete this foundation.