Tag Archives: sentencing

“Bright Line” Sentencing

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Imagine a world with no police, no alarms, no need to lock your doors. As a result, no noticeable police or law enforcement. However, there are still laws, but instead of going to a prison with a high rate of recidivism, as there is today, criminals are assigned the perfect punishment and never commit another crime; or they end up thrown in prison or euthanized because they have been determined to be a perpetual danger to society. This might sound a bit outlandish, but the purpose of the justice system is to keep the majority of society safe. To do this, it must predict a criminal’s future behavior based on biological and situational triggers, and come up with a punishment designed to, ideally, eliminate further transgressions. However, despite the intentions behind this goal, the “bright line” nature of the law is not fitting with the holistic science of predicting criminal behavior.

The actual idea of predicting behavior is as old as the law, but the science and statistical significance is young. As such, the law has developed around the idea of trial and sentencing as a form of retroactive punishment, and only recently has the law attempted to use neuroscience as an effective way of determining culpability and punishment for a given infraction. Previously, early forms of neuroscience were employed as a form of therapy, with the idea that a mentally ill person was like a broken machine: they could be fixed if you removed the broken part. This was the case with lobotomies. Developments since then have used questionnaires and checklists to determine the mental state of a criminal. This information is then used to determine culpability, which has an indirect influence on sentencing, such as with the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict/plea. Some states even include a determination of future dangerousness in the process of sentencing, while others disallow it.

However, “fixing” a person is not as simple as fixing a machine; there are many factors, both physical and psychological that influence a person to break the law. In the determination of guilt, all these factors are reduced to a verdict of guilty or not guilty for a given crime, and then a gradient of a set punishment is administered if the crime is not criminal. A majority of these punishments involve placement in a prison for an amount of time that is determined at sentencing. This punishment does not fit with why a criminal broke the law. The proper sentencing should take into account the psychological state of the criminal and work to readmit that person to society once they have been properly rehabilitated. This rehabilitation must be more personalized than a trip to prison for a given amount of time. Criminals who are determined to be mentally ill in light of psychological evidence should be committed to state psychiatric facilities, instead of being sentenced to prison in disproportionate numbers. When it comes to criminal culpability, psychological tendencies, and rehabilitation, the “bright line” nature of the law is oversimplified to accommodate the mentally ill’s needs for therapy in order to be readmitted into society.

The White Collar Criminal Threat

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What makes a criminal dangerous? This is a question that judges and juries posit when sentencing criminals. However, these judgments are far from objective. This is especially well-illustrated by the discrepancies that exist between blue collar criminals and white collar criminals. As is made obvious by the label, blue collar crimes are committed by those who reside in lower social classes. Typically, they include categories of burglaries and robberies, violent behaviors, and other targeted forms of crime. White collar crime is committed by people in higher classes and characteristically consists of fraud, embezzlement, forgery, and other methods of cheating for monetary gain. While Russ Mitchell of The New York Times writes that the notion of country club prisons and laughable sentence times for big wig offenders is far from accurate (“a first-time, nonviolent offender who committed a fraud that caused 50 or more people to lose $100 million or more … faces a minimum of 19.5 years and a maximum of 24.5 years”, certainly a less-than-light ruling), the article also notes the advantages many of these white collar criminals enjoy, such as a better chance of first-choice location placement and permission to self-surrender and avoid the convicted felon transportation system. In addition, white collar criminals usually have access to much better legal counsel and more resources to help ensure a more favorable or lenient legal outcome. Finally, white collar criminals often enjoy the benefits of white collar appearance; judges and jurors tend to view well-educated, well-dressed businessmen as less dangerous and culpable than blue collar offenders, who are more likely to be minority members and less able to eloquently communicate their innocence or remorse.

