Summary: Pregnancy And Accountability

It’s unnerving when someone with no criminal record commits a disturbingly violent crime but is it just as alarming if someone that has brain damage commits a crime? For most of us, myself included, we think criminals make a choice to break the law. In a challenging case piece, “The Brain on trial,” written by, Neuroscientist David Eagleman narrates several cases of mental illness criminals and the frightening events which took place August 1, 1966. Eagleman argues that human behavior cannot be separated from human biology and believes that criminals that suffer from a mental illness is the reason they commit an illegal act. Specifically, Eagleman argues that a “forward-thinking legal system” will respond to neuroscience’s increasing capacity to demonstrate the illusory nature of free will by developing “customized rehabilitation” for criminal behavior. Overall, Eagleman’s perspective and research, explains his thoughts and influences that cause individuals to perform certain acts, allow us to understand his proposal of a forward-thinking legal system and have rehabilitation for criminals with mental illnesses.

Unfortunately, TBI and inmates is not a well-established area of study. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2007), mild TBI is found within 25% to 87% of inmates. One such that looked at prevalence was done by Diamond, Harzke, Magaletta, Cummins, and Frankowski (2007) where the researchers looked at Minnesota male state prisoners and assessed them using the Traumatic Brain Injury Questionnaire. What the authors found

Since our justice system is designed to punish those who have deliberately chosen to do something wrong, there is a defence for those who have a “disease of the mind” (Verdun-Jones, Criminal Law in Canada, 2015, p. 206) because they, technically speaking, did not choose to do so in their right mind. Such defence is the defence of “not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder” (Verdun-Jones, Criminal Law in Canada, 2015, p. 204). As stated in section 16(1) of the Criminal Code (Carswell, 2015):

The brain can be affected by damage and cause behavior to be expressed differently in every person. Events such as a car crash or childhood abuse can affect brain development and function. Damage to certain areas of the brain can have a variety of effects. The hippocampus controls emotions and is associated with memory, and the frontal lobe is a brain cortex that controls motor functions, problem solving, memory, language, judgments, social and sexual behavior and impulse. When the frontal lobe or hippocampus is affected, a person’s emotion can be out of their control. In criminal cases, brain damage can affect the sentencing of a violent criminal, but to what extent should these abnormalities play a role in their conviction? Much research has been conducted in order to determine the effect that brain abnormalities should have on the conviction of violent criminals. A psychiatrist at New York University, Dr. Lewis, has conducted a study on death-row inmates, how their brains work and what affect the damage had on their conviction. By doing so Dr. Lewis paved the way for other researchers, such as Kent Kiehl and Jonathan H. Pincus to study the brains of violent criminals looking for a answer as to whether or not these criminals should be incarcerated. Over time research has been conducted focusing on mental illnesses and brain damage as the cause of violent acts instead of it being just premeditated murder. Many believe brain damage or mental illness should have no affect on

What the TBI victim goes through is horrific. Traumatic brain injury can cause a wide range of functional issues, short-term or long-term. It can affect thinking, sensation, language, or emotions (CDC). The long term damage of TBI’s can result in permanent damage that can change the person’s deficits to varying degrees, especially long

Traumatic brain injury is any damage caused to the brain. Individuals with TBI may show aphasia-like symptoms, yet the characteristics of TBI include mostly cognitive processes deficits. Those characteristics include disrupt orientation, attention, memory, visual processing, and executive functions problems. Penitents with TBI experience a blackout that can last anywhere between a few minutes up to months and usually wake up confused and disoriented. They do not have any recollection of the events that occurred. In addition to the common characteristics mentioned earlier, TBI patients exhibit communication deficits that relate to poor cognitive functioning such as problems with word finding, grammatical, spelling, reading, and writing. The cause of TBI is very straightforward, unlike SLI or ASD. Any injury to the head, for example motor vehicle accidents, falls, blast trauma, and more, can cause a TBI. These in turn can cause damage to multiple areas of the brain and impair motor, speech, language, and cognitive functions as discussed. It is important to note that unlike ASD that usually

