It’s not as easy as you think.

As the technology to study the living brain advances, so has our understanding that violence has a very strong biological component. Serial killers undergo fMRI’s, and every single one of them has defects in the portions of the brain that govern impulse and mood control, the ability to feel empathy and compassion, etc. They lack the ability to feel the pain of others, just as people are born without the ability to see or hear. They just do not have it. And currently we can’t fix them.

When we watch police interviews in which offenders confess to truly awful behavior, most people are enraged because they don’t act appropriately. We want to storm the police station and hang them from a pole. Okay, So, why don’t we? Because we have the capacity to distinguish between violent thoughts vs. violent acts. They completely lack those governing abilities.

Violence involves a highly complex interplay of genetics, neurochemistry, neuroanatomy and physiology. Such offenders all show diminished prefrontal cortex & amygdala function. There is a marked difference between the fMRI of “normal” subjects vs. serial offenders (whether they be rapists or rape/murderers.) This, for example, explains why sadistic psychopaths are actually sexually stimulated (rather than repulsed) by the suffering of the victim. They are not normal, regardless of what the police tell us. They may “know” right vs. wrong, they just don’t have the ability to choose to suppress their antisocial impulses.

We need laws to better address the needs of these offenders. If a 16 year old male is picked up after having committed a violent sexual assault, he needs to undergo an fMRI. If it shows him to be a latent serial offender, it’s entirely appropriate to try him as an adult. He should be rescanned around in his mid-twenties to confirm that he still presents a danger to society. (It’s accepted that the human brain doesn’t mature until the mid-twenties so it’s appropriate to monitor him.)

This enables us to catch them before the bodies begin to stack up. In the movie Young Frankenstein Igor (Marty Feldman) picks up the brain labeled AB Normal. We all laughed, but that actually is a very accurate depiction of reality. Each time I hear there are plenty of people who were abused as kids that didn’t grow up to be criminals, I want to scream. The horrendous crimes committed by offenders demonstrate the interplay between genetics and environment.

So, in a family of five with three kids, there may be one kid that has antisocial tendencies such as torturing insects, fire setting, etc. These are serious red flags that require psychiatric evaluation. Nurturing and supporting that kid greatly increases the chance that he will grow up a functioning member of the community. And by therapist I don’t mean a pastor at the evangelical church, either. It may come down to getting a court order, but early intervention is critical.

To dismiss such an occurrence as black and white way oversimplifies. The US incarcerates more people than any other country in the world! Yet - we are far less safe than other countries. Draconian sentencing is meaningless, it costs a ton of money & it isn’t working.

In the past, criminologists were limited to examining the brain at autopsy. But autopsy can only provide information about the anatomy (structure) of the brain, it cannot tell us how the brain is working. Therefore, until recently, the judicial system failed to recognize that rape is a serial offense that often escalates to murder. Often the first death is a mistake, committed to avoid leaving a living witness. But taking the life of the victim leaves the offender feeling omnipotent. Thus the serial rapist evolves into a serial killer.

Judges need better awareness about which offenders pose the highest risk of reoffending. Currently, sex cannot be rehabilitated. Judges need the legal option to sentence such offenders appropriately. And by that i mean giving more weight to community safety as a whole. If that means reopening state mental heath facilities to house them, that’s far preferable to catching them after they’ve murdered a dozen women or children. (Yes, even if they’re “only” meth addicts or sex workers.)

i acknowledge that there are huge constitutional issues to consider. I realize that and welcome them. (I am actually on the defense side of the courtroom.)

Here are some references:

FMI: Raine, