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 In quarter four I tried to focus on reaching my full potential for this advanced art class and I think I did a pretty good job  of that by spending my time on these four hour projects and these little assignments trying to do my best. The pieces that I did didn’t have any real meaning they were just challenging for me so I wanted to attempt them.

Usually in neighborhoods where there is more green, meaning trees, grassy fields, lawns, flowers, and plants, people feel safer. For example, in a  2008 study of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, meaning urban and suburban areas, violent crimes in the city was at about 2,100, in comparison to in suburban areas at about 1,000. This shows that crime in urban areas is more prevalent than that of suburban areas. But why? It could simply be the reaction to seeing nature and serenity, and the pleasant smells and atmosphere that promotes a safer lifestyle and environment. This being in comparison to say an urban area, where there are factories, busy streets, odd smells, limited greenery, and noise. Also, the closeness of everyone and everything contributes sometimes to feelings of being trapped, especially in living communities, in comparison to how each suburban house is separate. In all, its is a common consensus that suburban areas lead to lower crime rates, however, what more is there to this?

Research studies over the years has questioned whether it’s due to one's genetic makeup of someone that causes them to be involved in criminal activity or if it is due to the environment in which an individual was raised in. It has been concluded that genes and one’s environment both play a significant role in one’s desire to participate in criminal activities. Various studies and lab experiments have led to this conclusion. In all, criminal behavior is defined by social and legal institutions, meaning science and biology do not play a role in defining what criminal activity is.

Regarding environment, however, this is not simply limited to the type of actually environment one is living in, meaning what the outside looks like, the more in depth environment, meaning the household and family environment can factor even more into how a child is influenced. Research has concluded it is the family environment that essentially factors in a child’s superactivity. With family risks or triggers for a bad environment being poverty, a child’s education, how the parent’s choose to raise their child, and how the family functions as a whole. Unsurprisingly, researchers discovered families who lack solid communication skills with one another and have weak bonds and connections throughout the family have been linked with children’s development of aggressive behavior, eventually leading to criminal behavior. A solid conclusion for a families turn out is with a family that lacks financially or mentally to properly raise their children and punish them for doing room are more likely to have an environment that influences the behavior and mindset of those who participate in criminal activity and delinquent behavior. In conclusion, one can understand that not just the overall environment, meaning the city, or suburban, or rural areas has an influence on how criminal activity is promoted, but the actual environment of how a child is raised is the larger factor in determining an individual's criminal mindset and behavior.

Sources:

http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/jones.html

https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/p66.pdf

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

Adolescents, Crime and Brain Development.

Ghani  is a friend of my mom’s. When he was fifteen years old he and another friend of his came from New York to Philadelphia to work with a drug gang. His friend and he were put inside of an abandoned house where they were locked in a room and sold drugs through a slit in the door, and they were brought food and water through the slit in the door. They were trapped, desperate, and fifteen years old and their brains weren’t thinking about the consequences of their actions, so when the next person came to the door they killed him so they could escape. Ghani and his friends were both tried as adults as many teenagers are even though that shouldn’t be the case. There is no doubt that what Ghani and his friend did is wrong, but should they have been tried as adults?

The rational region (frontal lobe) of a teen’s brain won’t be fully developed until the age of twenty-five. The frontal lobe contains a region called the prefrontal cortex which lets us organize our thoughts, anticipate consequences, plan, and control impulses. “The frontal lobe undergoes far more change during adolescence than at any other stage of life.” It is also the last part of the brain to develop, which means that even as they become fully capable in other areas, adolescents cannot reason as well as adults. Under development of rational thinking causes teens to rely on emotional parts of the brain, rather than the frontal lobe.”  A scientist who studies adolescent brains explains, “one of the things that teenagers seem to do is to respond more strongly with gut response than they do with evaluating the consequences of what they’re doing.” Ghani and his friend didn’t kill the man out of act of violence, they killed him based on emotion. They felt trapped. They were trapped! Unfortunately our legal system doesn’t recognize that that teenage are more likely to do mindless thing because they lack rational thinking.

"Adolescence, Brain Development and Legal Culpability." Juvenile Justice Center. N.p., Jan. 2004. Web. 7 June 2016.

Some of the original lie detector test involved trying to use sweat and heart rates as a way to determine if someone is lying. The polygraph was the typical machine that is used to do lie detector test. While the polygraph may be know as typical and not reliable at times it it is the most accurate method of detecting lies that we have. There is a lot of belief that something happens in your brain when you lie that can be shown through graphs and exams. The way people get lie detectors verified is to take them to a court and put them to a test.