As someone who feels that no one is above the law, I have some reservations about completely changing sentencing guidelines so that two people who inflict the same harm receive drastically different punishments merely based on the states of their brains. Furthermore, because an increasing number of people are being diagnosed with various mild mental illnesses (depression, bipolar disorder, etc.), this may end conventional guidelines for sentencing. Because of the availability of psychologists for examinations and the potential for human error, I’m concerned about the potential for unequal judgment and sentencing. That being said, I do believe that this modification of the legal system will be most fair to criminal that have been driven towards crime by their difficult-to-control psychology, and can actually be implemented quite easily. One of the primary determining factors of a criminal’s culpability and appropriate sentence is their mens rea, or guilty mind, a spectrum of criminal liability ranging from accidental to premeditated. At the very least, the biology of a criminal’s brain could be introduced in court to mitigate the mens rea and therefore assign a more lenient and appropriate sentence. This gradual introduction could serve as an experimental gateway for the criminal justice system to begin implementing neuroscience as a foundation for sentencing and

In David Eagleman’s article “The Brain on Trail,” Eagleman (2011), a neuroscientist, writes about the massive developments that scientists have discovered about the brain and how our current justice system contradicts these findings. Eagleman’s main claim is that human behavior and human biology will always coincide with one another, which is why there should be personalized prison sentences, upgrades on rehabilitation programs, and introduce long-term catalysts for better performance.

There’s chances that an actual criminal could be faking a psychological dysfunction so they won’t be charged as guilty. Sapolsky asserts “Is a child doing poorly at school because he is unmotivated and slow, or because there is a neurobiological based learning disability?” (Quoted in Eagleman 438). Sapolsky’s question shows that it’s uncomplicated to mistake one thing for another. If a culprit committed a crim, and claimed that his/her motivation to do the crime was neurobiological, who’s to say that he/she is wrong? Even if the culprit was telling the truth, and he/she was sent to rehabilitation, they could hurt the workers with their impulses like Alex once tried to do. Even if rehabilitation did work, who’s to watch the patients after they got out? Dr. Kleiman proposes that “drug offenders undergo twice-weekly drug testing” (Quoted in Eagleman 442). Who’s to pay for these workers that are watching the patients? Who’s to pay for the rehabilitation facilities? Instead of using tax-payer dollars on trying to fix criminals for the crimes that they’ve done, the money can be used for a better purpose. Alex has shown that the impulses can come back at any time. Murderers and pedophiles shouldn’t be let into society just in case the feel these impulses. Even if they were let back into society, no one would look at them the

These deficits may be manifested in socially inappropriate behavior (Suchy, 2009) and can cause a great deal of distress and a decrease in overall quality of life (Langlois et al., 2006). In addition to these cognitive deficits, TBI has also been shown to have high comorbidity with various psychiatric disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety disorders (O’donnell, Creamer, & Pattison,

A significant and controversial issue within the legal system is the ‘insanity defense’ in which during a criminal trial, the defendant will make a claim that they are not guilty by reason of insanity, or in other words, they have deficient and impaired cognitive and mental capabilities. These mental health problems associated with insanity are caused by psychopathological disorders, which may have led to their dysfunction. What separates this from a regular plead of ‘diminished capacity’ is that a plea of insanity is a full defense rather than just a partial defense (Legal information institute, n.d.). With the diminished capacity defense, the defendant’s mental competence is still the focus, although they are pleading to a lesser crime

Two other types of tests were created regarding insanity in 1984--the Federal Insanity Defense Reform Act and Rogers Criminal Responsibility Assessment Scales. The Federal Insanity Defense Reform Act placed the burden of proof on the defendant, and not the prosecution (Morse, 2008). The Rogers Criminal Responsibility Assessment Scales were also developed in 1984 to evaluate criminal responsibility with regard to sanity. It uses the concepts of cognitive and volitional components and is structured to

When it comes to judging cases in the legal system, things get tricky due to the imbalance between psychology and law. Psychology acknowledges that disorders have degrees; however, the law uses the method of sane or insane. Due to this, “not guilty by reason of insanity” is used and one the most famous cases we see this in is the case of Andrea Yates. In my essay, I will explain the basics related to her case and my personal opinion on this case.

A traumatic brain injury (also known as a TBI) is a hit to the head that causes damage to the brain cells as well as causes the person to become confused, as a result of the information that’s being sent to neuron to neuron getting interrupted.When the impulses are not going the correct way it causes the person to change their personality, attitude and emotions. Not to mention that no two brain injuries are alike. For the medical team they take a different approach.

Mild traumatic brain injury may result in subtle physical alterations which lead to cognitive difficulties. Most of these injuries show no alteration on MRI and CT scans, therefore neuropsychological assessment has an essential role in evaluating cognitive and behavioural form of the injury (Belanger, Vanderploeg, Curtiss, & Warden 2007).