The biology of evil

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This article was published 05/12/2011 (5114 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Impulsive, manipulative and lacking remorse, criminal psychopaths typically face longer and harsher sentences in the justice system.

But a growing body of research shows their aberrant behaviour may be linked to faulty wiring in the brain, challenging the assumption that psychopaths are intrinsically evil and raising questions about how they should be dealt with when they break the law.

Should criminal psychopaths — who make up 15 to 25 per cent of the prison population, according to estimates — be held accountable to the same degree as offenders who don’t have the same brain abnormalities? Are they victims of their biology?

The debate is roiling across the fields of criminology, law, philosophy and neuroscience.

“I don’t think there is a consensus. I think that there is a lot of confusion,” said Heidi Maibom, an associate professor of philosophy at Carleton University.

A study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and published this month in the Journal of Neuroscience is likely to add fuel to the debate.

The researchers scanned the brains of inmates from a local prison, focusing on two key areas: the almond-shaped amygdala, which helps to detect fear and mediate anxiety, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for more complex social emotions such as guilt, empathy and regret.

One set of data showed the white fibres connecting these two areas of the brain were weaker in the brains of psychopaths compared to other offenders. Another set of data showed electro-chemical signals emitted by these two areas were less co-ordinated in the brains of psychopaths.

“What the science suggests is this is a brain-based disorder and that the neural dysfunction may undermine the ability of these individuals to control their social behaviour and regulate their emotions,” said Mike Koenigs, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the school.

Though scientists can’t say with certainty that these brain abnormalities are the cause of the disorder, they now know what area of the brain may be associated with it, he said.

Instead of simply treating psychopaths like they’re all axe-wielding madmen, such as the Jack Nicholson character in the psychological horror flick The Shining, they should be viewed as patients with neuro-cognitive disorders who may benefit from treatment, Koenigs said.

“We’re not talking about turning them into Mother Teresa,” he said. But with cognitive behavioural therapy and drug therapy, it is possible they could become “a little more responsible.”

The science is far from conclusive, but that hasn’t stopped some defence lawyers from using data from brain scans to try to persuade judges or juries their clients are incapable of making the right decisions.

In 2009, Brian Dugan pleaded guilty in Illinois to raping and murdering 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in the early 1980s. Dugan, who was already serving two life sentences for murder, faced the death penalty.

In an effort to save him from execution, Dugan’s lawyers turned to Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico who has amassed 2,000 brain-scan images from prisoners.

They asked Kiehl to interview Dugan and scan his brain in the hopes of persuading a jury that Dugan couldn’t control his impulses.

The jury wasn’t swayed and sentenced Dugan to death. (The death sentence was commuted this year, however, after the state of Illinois abolished the death penalty.)

Even so, the intersection between neuroscience and the law is only bound to grow, and judges and lawyers appear eager to learn more about the science, Kiehl said.

“It really does challenge their sense of what they understand is responsibility and free will, and they would like to find a better alternative than what they currently have for sentencing.”

In Canada, there’s still a tendency for judges to treat psychopathy as an aggravating factor, as opposed to a mitigating one, during sentencing.

This fall, the Alberta Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal of a career criminal who was designated a dangerous offender and sentenced to an indeterminate period of incarceration.

Roland Warawa got into an altercation with another man over a possible drug transaction and fired a gun in the man’s direction.

A stray bullet hit an innocent bystander in the face, blinding him in both eyes. Days earlier, Warawa had been consuming crack cocaine in another man’s home. When Warawa was asked to leave the home, he shot the man in the stomach.

The appeal court ruled the trial judge “reasonably concluded that the appellant was a psychopath who presented a high risk to reoffend violently and demonstrated little prospect of changing his behaviour.”

Some Canadian criminologists are questioning whether such severe punishments are fair.

In an article last year in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Simon Fraser University doctoral student Lauren Freedman and Prof. Simon Verdun-Jones suggested severe punishment of psychopathic offenders may not be justified on practical grounds because “it is ineffective” as a deterrent, and on moral grounds “owing to neurobiological deficits that are beyond their control.”

“What is clear is that imposing restrictions on psychopathic offenders for primarily punitive or retributive purposes is not acceptable in light of the rapidly emerging body of knowledge within neurosciences,” they wrote.

Maibom, the Carleton philosophy professor, isn’t sold on the idea of using biology as a courtroom defence for psychopaths.

She believes punitive measures are still appropriate when dealing with criminal psychopaths and that there is a tendency for people to be “overly impressed” when presented with images of brains.

Currently, the justice system distinguishes between those who are “mad” — insane and not criminally responsible — and those who are “bad,” she said. Psychopaths may lack empathy, guilt and remorse, but that doesn’t make them mad. Instead, she said, they essentially suffer from a “moral disorder.”

— Postmedia News