What are lies exactly? A lie is a made up state that someone attempts to pass off as the truth by withholding the truth itself. Most lies are made to either avoid telling someone the truth because they are afraid of how that person would react to the truth, or just to hide a dark secret. Of course there are other reasons people lie.

I personally believe that lie detectors are valuable and if the polygraph works now it has to be the best method of telling a lie. I do however believe that it is not perfect and engineers/scientist should keep designing better ones until one of them work. Other people of course believe that lie detectors don’t work and that everything said is a lie. Those are the same people that go on shows like Maury.

The science behind lying says that we when lying we first have to decide things like, how much trouble will we get in, is it worth it, and will we get away with it. We can’t lie more than our self worth. By that I mean we lie enough to maintain our image if we get caught. When tested studies show that people lie when it comes to money in-order to to increase their wealth. In society over 50% of adults lie every 10 minutes just because and almost 100% of children take that and begin their lying careers.

http://www.scienceofpeople.com/2015/03/the-science-of-lying/

http://mentalfloss.com/article/30609/60-people-cant-go-10-minutes-without-lying

Since the beginning of criminology, police officers and detectives have been trying to come up with  methods of detecting lies, stories and fibs. .It wasn't until the early 1920’s polygraphs have been used as an interrogation tool with criminals. The US law enforcement and federal government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA have been using them. This test works in a easy way, when someone lies it makes your heart race. It makes you pant, it drives up your blood pressure and in some extreme cases it makes you drip sweat. A polygraph machine detect lies by looking for signs of these physiological changes. But to often there have been times where the these test don’t actually work. Scientist have been coming up with ways that enhance and improve the way these test work by using neuroscience.  

“Scientists believe that a lie is made up of two parts: a person must create the lie and also withhold the truth”

After 9/11 the American government has become highly interested in procuring a sure-fire method of spotting liars. The American military has a whole department, the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute the need for a better test came along. These proponents believe the future impact of neuroscience “will be inevitable, dramatic, and will fundamentally alter the way the law does business” In this case there’s always going to be people who agree with polygraph test and people who think it’s a whole bunch of crap. Using neuroscience, scientist have come up with ways to use Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to looks inside the brain instead of tracking outside measures of anxiety like changes in pulse, blood pressure or respiration. fMRI’s get the point straight across, you ask a question and if you lie the test shows it. Detection accuracy was claimed to be as high as 90% compared to a purported 70% for polygraphs making them more reliable and fast moving. There would be no need to use lawyers that would switch up your words and evidence. While some see this the best thing that could happen, and a bridge to a whole new world of lie detection and criminology others think this is just a waste of time.

Scientist believe the fMRI machines will only confuse results  “In theory, it takes more neural activity to lie than tell the truth because you have to construct a narrative, so the extent of neural activity can be relevant in determining whether you’re lying,” said Andrea Roth, an assistant professor at Berkeley Law.  In order to image an area where there is activity, a thought has to be made, and an image taken a couple of seconds afterward (because the oxygen conversion is not instantaneous). Stanford University’s Anthony Wagner decided to do a test where laboratory studies involve instruction to tell a low-stakes lie about an action they recently performed. However, in the real world, lies are self-generated, often high risk and emotionally charged, and lie detection may occur years after the event in question. This process must be repeated a couple of times to be able to filter out false positives. In the end there is no hard data to show that we can actually detect lies with great accuracy. We would all love it if neuroscience could distinguish between these true and false memories until then cops and detective will still to polygraph test.

fMRI’s are not a perfect science, and they have a long way to go before they can be perfect. I feel like with a good mixture between the test, lawyers and great evidence court cases will be easy to solve and won’t be hard to put people behind bars. There’s going to be a lot of work done and a lot of time put in before we can get anywhere to a point where test can really tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. We shouldn’t treat fMRI’s as if it’s the only thing that can and should be used in the court, we should seen more like another piece of evidence that could be icing on the cake to completely the case.

The human brain is a marvelous thing with many different components that allow us to do the things we do. The many different parts of the brain are associated and linked to certain behaviors and allow us to perform the actions we perform in our day to day lives. In some cases there may be apart of one’s brain that may cause their senses to be off. The frontal lobe which is in control of one’s motor function, problem solving, memory, language, impulses, and social and sexual behaviors. When this part of the brain is tampered with or stuck by another force, detrimental effects that could lead to permanent damage could occur.

