In their annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America had this to say about their view of the future:

The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.

This is what a free market solution to crime prevention creates: vested intrest in the status quo.

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/11/bearish-on-private-prison-stocks-if.html

Rape is a crime that is processed as non-consensual sex between 2 or more parties (excluding some underage cases in which the parents press charges). Some people sometimes use “date-rape” drugs such as Rohypnol or, in older circumstances, chloroform. This is still nonconsensual. Imagine a drug that builds a sense of trust between the rapist and his or her victim. It’s something that happens quickly and has fleeting effects, but results in voluntary consent without reason. This drug already exists and it’s currently one of the chemicals driving your brain: oxytocin. In the court room, such a drug can greatly effect how much trust the jury gives a witness, or even the ability to identify the face of a suspect in a lineup.

The whole idea of a witness in front of a jury is flawed. The general public has a very distorted understanding of how memory works, and therefore, in a trial, a jury will trust the testimony they hear much more than they should. Most testimony is not based on the facts at all, but how much the jury likes a witness. This can be compounded by natural variances in oxytocin level across jurors. Increased levels of oxytocin in a person have shown decreased activity in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, and part of the striatum, which guides future behavior based on reward and feedback. Activities such as yoga, breast feeding, or exercise have been shown to increase oxytocin levels and thus increase trust. These variants could lead more persuasive jurors to argue for the point of one witness over another, despite one having more flawed testimony. Any change in oxytocin levels could result in a biased acceptance of information and further compounds the inaccuracies that plague witness testimony.

On the other hand, oxytocin has been shown to increase the ability to accurately recognize a face that one has seen before, and has potential applications to aid recognizing a witness from a line up. It has been shown that people who are nasally administered a dose of oxytocin are more able to recognize a face later. Surprisingly, this has no effect on the ability to recall specific attributes of a face, and would not be useful for character sketches. This can potentially help with identification of a criminal in a line up since a person will be accurately able to determine if they have seen the person’s face before, but the current research requires an initial administration before introduction to a face to be later recognized. Research into the use of oxytocin to aid in recognition after the fact is still ongoing but could potentially yield groundbreaking results that could greatly help the accuracy of criminal identification.

The use of oxytocin has many benefits but also carries risk. Research into its usage is still in development, but so far it is known that the drug can increase trust, which can have benefits and downfalls.

The subject of God and religion has always been touchy and controversial. The helpfulness of religion is clear in many cases and slightly less so in others, while the existence of God has prompted many arguments between different groups. However, neuroscience has shown a peculiar relationship between our brains and belief in God, one that poses interesting questions for faith and spirituality.

Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy experience the usual recurrent seizures cause by the disease. However, some also experience strong religious visions that would cause them to feel as if they are not alone and lead to religious sensations. These feelings can lead individuals to suddenly believe in God or feel as if there is a higher power; they become more compassionate and almost complacent compared to their previous self. In fact, according to the article, one of the founders of the Seventh Day Adventist movement was subject to a brain injury at the tender age of nine that caused her to have personality changes; some believe that these changes include alterations to her temporal lobe, leading her to feel very religious and eventually found the new Christian movement. Scientists do however recognize a difference between believing there is someone else in the room and having a religious experience.

This may mean that there was an evolutionary development of this region in order to further the experience of these holy sensations. According to renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, it may not be the case that we all naturally believe in God. There is just the capacity to do so that may have arisen with increased intelligence. Researchers even brain scanned a Buddhist meditating in order to observe effects on the brain. Bloodflow to the parietal lobes shut down almost completely, and these regions of the brain apparently give us a foothold on time and space. When they become inactive, we may “lose our sense of self” according to the article. This may have many implications for individuals who begin to act differently and may even do ridiculous things due to brain changes that cause them to suddenly believe in a higher power. Maybe cult leaders and those who form groups that seek to worship or believe in some higher being may form due to an individual’s brain changes, leading them to create huge groups of followers who blindly listen to whatever a leader says; deaths can result, as is the case with cults such as the Peoples Temple.

Further Reading/Listening:

1. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104291534

What makes a juvenile? One of the brightest lines in the US legal system is that of the age at which one can be tried and sentenced as an adult. What is so special about 18? The age has a special cultural significance (ironically, perhaps stemming from the presence of a legal cutoff at that point), but is there any neuroscience that actually supports the use this point for the line, or any line at all?