White collar crime has been a topic of public outrage and blood lust in recent years after disastrous scandals robbed companies and employees of millions – or, in some cases, billions – of dollars. In 2001, a resounding United States Sentencing Commission decision to significantly increase white collar crime sentences partially assuaged these feelings. However, white collar criminals continue to be more difficult to nail, often due to some of the reasons noted above. Though white collar criminals amass damage that far surpasses that caused by most non-violent blue collar criminals, there is still a marked incongruity in how these individuals are treated and sentenced by our legal system. The toll of white collar crime is much greater than that resulting from most blue collar crimes, but the punishments hardly reflect this fact despite some efforts to change the system. This comparison is clear evidence for many of the human biases that adversely affect the partiality of the courts. Humans make decisions based on outward appearance and first impressions despite information that advises them otherwise. As a result, such inequities – which are further exaggerated by differences in wealth and power – are perpetuated by basic human tendencies in decision making practices. It is especially difficult to override these implicit feelings, and it becomes very difficult to change a system that relies largely on human judgment. Thus, in order to help create balance and equality, it would be beneficial to introduce a system that can restore impartiality, namely an algorithm or group of algorithms which assist in determining the sentencing of individuals. A computer is blind to race and prefers facts to emotive arguments. The result of such a system where the severity of the transgression more appropriately matches the punishment might even be enough to deter some white collar criminals. In many ways, despite their outward appeal, these white collar criminals are some of the most dangerous criminals of our era and the public should take suitable measures to protect itself.

Further Reading:

White-Collar Criminal? Pack Lightly for Prison

Drug Addiction in the Brain

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Just as we have questioned and compared the differences between the brains of average people and the brains of a wide variety of criminals, at we must consider the difference between a normal brain and a drug-addicted brain.  We must also consider the difference between a normal brain and a brain that is perhaps more likely to become a drug-addicted brain.  According to an article about the impact of behavioral genetics and neuroscience on criminal law,  ”Neuroscience has shown that the brains of addicts are different from those of non-addicts, and there appears to be a genetic predisposition towards addiction.”  The article questions whether that should affect criminal responsibility.

The article also mentions that effective pharmaceutical treatments for opiate addiction are on the market, but for some reason have been little used up to this point.  One such drug is naltrexone, which blocks the binding of opiates to their receptors and thus preventing their effects.  According to two other articles that I read, which suggested that dopamine binding is the at the heart of most drug addiction.  One article on the neuroscience of drug addiction, says that dopamine is the molecule most directly implicated in the positive reinforcing (rewarding, pleasurable) effects of all drugs of abuse.”  According to the NIDA, “Nearly all drugs, directly or indirectly, target the brain’s reward system by flooding the circuit with dopamine.”  Dopamine is a widely functioning neurotransmitter, active in parts of the brain associated with emotion, pleasure, movement, and motivation.  The reason the drug-induced binding of dopamine and resulting euphoria is bad is that the person then learns to associate pleasure with taking the drug, instead of associating it with important functions of life that the pleasure “reward system” is supposed to encourage.  Furthermore, as the user continues to take the drug to achieve the same high, the pleasure of taking a certain amount is diminished as the brain releases less dopamine or generates fewer dopamine receptors.  A question I have involves how the increased tolerance from drug use correlates to changes in the reward circuit caused by the natural pleasures, such as eating and sex, which are beneficial to us.  Does desensitization occur for all pleasure sources, or does it occur only for drug use because of its negative effect on your health and lack of benefits appropriate to the reward being given.  On one hand, it seems like a fundamental truth the the more we do something, the less pleasurable it becomes.  However, why would this be the case for things like sex that would seem to always be beneficial?

Aside from those questions, however, I am baffled by the existence of effective treatments for drug addiction that are not widely in use.  Of all of the criminal activities for which the neural/biological correlates could be considered and treated, drug abuse seems to most obviously necessitate and facilitate a neural understanding and chemical treatments of the body and brain.  I do not know why naltrexone is not more widely prescribed to addicts, but I feel that its expense could not possibly match the expense of drug addicts in prison, and thus I would support subsidization of the drug to be used as an alternative to stronger sentences.

Further Reading:

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-151907251.html

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/22/9/3303

http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/understand.html

Free Will

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Although we have avoided the topic of free will, I believe that in the legal discussion of accountability and responsibility, consideration must be given to the concept.  I think that to a large extent, the attribution of criminality to neural dysfunction or underdevelopment seems to many to dissolve the notion of free will by chalking up human behavior to physical phenomena.  However, I believe that in many ways brain disorder defenses  serve a sneakily opposite purpose.  I think that they allow us to preserve our own sense of free will by creating a distinction between ourselves, most of whom have “normal” brains, and those others who have noticeable mental “disorders” or “dysfunctions.”  I believe that in crediting those others’ behavior to their “abnormal” brains, we often miss the larger implications of the underlying assumption, which is that our behavior results from the interaction of physical processes in our brains and our environment.  A seemingly average man with a seemingly average brain who steals something does so because at that point in time, the inputs that his brain received from his environment at the time interacted with the state of his brain at that time in such a way that caused his body to take something without paying for it.  Of course, he might have been slightly more predisposed to risk-taking, due to elevated levels of dopamine that could possibly be measured in a brain scan.  Perhaps not.  Either way, the fact remains that such an explanation exists for all crimes and all behavior.