In one case a 40 year old school teacher claimed that his tumor was the cause of his sexual behavior. It was noticed that something was wrong with him and even had severe headaches. This tumor was the size of an egg that pressed against the right side of his frontal lobe. This was one of the claims as to why he would act the way he did and was said that the tumor was the cause. The tumor was said to give him urges where and that he was in no way aware of his urges. He was eventually convicted and the day before that he had walked into an emergency room with a headache and was suicidal. These signs all were said to lead back to his tumor and he had the tumor treated so that it had shrunk. The urges no longer existed but once the tumor grew back so did the urges. What was the true reason as to his behavior? He was

In another case a 19 year old teen was murdered by who is pretty much remembered as a psychopath. One night after a night out with her friend, once she separated from her friends she was expected to be home and never showed up. At this point her family decided to start looking for her as any other caring family would. In this case Travis originally lied about what he did and the truth eventually came out with evidence. Once interrogated again he said “It was a mistake” and then went on to basically say he does not want to be remembered as a bad person because he just wanted to do some good by actually burying her instead of throwing her in a dumpster. Psychopaths lack emotions for empathy and the awareness in what their actions might do to someone else. This was linked to the cerebral cortex, and was noticed to be the cause of why people would lack empathy, self control, and common moral rights.

Each region of the brain correlates to specific body functions and when a part of the brain is damaged or injured, that can cause effects on the brain that can alter one’s life. In these cases these changes in the brain led to personality disorders, making it difficult for someone to control certain behaviors and impulses. In our law system there are cases where people plead insanity but in reality is it actually one’s fault for their actions if the reason for their behavior is from neurological disability or damage?

All around the world, children who commit crimes are being tried, and often times they are being tried as if they were adults. There has been a very big debate in science and with the people convicting kids of crime on whether kids should really be so harshly punished for what that are doing. While the kids are doing things that are bad, should they be tried and charged they way they do when they are still developing and aren’t fully finished growing yet?
When people are growing and maturing, their brains are also growing and maturing. It doesn’t all happen at once which is a cause for younger people changing emotionally. Our brains continue to grow until we are fully grown. When our brains are growing like this, according to Laurence Steinberg, we can’t always be taken responsible for our actions. Steinberg also said that because these brains will be changing later on that trials with young people should be revisited once they are adults. In this article, written by Emily Kaiser, she talks about 6 facts about the crime with children. One of her facts is that when kids are in groups with their friends they make more risky decisions. In this section she talks about Steinberg's driving simulation that he did with kids. He would take one kid and have them do this driving game and then he told him that his friends were watching him and had them do the simulation again. What they saw was that he crashed more and did worse things when his friends were “watching”. They saw that this was because when you’re with your friends, a part of your brain is stimulated which is the same part of your brain that makes it seem like you are being rewarded. Especially at this age when reward is such a big thing to teens.
Another side of this is that even though the brain of these young people are still developing, if they are going to commit horrendous crimes they need to be tried. These kids know that the crimes that they are committing are illegal and wrong so why not be tried for what they are doing? By the age that kids are allowed to be going out and doing things on their own they should have learned all of this, and the changing of their brain shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
Elizabeth S. Scott from Columbia University along with some other professors, did a study about this in 2007. They wanted to find out how the brain of a child or young adult differed from that of an adult and what it had to do with the likeliness of being reckless and doing things that they shouldn't do. They got people from the ages of 10-25 and studied their brains while doing different activities in different moods and emotional states. They also looked at what the brain function was like under the pressure of peers around them. The study is not complete yet but it is in the process of being completed. Research like this is helping change the minds of people who believe that children should be so harshly punished for crimes they commit.  
From the studies that have been conducted and that are still being conducted, we can see that children are not 100% responsible for every action that they do when their brains are still developing. There are many kids who are in jail with life sentences. What will happen to these children? And how do we know if a child is really responsible or if it had something to do with their brain developing?

Cites used:

1. Kaiser, Emily. "6 Facts about Crime and the Adolescent Brain." Minnesota Public Radio News. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2016. <http://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/11/15/daily-circuit-juvenile-offenders-brain-development>.

2. "Criminal Justice and the Juvenile Brain." Columbia Law School. Columbia University, 10 July 2013. Web. <https://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2013/july2013/scott-brain-research>.

