Institutions crumble. Civilization implodes. Everything seems random and dangerous.
Yes, this sounds like the world in 2026, but we’re referring to “Starfleet Academy,” the latest series in the “Star Trek” franchise.
The show caught our interest because most characters are emerging adults (ages 18 to 25), the group that’s the focus of the Emerging Adult Justice Project. We might associate this age with college attendance. Starfleet Academy — located in San Francisco with extension programs throughout the cosmos — is an amalgam of the Ivies, West Point and Hogwarts. But on present-day Earth, emerging adults also disproportionately fill our prisons.
No need to wait centuries to find out why. Brain development continues into the mid-twenties, and emerging adults share many characteristics with younger youth. They are susceptible to peer influences, impulsive and lack the maturity to anticipate consequences — all factors that can get them in trouble with the law. But this stage also holds great promise.
In “Starfleet Academy,” emerging adults are becoming exactly what they are wired to be — explorers.
The Emerging Adult Justice Project worked with national experts to synthesize research and create an Emerging Adult Developmental Framework, with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, charting the needs of this age group. Meeting these needs increases the chances they will someday contribute to their communities.
Core needs include safety; belonging; a connection to identity; work on personal goals and values; skill development; and a sense of contribution — a belief that they can play a part in making the world better.
Courtesy of Lael E.H. Chester
Lael E.H. Chester
Prisons create barriers to these good things. Surviving in a violent setting becomes the focus, not belonging (except to a gang for survival). There are little to no opportunities to maintain or create healthy relationships, achieve an education, learn skills, pursue a career or become civically engaged (even voting is often prohibited).
In the series, the academy is reopened following “the Burn,” a disaster that wiped out populations, destroyed technology and unleashed violence never seen in the United Federation of Planets. The cadets are intelligent, eager and a hot mess, struggling with romances, career anxiety and cultural conflict in an intergalactic society. Starfleet Academy Chancellor Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) metes out a lot of discipline. But the punishments are developmentally appropriate and never freeze her cadets out of opportunities — as an adult conviction in our world can. Nahla knows her charges need to contribute. She puts it beautifully: “…tiny acts of service to your fellow cadets — a single stitch and another and another, until you have devoted yourself to something greater than you ever imagined, a tapestry that is Starfleet.”
Another classic Nahla quote: “These children have seen and experienced things far beyond their years.” Her protégé, Caleb, has survived the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as have many emerging adults incarcerated in our world. All the cadets have grown up in a time of uncertainty, danger and division — again, like our own emerging adults.
[Related: Why career readiness programs should treat teens as emerging adults]
We look forward to next season, where we expect to see the cadets make strides toward maturity and responsibility. Unfortunately, it’s been announced that next season will be the series’ last. Art imitates life. Our society tends not to stick with great ideas that benefit the next generation.
Courtesy of Colleen Shaddox
Colleen Shaddox
Politicians in the 1990s raised cries of “lock ‘em up and throw away the keys.” Reformers responded by applying a developmental lens to our juvenile or youth justice system. Courts and legislatures have increasingly protected people under 18 from brutalizing adult incarceration — and crime has dropped. Judges and legislators responded to research and applied similarly effective responses to young people older than 18. Today, promising practices in jurisdictions around the country foster emerging adults’ success.
But we see a recent relapse to failed policies. Louisiana and North Carolina are prosecuting more teens as adults. Last year President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the District of Columbia (though youth arrests had dropped by half in the past 15 years) and the U.S. House of Representatives advanced legislation that would see kids as young as 14 tried as adults in the District. Similar bad ideas are sprouting around the country.
So it’s not just “Starfleet Academy” that’s getting canceled — it’s reform itself.
Research proves that adolescents are likelier to turn away from lawbreaking when they experience rehabilitative, developmentally appropriate responses rather than bluntly punitive ones. Supporting maturation leads to desistance and therefore increased public safety. When times get tough, however, society rushes to a hardline approach that fails young people and, ultimately, everybody else.
Starfleet Academy trained the Federation’s war heroes. Nahla Ake aims higher. “I’m teaching you to end wars,” she tells her cadets.
If our society is to heal, our systems must prepare young people to be their best selves.
We know how to do that — and the time to do it is now.
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Lael Elizabeth Hiam Chester is an attorney who has spent her career working on youth justice reform. She has been director of the national Emerging Adult Justice Project for the last decade.
Colleen Shaddox is a writer, activist and Trekker who has supported various anti-poverty and youth justice reform campaigns. She is co-author of “Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty”.