Professor Patrick Haggard, a leading British neuroscientist, agrees.  He says, “We certainly don’t have free will.  Not in the sense that we think.”  In the cited article, he is being interviewed while one of his assistants makes his fingers twitch using trancranial magnetic stimulation.  “This is absolutely out of my control,” he says.  “I’m not doing it, [my assistant] is.  I am just a machine, and she is operating me.”

Now substitute the larger, complex environment of the thief for the assistant, and you have the twitches in the fingers that grab the item off the shelf and the twitches in the feet that run out the door.

The even larger assumption, which I believe to be true, is that behavior is therefore predetermined.  If the environment acts according to physical laws, and the our bodies and brains are simply part of that physical environment and therefore obey the same laws, then the system can only work one way; each occurrence must occur in a single, exact way.

Once again, Professor Haggard agrees:

“The philosophical definition of free will uses the phrase ‘could have done otherwise’. I picked up the blue cup; could I have picked up the white one? Given the initial conditions, the world as it was, could I have acted differently? As a neuroscientist, you’ve got to be a determinist. There are physical laws, which the electrical and chemical events in the brain obey. Under identical circumstances, you couldn’t have done otherwise; there’s no ‘I’ which can say ‘I want to do otherwise’.”

The man was certainly going to steal.  Therefore, I find it faulty to say that any tumor, or the elevated level of any single neurotransmitter, can be responsible for one’s crime.  I think the fact that specific interactions between brain and environment should serve to mitigate punishments of first offenses.  Rehabilitation methods should be used to change the factors that led to the crime, by attempting to change the criminal’s environment as well as his brain.  Repeated offenses would indicate the need for stronger methods of change/conditioning, namely longer incarceration.

At the same time, noone should be completely acquitted based on something in their brain perceived to be “abnormal” and thus responsible for the crime.

Further reading:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8058541/Neuroscience-free-will-and-determinism-Im-just-a-machine.html

The Battered Woman Defense

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A recent article on CNN Justice describes the resentencing of Susan Wright, otherwise known as the Blue-Eyed Butcher, on charges of first-degree murder. Wright was found guilty by a Harris County jury for stabbing her husband over 200 times after seducing him and tying him to a bed. Currently serving a 25 year sentence, her case was recently sent to an appellate court where the charges have been upheld, however her sentence has been set aside after finding that her attorneys failed to serve her in the penalty phase of her case. The primary point of contention was with the defense attorney’s failure to capitalize on Wright’s claims of domestic abuse which she claims caused her to have Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) – an physical and psychological condition resulting from persistent physical, emotional, or sexual abuse from another person, most commonly a spouse. BWS has been identified as a subcategory of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the DSMV-IV but has not been universally acknowledged in either the legal or medical communities and has in fact been rejected by Congress after investigation into the condition.

This case is an example of how psychological conditions – even those which are not acknowledged in the DSMV – can mitigate severity of punishment. With new information introduced to the case, namely the testimony of a psychiatrist, a BWS expert, and an ex-girlfriend who had once pressed assault charges on the victim, a second jury must now determine Wright’s punishment, which could range from probation to life in prison. Although it seems intuitive that this new testimony will lessen the severity of Wright’s sentence, arguments against the use of a similar condition (Rape Trauma Syndrome) could hinder the effectiveness of the Battered Woman Defense, as it is also called. These arguments focus on “the lack of clear definition and scientific reliability” and the worry that BWS oversimplifies victim response. Acknowledging the slippery slope, one could imagine a scenario in which anyone who can prove themselves a victim of abuse could employ a similar defense. An extreme case of this would be if a man who was spanked as a child were to kill his mother and then claim that his actions were justifiable and in some way a self-defense response.

