The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine Read Free Book Online

color-plate section, you can see very clearly the reduced medial prefrontal cortical functioning. He is less capable than the rest of us to reflect on his behavior, to recognize factors that place him at risk for violence, and to take responsibility for those risk factors and seek treatment.
    Let’s step back and consider the counter to my own court testimony. Aren’t we treading into legal quicksand if we accept the biosocial argument for clemency to Donta Page? Let’s concede that genes place the bullets in the gun. I’ll admit that the environment cocks the trigger. But surely it is your choice whether to pull the trigger?
    Scientifically, I take a more deterministic—and some would say pessimistic—perspective. If there are people stumbling around with a loaded, cocked gun all the time, somebody for sure is going to get shot. We cannot prove that brain impairments cause violence, but as with Page, we can come close.
    But your retort is that these offenders must have
some
degree of insight into their loaded-gun condition, and must know there’s something just not right with them. Based in part on the four years I worked with prison inmates, I’m not so sure. Most prisoners whom I suspected to have brain dysfunction simply had no idea that anything was wrong with them. This is not entirely surprising when you consider the neurodevelopmental basis to violence, with brain mechanisms not developing normally throughout childhood and adolescence. In many cases these offenders grew up with brain dysfunction, so it has always been an intrinsic part of them. Even when their biological dysfunction is pointed out to them, like many of the general public they believe that the causes of violence nevertheless lie squarely in social factors like poverty, unemployment, bad influences, poor parenting, and child abuse. That’s what they have grown up to believe. I think that these offenders and some of you think that way because poverty and bad parenting can be objectively seen and recognized, and are consequently very salient—whereasbiological risk factors are invisible to the naked eye. Yet the neurobiological reality is that many offenders, likePhineas Gage, and individuals withAlzheimer’s disease, have brain impairments and cannot objectively evaluate their own minds.
    But even if offenders knew they were at risk for violence, the way society is constructed precludes them from doing anything about it. Even if Donta Page had been able to recognize and comprehend the implications of the many factors that placed him at high risk for impulsive violence, what was he going to do about it? Go to the police and tell them he felt likeraping someone? 18 We know what the societal response to that would be, and you cannot blame an individual for not wanting to be locked up for a long time in prison. There are no self-help groups for foresightful criminals.
    In reading over the case of Donta Page, you may have been reminded of a friend, an acquaintance, or even a family member who might have had some biological and social risk factors for crime, and yet they did not succumb. So you say, surely there must be something profoundly wrong with this actuarial approach of weighing degrees of risk for violence.
    Thecounterargument? The concept ofprotective factors. That person sticking out in your memory with all those risk factors for crime likely had positive influences on their lives—factors
protecting
them from future crime in the face of the biosocial bogeymen. For example, positive family functioning can protect a child from antisocial behavior in the face of living in a community with a high level of violence. 19 Or, conversely, I have shown that good fear conditioning 20 and high levels of arousal 21 serve as biological factors that protect a child from adult crime even when that child was antisocial during the teenage years. These protective factors helped them along a different course, but not necessarily because they had exerted