Crime and Responsibility

[Stonehead]

Whaddya conservatives think of this?

 

“To a neuroscientist, you are your brain; nothing causes your behavior other than the operations of your brain,” Greene says. “If that’s right, it radically changes the way we think about the law. The official line in the law is all that matters is whether you’re rational, but you can have someone who is totally rational but whose strings are being pulled by something beyond his control.” In other words, even someone who has the illusion of making a free and rational choice between soup and salad may be deluding himself, since the choice of salad over soup is ultimately predestined by forces hard-wired in his brain. Greene insists that this insight means that the criminal-justice system should abandon the idea of retribution — the idea that bad people should be punished because they have freely chosen to act immorally — which has been the focus of American criminal law since the 1970s, when rehabilitation went out of fashion. Instead, Greene says, the law should focus on deterring future harms. In some cases, he supposes, this might mean lighter punishments. “If it’s really true that we don’t get any prevention bang from our punishment buck when we punish that person, then it’s not worth punishing that person,” he says.

 

THe Brain on the Stand--New York Times

[billcoe]

Whaddya conservatives think of this?

 

the law should focus on deterring future harms

 

When has this not been the case?

[high_on_rock]

They have been making great strides in the past few years in brain reasearch that I think will create some great evidence against our current criminal law system. I think we all pretty much agree that the way we do it now does not "work" well, the new research could help explain why it does not work and possibly provide better options.

 

Let's change the question a little, should we punish the action or punish the result? If I am driving blind drunk, should I be punished the same whether or not fate has me hurting someone else?

[Stonehead]

Whaddya conservatives think of this?

 

the law should focus on deterring future harms

 

When has this not been the case?

 

In contrast to...

 

Well, for instance, marijuana possession in some cases. Seems that the focus is on punishment or retribution for flouting the law. But I could be all wet.

 

 

[Stonehead]

 

Let's change the question a little, should we punish the action or punish the result? If I am driving blind drunk, should I be punished the same whether or not fate has me hurting someone else?

 

I don't know if this speaks to your question but it seems that there's a difference in how we decide to mete out punishment based on criteria specific to the individual.

 

“You were a researcher’s dream come true!” Buckholtz tapped the keyboard, and a high-resolution 3-D image of my brain appeared on the screen in vivid colors. Tiny dots flickered back and forth, showing my eyes moving as they read the lurid criminal scenarios. Although I was only the fifth subject to be put in the scanner, Marois emphasized that my punishment ratings were higher than average. In one case, I assigned a 7 where the average punishment was 4. “You were focusing on the intent, and the others focused on the harm,” Buckholtz said reassuringly.

 

 

[ashw_justin]

Better think a little harder before you deem criminals irresponsible for their actions, because in doing so you dehumanize them. He who has no control over his actions is a liability to society...

 

If you posit that a wrongdoer has no control over their actions, then you must also conclude that they are unredeemable--incapable of making rational choices not to do wrong. This makes them analogous to a dog who has tasted blood. Do they go easy on a dog who has attacked someone? Take it down to the park to play with some kids so that it feels better? No. They euthanize it before it attacks someone else.

 

Are you a human being capable of self-control, or merely a vicious animal acting on violent instincts? If the former, let's talk, if the latter, well we've all seen Old Yeller.

[Stonehead]

Better think a little harder before you deem criminals irresponsible for their actions, because in doing so you dehumanize them. He who has no control over his actions is a liability to society...

 

I don't know how many times I've seen issues on this board narrowed down to a simple dichotomy. Sure it's easier to talk about but it leads to entrenchment. Seems the credo here is: Never give an inch.

 

Anyway, I think the article refers to uses of technology that should lead to refinements in crime investigations, criminal justice, etc. It lends a more discerning eye to what's going on around us.

[selkirk]

I don't think the article was implying that criminal behaviour was irredemable or unchangeable, just that in the short term we are a slave to our brains patterns. It doesn't say that over time those patterns can't change with the proper stimulus and application of effort. Isn't that what biofeedback does?

 

The indication I see is that the focus should shift from pure retribution to rehabilitation, which I think would be a better policy anyway. Some people may be truly incurable in which case they should still be locked up where they can't harm anyone. Those who have the ability to change their behavior or even to learn to control what situations they end up in, if they can't control they're responses, should be supported.

 

My wife works with criminals on a daily basis and what she's consistently seen is that to get someone to not re-offend they have to be given the chance, and allowed to develop things that they value enough that they want to hold onto them (posessions, friend, family).

 

 

[ashw_justin]

I'm focusing on this:

 

even someone who has the illusion of making a free and rational choice between soup and salad may be deluding himself, since the choice of salad over soup is ultimately predestined by forces hard-wired in his brain.

 

Come. On. We're using this argument in the context of all crimes, including violent ones?

 

Again, rabid dog vs. human being. You're saying that not only can someone be an instinctual killer absent of choice in the matter, but we should also forgive them for it with lightened penalties?

[Stonehead]

I'm focusing on this:

 

even someone who has the illusion of making a free and rational choice between soup and salad may be deluding himself, since the choice of salad over soup is ultimately predestined by forces hard-wired in his brain.

 

Come. On. We're using this argument in the context of all crimes, including violent ones?

 

Again, rabid dog vs. human being. You're saying that not only can someone be an instinctual killer absent of choice in the matter, but we should also forgive them for it with lightened penalties?

 

Culpability in crime is only one area that the technology touches on.

 

But I think the soup/salad thing is more applicable to such issues discussed in the article such as jury selection and unconscious bias.

Edited March 15, 2007 by Stonehead

[ashw_justin]

Dude. I am not arguing against your social/political beliefs on the justice system. I am arguing that the quote at the top of this thread presents a ridiculous argument: that people are not responsible for their actions. I am arguing that the pop-culture pseudoscience espoused by this quack has no place in an argument over criminal justice.