Let's say a truthful man was at the bank and he saw a robbery take place right in front of his eyes. Would you rely on that man for information about what they recall during that instance? I would expect this truthful man to tell the story as the way it happened and according to the article on Eyewitness by Hal Arkowitz, Scott O. Lilienfeld, jurors also heavily rely on information provided by eyewitnesses. Eyewitness testimony is a trusted source of information and has been that way for a long time. However, study has shown that eyewitness testimony might not actually be a reliable source of information. It’s apparently not a rare case that during these types of situations, people recall the wrong information. In 1984, a man named Kirk Bloodsworth was charged and sentenced to nine years in prison because the statements given by five eyewitnesses were very heavily weighted during the session. Years later, DNA testing proved him to be innocent.

Psychologists have found that when people recall memories, they’re alway changing the details of it. In the famous Lost in the Mall experiment, the subjects recalled information more detailed as time passed and 48% of what the subjects stated were false. It’s easy for our brains to implant memories that never occurred. Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist, worked endlessly to prove how memories could be so distorted and richly wrong. She’s experimented numerous times implanting memories and studying its results, she states that sharing these information to learn how to prevent memory implant is better than covering it up. It has been reported that “73 percent of the 239 convictions overturned through DNA testing were based on eyewitness testimony.” Cases involving conviction of innocent people are 70% of the time rooted from eyewitness misidentification according to John Bohannon’s article on Science magazine. It is crucial that the justice system adjust and reconsider eyewitness testimony looking at these research and statistics.

There is the misconception about how the memory works and this truly creates our society to rely on eyewitness information causing many complications especially in our justice system. I think there needs to be more research and experiments completed to understand exactly how and why that occurs. As Loftus has stated, we need to work to protect ourselves from misleading preconceptions and uncover as much information about it as possible. Doing that will allow right judgement on cases like Kirk Bloodsworth.    

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/18/health/lifeswork-loftus-memory-malleability/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12/eyewitness-testimony-may-only-be-credible-under-these-circumstances

The insanity defense is an excuse defense used in criminal trials. It means that the defendant was not or could not be responsible for their actions either during the time of the crime or permanently. One of the first cases of pleading insanity was in Auburn, New York. William Freeman was wrongfully accused of committing a theft. When they found the right man he still implicated Freeman in the theft and so Freeman fled jail. He was convicted of theft and escape and at the age of 16 he was sentenced to five years of labor at the state prison. After continuously insisting upon his innocence he was beaten in the head with a piece of wood by a guard. This left him mentally impaired. Shortly after Freeman was released a farmer and his family were murdered. Freeman was able to get a lawyer who was willing to make a case for insanity because he believed the mental state of the defendant should be taken into account. The court found him guilty saying that he was perfectly sane. Freeman died in his cell and an autopsy showed definite brain deterioration so the insanity case actually should have been sufficient.

The first viewpoint is that the insanity defense does not hold water. It is extremely difficult to figure out whether or not someone should be held responsible for their actions. It was pretty clear in the case above because after the autopsy it was definitely shown that there was brain deterioration. But in modern day cases, especially because the insanity defense is more widely known, it is hard to tell whether the claim should excuse the crime. For example, there have been cases of pedophilic behavior being the side effect of a brain tumor. Is that person then responsible for their actions or was it solely the tumor? There is significant neuroscience to back up the fact that the mental stability of the defendant often can remove a level of responsibility. There is a part in the brain called the orbiofrontal cortex which controls things like reasoning, impulse control, social integration, morals, etc. So when that area of the brain is damaged the result can be sociopathic behavior. So the science does support the insanity defense.

On the other hand, the science isn’t always perfect and there are still a lot of unknowns. In the case of a man who had a brain tumor and started watching child pornography when he was at home, the question was raised as to how much he could control his impulses. After all, he wasn’t watching it at work. Also, he didn’t tell anyone which raised further questions; maybe this is something he had already felt and the tumor brought it out. It becomes very subjective. The other societal issue is, even though it may have been out of their control at the time the damage was still done. The man supported the child porn industry. So what is the best way to handle an insanity defense? Should it take away the responsibility and punishment?

The use of fMRIs in a court of law as evidence, replacing the polygraph machine. They would be used to “prove” if a defendant is lying or telling the truth. Though scientists may understand the advanced technology of an fMRI, jurors certainly don’t, and the major worry is that the science will completely replace the law. With jurors basing their decisions based entirely off of the science, when it can be easily manipulated.

Polygraph testimony should excluded from court cases because it is unreliable, the technology is no better than the polygraph machine; it is one more subjective piece of information that informs decision making. Neuroscientists are worried about over-reliance on this technology, when you’re anxious there is all sorts of brain activity from the situation you are in. If you are innocent and you're being asked about the thing you're suspected of, you're going to be just as anxious as you are if you’re guilty of it.

Law is not going to disappear because of neuroscience. Getting a better handle on what brain machinery causes certain behaviors will change the criminal justice system, but it will not disappear. Neuroscience evidence of mental state may ultimately be admitted in trials, but it will not restrict the roles of judges and juries to reading brain scans.

When imaging is used to demonstrate damage to a victim's nervous system, a judge can expect that most evidence will be based on conventional clinical procedures. In cases involving victims, conventional CT scanning has dominated as the preferred diagnostic method. Less frequently, conventional X-rays, diagnostic MRI scans, electroencephalography and SPECT scanning of brain blood perfusion are used

The real question is how can neuroscientists present fMRI evidence in a court of law accurately and clearly enough that it can’t be interpreted in any other way. It requires a deeper understand of the neurology, one we don’t necessarily have.

As society progressed we, as a human species learned how to use technology in our advantage, later on inventing new ways of predicting new things such as how many foods will need to be harvested in order to feed a population or even better for safety such as finding patterns or predicting crime in certain minds. As we know finding patterns that relate a psychopath can help the world from a lot of hurt and sadness so machines that can find these patterns can be very useful.

Some major issues associated with this are the fact that brain changes over time altering the outcomes for example if a young child were to be labeled as the black sheep or the bad seed of the family it could ruin their future due to the fact that the machine is not perfect affecting the individual's life and everyone around them.

Other reason why this practice isn’t very useful is the issue of since the brain changes and the studies need to be done on young teenagers it could never really be very accurate due to the fact that the brain is done maturing around the 20’s even late 20’s and that is when you can find a better formed example of a fully grown psychopath. For example psychopaths tend to start doing rebellious acts at a young age some even at the age of 7! But most of or at least a minimum of these acts are later on stopped due to the parents taking actions which later on changed the outcome of their brain.

Most of the signs of being a psychopath are the lowering of affection due to other humans distress which means that if a psychopath and a average person were having a “heart to heart” conversation the psychopath would show little to no care about the others feelings almost as if there was nothing wrong. A lowering in decision making, meaning if the psychopath were to talk about a very gruesome act such as blowing up a building he wouldn’t really feel the nervousness or think of the acts following such act meaning they wouldn’t really think of caring about jail etc. Lastly as a psychopaths they see their wrongs as rights and not care about others, meaning if I were to think robbing a bank it’s a terrible idea they would see it as a good or average thing with “fun” feelings.

For the people who believe that adolescents should be punished when committed a crime,

  My name is Charlotte and I am a teenager who robbed and brutally beat an old lady with my friend Emily. I know you think that I should go to prison for this crime but I am here to tell you all of the many reasons why I should not go to jail. For one, our brains have weak breaks. If we see something that intrigues us enough than we go after it. Our reward system is very aroused hehe. Very aroused I said. The braking system to make sure we don’t follow the leader with our negative decisions is turned off at that time. Also, we are more likely to take more risks with our friends. There was a study done at Temple Hospital where when people played games without their friends, they don’t play it differently than any other adult. A student mentioned that by even knowing their friend is watching them, it doubles the number of risks we take but if we look at adults, playing with friends has no impact on their behavior. Let’s not forgot that the behavior-governing prefrontal cortex is morphing. This part of my brain isn’t even developed yet. It is still in the stages of developing correctly so that I make the right decisions and not do idiotic things….just like this situation. Another important factor is adults. Adults guidance makes a huge difference so that we don’t follow the wrong crowd. My mother wasn’t active in my life at all. I barely knew her so I didn’t have the skills to think good enough so that I wouldn’t make negative decisions. By having a parent in your life, you are more willing to do positive things instead of doing risky behaviors. In a case called Atkins v. Virginia, it banned the execution of mentally retarded people so if that was an option, that’s now illegal. What about our hormonal changes?? Being an adolescent, we undergo many emotional and hormonal changes. One of the hormones that has the most effect on our body is testosterone. Emotionally, an adolescent is part child and part adult. Not only that but my father was also abusive which is why I committed this crime. All I know is violence. Research studies shows that abusive childhood experiences can cause violent behaviors. Some situations that can trigger it is being a witness to domestic violence or substance abuse with the family, and also being the victim of physical or sexual assault. This is the reason why I committed the crime that I did. Myself was not only physically abused by my father but I was also bullied in school. I would do one thing wrong, like forget to do the dishes one time and the next thing I knew, my face was being slapped or I got pushed down to the floor. When I was at school, people would call me words like ugly, worthless and fat albert. This is my case as to why I should not receive jail time and walk a free woman.