In the court room, testimony from BWS experts most commonly aims to support a defense of self-defense, however it could also support claims of provocation, diminished responsibility or insanity. The Battered Woman Defense does not necessarily address the three criteria of the self-defense law (that a proportionate amount of force be used, that the defendant be faced with immediate provocation, and that the defendant be in immediate danger), so it has thus far served to mitigate the sentencing of women like Wright. I think that the details of this particular case argue against the self-defense plea, particularly the fact that Wright premeditatedly lured her husband into a sexual scenario and stabbed him not during an attack and not just once, but 200 times. It seems as though Wright acted more out of revenge than actual self-defense, and assault victims who act out of revenge are not entitled to the self-defense law. It will be interesting to see how the defense attorneys handle this case and how the legal system evolves to include the Battered Woman Defense.

Does Prison Work? Questions about the effectiveness of the United Kingdom’s proposed system.

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The United Kingdom has help to reignite the questions about alternative forms of punishment and/or rehabilitation to prison. In the U.K., roughly 60% of those convicted each year are only in prison for less than 12 months, because they are there as a result of small offenses, and drug offenses. Of those who leave prison, roughly 60% of them are convicted again within a year of their release. With a system that such high rates of recidivism it is no wonder the U.K. is struggling to do something to correct it. Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke announced that he thinks there must be a better way to approach the issue as he announced that the inmates should work a 40 hour week getting paid minimum wage and give a part of their wages to pay for their stay at the prison and some of it to the victim’s charities.

The underlying reason for this rapid change in policy was the new spending budget which proposes cutting the Justice Department’s budget by around 25% in the next 5 years. In order to reach those dramatic cuts, dramatic action must be taken in reducing the recidivism of inmates and making sure they leave jail to become productive members of society. Part of the problem with this is that the short term offenders are serving sentences which are just long enough to dramatically effect their life (job, family, etc…), but in many cases, the sentences are not effective at bringing forth a change in behavior. The idea of giving prisoners a 40 hour work week has its disadvantages. According to Mark Johnson, it would be impossible to be able to monitor inmates, many of whom suffer from mental health and addiction problems, during a 40 hour work week if they were able to do any meaningful kind of work other than sorting recycled goods. This brings forth another option brought forward by Ken Clarke, which was that of payment by results; a system where private outfits would be paid in accordance with the reduction of recidivism.

Though all of these reforms may be promising in their own way, I think that a better idea would be to use the tools we have gained with cognitive and behavioral neuroscience to help find new ways of rehabilitating these inmates to keep them from falling back into the cycle of crime. In a BBC report interviewing former inmates and those involved in rehabilitation; it seemed almost unanimous that they believed prisoners should be given some kind of responsibilities and work while they are in prison, but many of the rehabilitation groups argued for the importance of giving the inmates “real” jobs. I agree with this sentiment; I think that by giving inmates both the education and training to be successful in the outside world must come with some real life application of those skills, which could be done through a targeted job. These “rehabilitation jobs” should be customized based on the inmates skills. In fact, in doing so the system might even be able to use the inmates own weaknesses (reason they committed the crime) as a reference point to what skills they should help the individual develop to prevent them from going back to that path. Overall, I think this is a landmark opportunity for the U.K. Justice System to try out more comprehensive rehabilitation strategies, and their success (or the lack thereof) should be followed closely by Judicial Systems around the world, many of whom have the same issues.

The Defendant-Attribute Effect and Equal Treatment Before the Law

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I was reading over my local newspaper (The Miami Herald) this morning when I came across an article about an entire family that was shot by the mother’s boyfriend in a murder suicide case. Angelina Jacques, the mother of four children, was killed in her home by her boyfriend Mark Glinton, a 37-year old security guard; three of the four children were shot and remain in critical condition while the fourth – a two year old – was the only child left unharmed. Aside from its tragedy, this article struck me for its obvious journalistic bias. The author blatantly paints a portrait of the family as being nuclear and untroubled prior to this event despite the subtle but nonetheless present signals of domestic disarray. The spin of journalism seems analogous to the manipulation of jurors, judges, and even the public by lawyers.