[Stonehead]

Dude. I am not arguing against your social/political beliefs on the justice system. I am arguing that the quote at the top of this thread presents a ridiculous argument: that people are not responsible for their actions. I am arguing that the pop-culture pseudoscience espoused by this quack has no place in an argument over criminal justice.

 

The way I see it, it's just dialogue. But yeah, he starts out by saying: "to a neuroscientist...". I think it was Steven Picker ( Brain Cells Fire in Patterns) who when asked to describe the workings of the brain in five words or less said, "Brain cells fire in patterns." So yeah, if we took it to that ridiculously reductionist extreme, then the culpable individual no longer exists, only patterns exist. Admittedly, there's a lot of abstract notions being brought up, things such as free will for instance.

 

Personally, I'm a believer in bringing complicated issues into simpler formats. Sure there's something lost in the translation. Hardly anyone here faults Al Gore for doing that with global warming. It just seems the important thing is dialogue. Is this pop culture pseudoscience?

[archenemy]

I agree with you about simplifying concepts so that they become accessible to us all.

 

Patterns would not automatically exclude someone from culpability, would it? I mean, we aren't born with patterns that cause us to steal or hurt others--those are patterns we learn through repetition, right? (Again, very basic for the non-nuerowhatever person).

[ashw_justin]

to get someone to not re-offend they have to be given the chance, and allowed to develop things that they value enough that they want to hold onto them (posessions, friend, family).

 

That's a great point (I hope I didn't come off sounding like I'm in complete disagreement). Surely ruining someone's life isn't going to help them become a civil human being. It's sad that we think we can just toss people in prison and forget about them, much in the way that we think that we can make our garbage just disappear (I'm not saying that people are garbage, just talking about the psychology of the discarder).

 

I just think it's a huge mistake to portray people as not having control over themselves, or using some handwaving excuse for psychology to suggest that people are not accountable for their actions. It's precisely because people are accountable for their actions, that they have any hope of being civilized.

 

[Stonehead]

I just think it's a huge mistake to portray people as not having control over themselves, or using some handwaving excuse for psychology to suggest that people are not accountable for their actions. It's precisely because people are accountable for their actions, that they have any hope of being civilized.

 

The problem is that the recidivism rate is high so this says something about lack of control. Accountability that's another issue, as is punishment. It's just my unease with an one size fits all approach that seems to be the conservative's answer to many things.

 

Ok, this is different but it touches on behavioral choices and their outcome (matters under free will) but again I don't want to portray it as either-or. Obesity for instance. Some have argued that it's simply a matter of caloric reduction. Ok fine. I'm not trying to prove otherwise with the following two articles, just pointing out that it's not as simple as that.

 

Bugs and the Bulge--CBC Radio

Programmed For Obesity: Early Exposure To Common Chemicals Can Permanently Alter Metabolic System--ScienceDaily

Edited March 15, 2007 by Stonehead

[mattp]

Neuroscience aside, I'm not sure I'd argue that we should treat criminals as not being responsible for their actions. However, for thirty years I've frequently heard criminologists and police officials saying that increasing the severety of punishment doesn't produce much deterrent. In general, criminals don't think they are going to get caught or they just don't think about long term consequences.

 

[archenemy]

I have read that very same thing. I have come to look at long sentences as just a way to keep criminals away from the rest of us.

[Stonehead]

Such an understanding does not excuse immoral behavior, rather it makes us aware of how the to change those features of situations, like military prison environments, that can exerts such corrosive influences on even our best young soldiers who temporarily play various roles on those stages. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the “banality of evil”—that is, given certain conditions, ordinary people can succumb to social pressure to commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable. Just as Lucifer was transformed from God’s favorite angel into the devil, I argue that many good, ordinary people can also be seduced by situational forces to engage in evil deeds.

 

I also question how well any of us really knows what we are capable of doing in new situations where we might be given authority and control over others. We want to believe that we are good folks fully aware of the inner moral constraints on our behavior, and of course different from the bad folks on the other side of the line separating good and evil. But the dangerous thought to consider is that line being permeable, like cells of our body that allow movement of chemicals across their boundaries. Any thing that any human being has ever done, that is imaginable, becomes doable, by any of us in the same situation. It is a humbling corrective to our moral arrogance of assuming superiority without fully appreciating the situational forces that may have driven others just like us to become perpetrators of evil at that time in that place.

 

 

The Situationist

 

There is a dominant conception of the human animal as a rational, or at least reasonable, preference-driven chooser, whose behavior reflects preferences, moderated by information processing and will, but little else. Laws, policies, and the most influential legal theories are premised on that same conception. Social psychology and related fields have discovered countless ways in which that conception is wrong. “The situation” refers to causally significant features around us and within us that we do not notice or believe are irrelevant in explaining human behavior.

[joblo7]

bunching up 'criminals' into a single group will render this discussion pointless as usual.

 

a severely abused child or a pot smoking heir? kill or speed?steal or rape?

[archenemy]

The problem is that the recidivism rate is high so this says something about lack of control.

 

I think this is faulty reasoning. There are many hypotheses about recidivism rate causes, this control issue only being one of them.

[joblo7]

i break 'some' law several times a day.i speed , i spit on the sidewalk,....etc i'm a criminal ? the same behavior in peru would be unlegislated. . 'the' law? that is relative.

[joblo7]

asa society we have to look at ways to profit. jails are profitable. we just need more laws and more enforcement.especially in minorities-laden enclaves that could be better used by whites of better means.

[archenemy]

What are you talking about?

[joblo7]

it is illegal to say that a certain political leader should meet his demise at once. sue me. mf.

[joblo7]

What are you talking about?

 

THE LAW of course.......