About Neurocriminology

Abstract:

Article indicates that violent offenders often exhibit reduced prefrontal glucose metabolism, diminished amygdala activity, and altered cerebral blood flow, alongside hormonal imbalances such as elevated testosterone and cortisol levels, contributing to aggressive behavior. While no specific neurocriminology laws exist, frameworks like Chile’s neural law amendment, U.S. neural data privacy laws, and India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, provide tangential regulation. Cases like People v. Weinstein and People v. Donta Page highlight judicial recognition of neuroscientific evidence in mitigating sentences. However, preventive approaches targeting potential offenders through brain scans raise ethical concerns, potentially violating rights by preempting criminal acts.

Neurocriminology merges medical and legal disciplines, aiming for advancements in MRI and EEG technologies to distinguish criminal brain patterns, with scholars like Adrian Raine advocating for predictive interventions. This field offers significant potential for crime prevention but requires careful navigation of legal and ethical challenges.

Introduction:

Violation to any existing law by any act or omission is a crime, but mere violation does not cause any act to fall into category of crime but there are certain prerequisites which are to be satisfied for an act to be a crime and one of them is “mens rea”. Mens rea had evolved through a Latin maxim ‘Actus non facit Reum nisi mens sit rea’ which means an act alone does not make one guilty of any offence until followed by guilty mind.

Guilty mind is very much appreciated for an offence, in absence to which such act will not be considered crime.

Neurocriminology is subset of the criminal biology in which the study and analysis of human brain is conducted to understand the root cause of crime and aims to prevent the crime. There are various process followed in nuerocriminology like brain imaging technique and principles from neuroscience to deeply understand and analyze the human brain to understand the reason why one commits a crime and what is the status of brain of an offender and compare it with normal humans, and to prevent the happening of crime by early recognition of ‘to be offender.’

Legal Backing:

There are no specific laws for neurocriminology as this subset has not yet been successful and fully operational, merely studies are being conducted and not, yet it's been purely proved to be the part of criminology. One another cause of why it has not been codified as a law is that this thing defies the principle of criminology as there is nowhere any law or principle governing in criminology or anywhere on earth which punishes someone before doing of any act but this field of study aims to prevent the crime before even happening and such prevention may cause someone to be victim of their violation of their right. Yet not any hard to bleed measures for the prevention of crime through criminology has been provided by scholars of this field like Adrian Raine, James Blair etc.

But there are several laws in various countries like Chille's constitutional amendment on neural law, US’s state level neural data privacy laws and India's mental healthcare act 2017, which indirectly deals with brain and its related practices.

Studies and results:

There are various studies conducted in the various parts of USA shows how brain functions differently in criminals and other persons. The study provides that when certain part of brain like prefrontal cortex or medulla is altered from its original position then it causes certain change in human behavior. Neuro physiological studies showed that brains of criminals & psychopaths are not only different from normal brain structurally but also operate in different ways.

Studies showed that in violent criminals there is a notable reduction in glucose in prefrontal metabolism which means that the less amount of glucose reaches in the metabolism system of prefrontal cortex in most violent criminals. 'amygdala’ a part of brain responsible for emotion and personal moral decision making is found to be less active in most anti-social criminals

Further studies done showed that less amount of blood flow in the cerebral cortex of brain increased violent and impulsive behavior. 2022 studies showed that the level of hormone in a body also affects the possibility of happening of a crime, example given a man with high testosterone and cortisol level gets violent sooner than a person with less level of these hormones.

Case laws:

People v. Weinstein -

In this case 65-year-old person with no criminal record had thrown her wife out of window from 12th floor. The defense scanned his brain and found that a large portion of prefrontal cortex was missing which led him to behave his emotions uncontrollably. The court accepted the the pleading and sentenced him for 7 years only for the crime which he would have been punished for at least 20 years.

People v. Donta Page -

In this case Page robbed raped and killed a female student, of which, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced death penalty. Dr, Raine was expert witness of the case and when he scanned the brain of Page he found and showed to court that there was a lack of activation in the ventral prefrontal cortex in the brain of Page to which the court accepted as biological reason behind such act and behaviors and ordered to revoke his death penalty.

Conclusion:

Among various theories criminology neuro criminology is one of them which mainly focus on the fact that any offence done is caused but the brain it's the brain disfunction that causes one to commit a crime such as increased size of prefrontal cortex or reduced level of glucose in prefrontal metabolism or increased level of testosterone and cortisol. This field aims to achieve such advancement in techniques like MRI, EEG and brain imaging technique that the clear distinction in the brain of criminal and normal be acquired, in terms of Dr. Raine there will be a time when there would be brain scan of every 18 years old and the person likely to cause offence in future be deviated from mainstream society and thus prevent the crime. This field of criminology is the mixture of medical and law subjects and requires highly accuracy in distinction of physiology of criminals from society at large.

FAQs

1. What is Neuro criminology?

It is subject of bio criminology which specifically deal with causes of crime evolved in the brain. This can be considered as theory of law which says that the offence done by a person is because of, mutation in the brain.

2. Why is it different from Bio Criminology?

The bio criminology can be understood to be the genus and the neuro criminology as the species. Bio criminology is of broader scope as it deals biological physiological and genetic factors but the neuro criminology deals only with brain related factors.

References-

- Neurocriminology, available at Neurocriminology - Wikipedia

- Ayoubchhaba ,Neurocriminology; understanding the brain’s role in criminal behavior, available at Neurocriminology: Understanding the Brain’s Role in Criminal Behavior - CrimPsy

- Olivia Dahl, Neurocriminology; the disease Behind the crime, available at neurocriminology in criminology - Search

- Jeffrey Rosen, the brain on the stand, available at Neuroscience - Law - The Brain on the Stand - Jeffrey Rosen - The New York Times

- Adriane Raine, the criminal mind, available at Neurocriminology: Inside the Criminal Mind - WSJ