This article focuses on the case of homicide, and through a new perspective provided by neurocriminology, the causes of criminality are viewed as a combination of genetic factors and environmental influences. In doing so, we hope to shed new light on crime prevention and punishment.
Everyone dies eventually. But some of them are killed. In the news, homicides are a great way to grab viewers’ attention. Even if it’s a story of someone not directly related to you, and even if it happens in a place that is completely unrelated to you, the story of someone being killed as a person, in the same space of Korea, or more broadly, on the planet, makes you stop and listen. And if we feel that the event is even slightly related to us, our interest and concern is amplified.
On one side of the world, new life is born every day. On the other side, life is extinguished. There are many reasons for a person’s death, but one of the most saddening and outrage-inducing is the death by murder.
Let’s think about it. While it’s hard to keep track of all the events around the world, let’s take a look at the situation in our own country right now. How many people are murdered in South Korea per day? According to statistics, there are about 1,100 homicides per year on average. Divide that by 365 days and you get an average of about 3 murders per day, or 3 people per day. Three people out of a population of about 50 million may not seem like a lot, but imagine how scary it would be to think that one of those three people could be you.
When we hear about a murder on the news, we go through a number of thoughts. The most common reactions are: first, compassion for the victim, and second, anger at the perpetrator.
Now consider a single murder. Once we know who killed and who was killed, we come to the most important question: “Why?” Why was the person killed? It could have been an accidental killing due to a conflict or an argument, or it could have been a premeditated killing out of revenge, or it could have been for a variety of reasons, such as an unasked-for murder or a serial killing, where people indiscriminately kill unrelated people. For ordinary people like us, such events can be both frightening and outrageous. We are more interested in what kind of punishment the killer should receive than in the details of his situation.
However, there are some people who are interested in the inner workings of these killers, their circumstances, and the background of their crimes. Their research was the beginning of neurocriminology, and they made some surprising discoveries. We’ve generally assumed that social and environmental factors contribute to why people become murderers, and treatment and prevention of criminals have been approached primarily from these social and environmental perspectives. However, neurocriminology fundamentally disrupts this paradigm.
Adrian Lane, a world-renowned authority on neurocriminology and author of Anatomy of Violence, describes the field this way. “Some people are born criminals!” This provocative and shocking statement created a ripple like a stone thrown into calm water.
The idea that criminals are determined at birth has actually been discussed in detail since the 1870s, but it didn’t see the light of day then. However, with the development of science and technology and the emergence of new research methods, there has been a resurgence in attempts to find new ways of looking at the causes of violence.
For example, American Jeffrey Landrigan was abandoned in 1962 at the age of eight months. Fortunately, he was adopted by a family with a geologist father and a loving mother, who gave him a fresh start with a good education and a strict upbringing. Nonetheless, Landrigan dabbled in alcohol and drugs as a minor, stealing and eventually murdering a friend at the age of 20. After escaping from prison, he committed another murder and was sentenced to death. While incarcerated, Landrigan stumbles upon a man who looks exactly like him, a killer named Darren Hill, who turns out to be his biological father. Furthermore, it turns out that Landrigan’s grandfather was also a criminal.
Darren Hill says “You don’t have to be a smart person to realize that when a crime is repeated over three generations, you know there’s a connection. There’s a pattern.”
This makes me think that there might be a “killer gene”. It’s fair to question whether what makes a person a criminal is not just social and environmental factors, but may also be tied to biological genes.
We are generally taught to believe that we are born for a reason, and that we are searching for meaning and a calling in life. But what would the impact be if someone said to you, “You were born with the genes of a killer,” or if you found out that your brain scans look similar to a killer’s brain?
Neurocriminology does not predict or guarantee that “you have the genes of a murderer and will commit murder”. It does warn that when a person with antisocial, abnormal genes or brain structure is combined with adverse social and environmental factors, they may be more prone to antisocial behavior than the average person.
Indeed, neurocriminologists have demonstrated this through various statistics. For example, when the prefrontal cortex of the brain is dysfunctional, meaning it is less activated than in normal people, they are less able to control instinctive emotions such as anger, more risk-taking, less responsible, and more likely to engage in rule-breaking behavior. This has a multifaceted impact on emotional, behavioral, personality, social, and cognitive levels. This is not to say that brain imaging techniques alone can tell us once and for all who is normal and who is a killer, and of course normal people can sometimes exhibit antisocial violence. However, we do have ample evidence of which brain functions are dysfunctional and which are associated with increased violence.
The emergence of neurocriminology could have a huge impact on our society. While it is commonly thought that criminals are punished and sent to prison, this new discipline allows for a deeper approach to the occurrence and causes of crime. The ultimate goal of this approach is to find an answer to the question, “How can we prevent future crimes?” With the development of neurocriminology, we may need to consider biological factors in the treatment and prevention of offenders, whereas up until now we have focused primarily on improving social and environmental factors. This suggests that current solutions may not actually contribute much to crime prevention and rehabilitation.
In the future, advances in neurocriminology will make it possible to identify at-risk individuals who are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior through brain scans, genetic analysis, and physical exams. If mandated at the national level, these tests could identify potential criminals who are more likely to commit crimes. For example, a person with a problem in the prefrontal cortex of the brain may not show it outwardly. If we know in advance that they are likely to lose control, and act cautiously through treatment and prevention, we can reduce the incidence of crime.
Neurocriminology argues that biological factors do not simply determine who becomes a criminal, but rather that a person with a biological defect is more likely to become a criminal when he or she encounters unfavorable environmental factors. Thus, while biological factors, whether congenital or acquired, cannot be determined by the individual or his or her parents, environmental factors can be approached differently. If parents are aware of their child’s biological defects and pay attention to their upbringing and treatment, the chances of their child becoming a criminal will certainly decrease.
However, applying these developments in neurocriminology to society requires a number of considerations. In particular, when it comes to pre-screening prospective criminals, the first issue is social acceptance. While people with brain or genetic abnormalities are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior, these are people who have not yet committed a crime, meaning that labeling them as potential criminals could create a sense of social distance and lead to public distrust of them. Additionally, the stigma effect can make people who are notified of a potential offender less likely to accept the problem and more likely to act against it. Children and adolescents can be particularly sensitive to these social issues.
The human rights and privacy of potential offenders is also an important consideration. There is also the question of whether the state can violate the human rights of these people for the safety of the majority. “We shouldn’t punish people who haven’t broken the law, but we should deter people who might break the law. But the moment you stop them, there is no crime.” How do we solve the dilemma from the movie Minority Report?
The brain science behind neurocriminology is now being used in real-life trials. Brain imaging has even been used to influence sentencing. But think about this. If a person commits a crime, and he has a gene or brain defect that predisposes him to antisocial behavior, should his crime be evaluated differently than it would normally be? Is the argument that “it’s not the person, it’s the genes, what could I have done” justified?
The new directions offered by neurocriminology certainly make us hopeful for a world with less violence. However, there is still a lot of discussion to be had before it can be applied to society. We should be interested to see how neurocriminology can be used to prevent and punish crime while overcoming its limitations.