Jay Aronson of Carnegie Mellon University provides an excellent review of the topic (Aronson, 2009). One of the most important instantiations of the idea of age-related culpability is the verdict of Roper v. Simmons, a case in which the court held that those under age of 18 could not be sentenced to death on the grounds that they were not fully culpable for their actions. This case cites Thompson v. Oklahoma, “their irresponsible conduct is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult.” In addition it was supposed that “The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character.” Analysis of the Brief of Respondent for this case indicates that the Justices actually did consider some neurological and cognitive evidence in defining these things. The evidence, and court’s the interpretation of it, was as follows:

MRI evidence indicates that the frontal lobes are not fully developed in 16-17 year olds. The unfinished areas, specifically the prefrontal cortex, are strongly involved in for emotional inhibition and impulse control, decision making and planning, and decisions involving reward and risk. The particular way in which these PFC areas are underdeveloped is a lack of myelination and a lack of synaptic ‘pruning’ (essentially learning). Thus, 16-17 year olds have an underdeveloped “seat of intentionality.” Finally, white matter (which is indicative of well myelinated neurons and appropriately selective connectivity) tends to keep increasing into the early twenties (much of this evidence was cited as coming from Goldberg et. al., 2001).

Slightly more recent literature has corroborated the supposition the PFC white matter correlates with the quality of higher cognitive function. Schmithorst, et. al., 2005 used diffusion tensor imaging to correlate measures of fractional anisotropy (which itself measures the amount of white matter in this context) with measures of IQ. However, it should be noted that there is of course some amount of individual difference in the rate/amount of myelination present at a given age (Sowell et. al., 1999).

What is truly fascinating about the use of this neurological evidence is the fact that, in the words of Santha Sonenberg, “Thus, even without his serious cognitive deficits, at nineteen, his brain was not that of an adult.” ‘His,’ referring to the juvenile defendant in United States v. Kurt W., (D.C. Super. Ct. 2005), but generalizing to anyone under the age of 18. The defense in Roper v. Simmons wanted to “have both anatomical and cognitive normalcy and pathology defined by age rather than by some diagnosable medical condition or mental state,” and this is indeed what happened. However, instead of leading to standard evaluations of individuals’ prefrontal development and something like a continuum of intentionality (and perhaps culpability), Roper v. Simmons led to a blanket precedent that 18 was to be the cutoff for full culpability in cases of the death penalty. While the neurological evidence does not make this seem an unreasonable place to draw a line, the fact that individuals differ in PFC development must call into question the practice of drawing a universal line in the first place.

Citations

Jay D. Aronson, Neuroscience and Juvenile Justice, 42 AKRON L. REV. 917 (2009).

Goldberg, Elkhonon, The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind (2001)

Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing, United States v. Kurt W., at 7 (D.C. Super. Ct. 2005)

United States v. Kurt W., (D.C. Super. Ct. 2005) (Juvenile Criminal Case Under Seal).

Elizabeth R. Sowell et al., In Vivo Evidence for Post-Adolescent Brain Maturation in Frontal and Striatal Regions, 2 Nature Neuroscience  859 (1999)

Schmithorst VJ, Wilke M, Dardzinski BJ, Holland SK.  Cognitive functions correlate with white matter architecture in a normal pediatric population: a diffusion tensor MRI study. Hum Brain Mapp. 2005 Oct;26(2):139-47.

Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005)

Where do we draw the line when statistics conflict with societal moral values? There are two particular topics that will be discussed here, (1) evidence that the death penalty deters murders and that (2) the legalization of abortion significantly lowered the crime rate in the 1990s.

(1) A study conducted at Emory in 2003 states that an average of 18 murders are deterred for every execution. Many are taught from an early age, ‘thou shalt not kill.’ But is this justified if we know that 18 lives can be saved at the expense of one criminal accused of an awful crime? Or is it more an argument that we should not have the right to sentence someone to death?

Could the driving force behind our laws be the preservation of as many human lives as possible? Consider a world where the death penalty is applied to all murderers. Certainly, the murder rate would decrease significantly, but would this statistic be enough to justify it? If we knew that enforcing this law would save more lives in the longer run, would it be the right thing to do? How much power do statistics have?

(2) There is evidence to suggest that legalizing abortion may have accounted for 50 percent of the drop in crime in the 1990s. This is more controversial as it deals with whether fetuses should have protection by law. Now, the first instinct for many towards this study is outright dismissal. Granted the benefit of the doubt, is a 50 percent drop in crime enough to justify the loss of thousands (827,609 in the US, 2007) of unborn lives? Researchers should look into finding the balance between statistics and moral values. In this way, we can better understand exactly how much ‘debias’ is necessary for proper law-making.

Further Reading:
Abortion lowers Crime
Death Penalty deters murder