A consequence of a common law jury system is that lawyers make their living every day attempting to manipulate perceptions about a defendant or plaintiff. After doing some research, it turns out that there is such a thing as the defendant-attribute effect. Studies have shown that defendants who had been attributed positive characteristics or who are generally likable were treated with significant leniency as compared to those with negative characteristics (Dowdle, Gillen, &Miller, 1974). Furthermore, juror verdicts and sentencing recommendations have been shown to be contingent upon the extent to which the defendant fits the criminal profile. In an experiment by Sigal and Ostrove (1975), defendant attractiveness was manipulated in a courtroom scenario; the results of this study showed that when attractiveness is related to the crime (more typical of the particular type of crime, for example, swindling) the defendant is more easily perceived as guilty.

The defendant-attribute phenomenon begs the question “do all defendants receive equal treatment before the law?” (Maynard, 1982). If we have shown that jury opinions are sensitive to stereotypes and other superficial information about defendants such as their physical appearance and projected personality, can we trust ourselves to make accurate rulings? The defendant-attribute effect also describes the tendency of jurors to empathize with defendants in light of certain extraneous circumstances. Austin, Walter, and Utne (1976) demonstrated that jurors produce more lenient verdicts for defendants with increased suffering or whose accomplice had not been captured.

Knowing this now, I cannot help but recognize that the article’s positive description of the murder suicide victims – including the suicidal shooter – initially stopped me from questioning the integrity of the victims. I was pretty sold on the story of the unexpected father-turned-murderer who only could have done such a thing in a fit of insanity. That is, until I read on in the article and picked up on subtle hints of disarray amongst the family. For instance, Glinton had lost his job the previous day and the children reported arguments over infidelities amongst their parents. Though neighbors, relatives, and friends insisted that everything seemed fine in the household, it goes to show that stereotypes are unreliable markers of criminal liability.

References

Austin, W., Walster, E., & Utne, M. (1976). Equity and the law: The effect of a harmdoer’s “suffering in the act” on liking and assigned punishment. In L. Berkowitz & E. Walster (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Dowdle, M., Gillen, H., & Miller, A. (1974). Integration and attribution theories as predictors of sentencing by a simulated jury. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1 (1), 270-272

Sigall, H, & Ostrove, N. (1975). Beautiful but dangerous: Effects of offender attractiveness and nature of the crime on juridic judgement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 410-414.

Juvenile Sentenced as Adult

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The state Supreme Court of New Mexico has ruled that a juvenile be sentenced to 25 years in an adult prison. Rudy B., a then 17 year old teenager, shot at two other teens that he believed were going to their car to retrieve guns. His shots grazed one boy and seriously injured the other, who is now a quadriplegic. Rudy was charged as a youthful offender, and plead no contest. The judges sentenced him as an adult to 25 years, despite no hearing from a jury to decide his probability of recidivism. Several psychologists testified that Rudy was probably able to be rehabilitated. However, the children’s court judge, Monica Zamora, was not convinced and decided that Rudy would still be a threat to the public by the time he turned 21, at which time the Children’s Court would lose jurisdiction.

Many experts argue that the new way to deal with criminals, especially those that are at higher risk to be repeat offenders, is to rehabilitate opposed to lock-up. Rehabilitation is definitely possible, but it must be done outside the prison system. By putting Rudy in prison and extending his sentence, not only did the judge deny him his right to be tried by a jury, but also eliminated the prospect of successful rehabilitation.

It has been proven that the teenage brain is still in the developing stages until about the age of 21. When Rudy made the decision to shoot at the boys, I do not think he had the intention to kill them. He acted out of fear and a lack of impulse control (characteristic of 99% of teenagers) caused the event to occur. Because several psychologists have testified that Rudy is capable of rehabilitation, it would be unjust to not only sentence him as an adult, but extend his sentence because he is considered to have a high risk of recidivism.

Rudy’s lawyers are now looking into appealing the sentence, which would take the matter to the Supreme Court.

Mitigate or Elongate a Prison Sentence?

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The Times’ Anjana Ahuja wrote on article entitled “The Get out of Jail Free gene” on November 17, 2009. Its title is referring to murderer Abdelmalek Bayout, who stabbed Walter Perez to death after he taunted Bayout for wearing eye-makeup. The article reports that Bayout’s attorneys used his genes as a mitigating factor in Italian court. Bayout posseses a variant of the MAO-A gene, known as “the warrior gene,” that has been correlated with violence and aggression. Apparently, Bayout’s possession of the gene along with a past of psychiatrist illness lent to his sentence of only 8 years in prison for murder.