Sincerely,

Charlotte

Sources;

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/11/15/daily-circuit-juvenile-offenders-brain-development

http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/criminal_justice_section_newsletter/crimjust_juvjus_Adolescence.authcheckdam.pdf

Biological factors in criminality is a “deterministic approach” when a criminal behaviour has a psychological origin, meaning there can be inherited characteristics of person’s behaviour. There is a genotype which also has a low level of the enzyme that can cause violence in people. This gene and being exposed to abuse as a child connects together causing the violence to be present in person’s behaviour. A damage to the prefrontal cortex connects to antisocial behaviour. The damage usually happens because of the head injury.

An Italian army doctor, Cesare Lombroso collected the features and traits, which showed that the criminals were born with these features. According to Keith E Rice, The Biological Factors in Crime article states that “Based on the physical measurements he collected from Italian prisoners and non-criminal military personnel, Lombroso held that many criminals had been born with ‘atavistic’ features. Criminals had definite biological failings that prevented them from developing to a fully human level. They showed certain ape-like characteristics or sometimes just ‘savage’ features. Such physical anomalies included large jaws, high cheek bones, large ears, long arms, thick skulls and extra nipples, toes and fingers.” People with these features are seen as criminals in the society because these traits made them look like criminals in people’s minds. These features made people look bad and some people are judged because of it. It is not right to judge people based on how they look like.

William Sheldon argued that the person’s body shape describes what kind of person they are. People with mesomorph body shape are most likely to get involved with a crime. Mesomorph body shape is an aggressive and muscular frame so the question is why do people think that people with an aggressive body shape are criminals?

Sources:

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09111601

http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/crime-biological_factors.html

http://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector/drivers-of-crime/publications-and-background-information/documents/spb-biological-risk-factors

http://euc.sagepub.com/content/2/3/287.abstract

Adrian Raine, Professor of Criminology & Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, was the first psychologist to study the brains of murderers. After doing PET scans on the brains of 41 murderers and 41 control test subjects at a lab at UC Irvine, Raine found significant results. Compared to the 41 control subjects, brain functioning in the very front of the prefrontal cortex in the 41 murders was very poor. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for our highest order tasks - decision making, impulse control, and emotional regulation. As you would imagine, if your brain has a harder time making decisions, controlling impulses and regulating emotions, you might be more likely to have angry turn to rage, and rage turns into homicide.

Criminologists and geneticists around the country are looking to the genetics of criminology. While they know there is no “crime gene,” markers for aggression and antisocial behavior could play a role in a criminal's activity. For example, Terrie E. Moffitt, a behavioral scientist at Duke University discovered a gene linked to violence that alters the production and regulation of serotonin in the brain. They also found that the gene is most often triggered to “turn on” by stress.

Both Raine and Moffit’s findings about criminal nature are incomplete without the measure of nurture. As the New York Times reports, “genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.”

Nurture could start as early as in the womb. Mothers that smoke or drink while pregnant double or triple the odds of a baby becoming a violent offender later. In childhood, poor nutrition nearly triples the rate of antisocial personality disorder in adults.

This raises the question that Adrian Raine puts well in his interview on Fresh Air, "if bad brains do cause bad behavior, if brain dysfunction raises the odds that somebody will become a criminal offender — a violent offender — and if the causes of the brain dysfunction come relatively early in life ... should we fully hold that adult individual responsible?"

What does the biology of criminology mean for the law?

There are several theories about what the biology of criminology means for the practice of law. The first is genetic consideration. Genetic consideration asserts that not all criminals are created equal biologically, so not all criminal offenders should receive the same punishment for the same crime. People who commit crimes that are proven to be under the influence of brain dysfunction and genetic make-up out of their control should be sentenced using less harsh tactics.

The opposite is deterrence theory. Deterrence theory disregards genetic consideration altogether, by arguing that the fear of punishment should deter people from committing crimes, regardless of their biology. Criminologist Amanda R. Evansburg argues “while evidence of a genetic predisposition to violent behavior may potentially be significant, it would be imprudent, as well as politically infeasible, to allow genetic determinism to substitute for the assumptions of free will in the criminal law.”

What do you think? What should be the future of genetics and the law?

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/01/180096559/criminologist-believes-violent-behavior-is-biological

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/arts/genetics-and-crime-at-institute-of-justice-conference.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/03/health/biology-crime-violence/  

http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/593/debating-genetics-as-a-predictor-of-criminal-offending-and-sentencing