CAN NEUROSCIENCE HELP US SENTENCE MORE EFFECTIVELY?
An intriguing new book by Professor Deborah Denno is coming from Oxford University Press: It’s called Changing Law’s Mind: How Neuroscience Can Help Us Punish Criminals More Fairly and Effectively.
Here is some of the summary from the abstract on the book:
A criminal justice system should protect society from crime and also punish criminals at the level of their blameworthiness. Changing Law’s Mind contends that new insights about the brain can help us in the quest to construct a fairer and more effective criminal justice system. Recent neuroscientific discoveries suggest that some of our previous intuitions about human culpability fail to reflect the reality of how the brain functions. If we ignore these developments, we risk perpetuating a justice system that punishes some people far too much and others too little or not at all.
The intersection of law and neuroscience is a thriving topic, but this book is unique. Many books and chapters in edited books focus narrowly on issues such as the diagnosis and effect of brain abnormalities or the possibility that neuroscience will someday perfect lie detection. Changing Law’s Mind, instead, provides readers with a foundation in both the legal doctrine and neuroscience and then uses that bridge to question the criminal law’s underlying principles and practice, starting from the moment a case is processed in the system to the point at which a defendant is sentenced and punished. Based on this assessment, the book suggests ways in which the criminal law can change — either quickly by accommodating our new understanding of the human mind into current practice or more fundamentally by incorporating this understanding into long-term modifications of criminal law doctrine.
PS: Thanks to Doug Berman at Sentencing, Law & Policy for pointing to Denno’s book.
I hope the book lives up to its promise. If so, it could be particularly helpful in the arena of juvenile justice, where we seem to be ever more eager to shove kids into adult court in defiance of everything we know about how the human brain matures (not to mention just basic psychology).
In fact, it has long struck me that so much of contemporary sentencing, incarceration and parole policy is designed with a bizarre disregard for nearly everything we have learned about human behavior in the last century. With rare exceptions, we use our prisons almost solely to punish—even though there is nothing in research or anecdotal observation that tells us that punishment alone will improve behavior and/or expand one’s ability to function as an upright, productive citizen. In most cases, it makes people worse, not better. We seem also to forget that 95 percent of 2.3 million who are locked up in our nation’s prisons at any given time, will eventually come home. Then, we act shocked and dismayed when more than half of the more than 700,000 Americans who are paroled each year, do not succeed on the outside.
I long for the time when our policies are based more promoting public safety and community health instead of some atavistic notion of vengeance.
THE FEDS AND THE DEATH PENALITY
Carrie Johnson for NPR reports that “…a quiet revolution has overtaken the death penalty debate. Like many trends, this one started in the states and moved to the federal level..” That “quiet revolution” means fewer executions. Read the details here.
THREE MULTIMILLION $$ EXECUTIONS
The Seattle Times reports that various counties in Washington state have put capitol punishment on hold due to budgetary concerns. In King County, which still has active death penalty cases, the paper reports that “.…the cost of prosecuting two men and a woman accused of two of the most heinous crimes in King County in recent years is $656,564 and counting.
The cost of defending them is even higher: $4.3 million, and also climbing.”
Last year’s prosecutor of a third case has thus far cost the county $2.4 million.
All three of these cases, the defendants appear to be the worst of the worst-–people that one is hard-pressed to believe that the planet will miss all that much.
Still, even some of the Washington’s death penalty advocates are wondering if maybe the price tag is too high for the state to afford.
IF LAW-N-ORDER STATES LIKE TEXAS CAN REVISE THEIR SENTENCING LAWS, WHY CAN’T CALIFORNIA?
Charlie Savage of the New York Times has this story:
Fanned by the financial crisis, a wave of sentencing and parole reforms is gaining force as it sweeps across the United States, reversing a trend of “tough on crime” policies that lasted for decades and drove the nation’s incarceration rate to the highest — and most costly — level in the developed world.
While liberals have long complained that harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses like drug possession are unjust, the push to overhaul penal policies has been increasingly embraced by elected officials in some of the most conservative states in the country. And for a different reason: to save money….
FULLERTON’S CITY COUNCIL APPROVES LA’S MIKE GENNACO TO EXAMINE THE PRACTICES OF FULLERTON P.D. IN WAKE OF KELLY THOMAS BEATING DEATH
The LA Times’ Richard Winton has the story. Here’s a clip:
The Fullerton City Council late Tuesday gave the go-ahead for an independent review of the city’s embattled Police Department and to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a homeless man after a violent encounter with six officers.
Michael Gennaco, who oversees Los Angeles County’s Office of Independent Review and scrutinizes the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s actions, said the two contracts approved by the Fullerton council allow him to review Kelly Thomas’ death and conduct a separate extensive review of department policies and procedures.
The council’s decision came after a meeting dominated by more than two hours of public comments criticizing how the Police Department and the city handled the July 5 altercation that resulted in Thomas’ death and its aftermath. The meeting grew so heated that three council members briefly walked out.
Illustration from SerenaDraws
Bravo, Deborah Denno! Havn’t read her book as yet but I’m very happy that a well known criminologist/attorney has brought the brain to our attention as it applies to criminal behavior. As one who specializes in working with brainwave activity I cannot overstate how a greater understanding of the brain will help us climb out of the dark ages of prison policy. Does anyone know, for example, that an injury to the right frontal lobe can result in behaviors that are similar to a sociopath’s? And that’s just for starters. Can’t begin to describe what drugs, both legal and illegal, are capable of doing to the brain. The frustrating thing is, as you put it Celeste, policy makers have ignored everything we have learned about human behavior in lieu of revenge. The insights we have gained about the brain would put an entirely different spin on justice as we know it.