Bayout’s trial in Italian court is the first time that violent genes have been used to amend a sentence. However, scientists have been linking genes to types to behavior for quite some time. There is debate over whether genetics should be put in the same category as mental illness for those who carry violent genes or if they should not be considered at all since not all carriers of those genes turn into killers or gang members. According to the article, thirty percent of Caucasians carry the same variant of MAO-A as Bayout does. Dr. Kevin Beaver, a criminologist, says that the gene is an “explanation, not justification,” and that “everyone makes their own personal choice.”

Whether the genetic information should be considered or not is only the very tip of the iceberg, in my opinion. “The Get out of Jail Free gene” is only suggesting how it could be used as a sentence softener. I think the important issue they left out, is how it could be used to increase sentences. If someone does posses this “warrior gene” and their behavior has shown that they have chosen to commit violence, they are clearly a threat to society. The genetic information could be used in a defendant’s favor if they were trying to avoid the death penalty. In any other circumstance, it would seem intuitive that a defendant who carries the gene should receive a longer sentence or commitment to a mental health facility to protect society.

Ahuja, Anjana. “The Get Out of Jail Free gene.” Times 19 Nov. 2009: n. pag. Web. 3 Nov 2010.<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/genetic

Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

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Not many people would contest the usefulness of predicting recidivism in the criminal justice system if only an accurate means of prediction would arise. In particular, predictions could be used in sentencing recommendations and bail amounts to increase the efficiency and successfulness of the system. So, when it comes to attempting to predict recidivism in the criminal justice system, where are we at today? Well, along with improvements in the field of neuroscience, it seems the accuracy of new methods of prediction are also increasing. A recent article from ABC News, “Software Predicts Criminal Behavior,” claims that newly developed crime prediction software should have the capacity to not only reduce the murder rate, but other crime rates as well.

The software was developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who assembled a dataset of more than 60,000 various crimes and by using an algorithm he and his team developed, found a subset of people much more likely to commit homicide when paroled or probated (A new algorithm was later developed to include other offences). The software examines about two dozen variables with two of the most predictive being: the age at which the crime was committed and the type of crime, which were also determined as strong predictors of nonsexual violent recidivism in studies such as Hanson and Bussiére’s article “Predicting relapse: A meta-analysis of sexual offender recidivism studies.” Although prediction is a difficult task, Berk’s results have been praised and it has been said that he’s doing a better job than others in the field. Presented with the fact that his software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia and his latest version, considering other crimes besides murder, is being implemented in D.C., we can conclude that his software must hold some merit. Furthermore, the article makes the point that such results would not only be useful to sentencing recommendations and bail amounts, but also the level of supervision necessary for criminals out on parole. The question is how much can we actually trust such predictors and is putting harsher sentences or more supervision on various individuals based on statistical analysis fair?

Another article from Science Daily describes yet another technique which may be useful for predicting recidivism. This article describes how a group of researchers were able to develop a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference, with their goal being to open the world of choice to children who are “locked in” by disability and can’t express preferences. Branching from this research, we can imagine a similar technique being used to study the preferences of criminals being released on probation or parole to various stimuli then, years later, tracking those who have recidivated and commons threads within their responses. This would help to further the accuracy of predictive factors. The main difference in the use of the technique in the article and the way I have proposed, however, is that the subjects were asked to make a mental decision on which of the items in the images they preferred and criminals might repress their preferential thoughts. Granting that a way develops to recognize their true preferences, we can still imagine the usefulness of such a development to the “science” of predicting recidivism by fine-tuning our knowledge of the related factors.

I believe Theodore Y. Blumoff puts the potential advantages to these neurological advances well when he says: “Given the advances in imaging and behavioral genetics, however, neuroscience is sufficiently mature today to effect some global procedural and substantive changes in our criminal law jurisprudence based on our advanced understanding of behavioral norms – e.g., changes in the definitions of, and burdens of proof on the issue of competency.” Blumoff’s article “The Brain Sciences and Criminal Law Norms” explores some of the other advancements in neuroscience and their impact on the issue of culpability, but I believe he shares the common notion that such developments should be utilized to their fullest potential to maintain justice in our court system. Therefore, as the accuracy of such methods as Berk’s software and other methods of zoning-in on factors that predict recidivism improve, I suggest that they be implemented into sentencing, bail amount, and probation scrutiny to increase the effectiveness of our system.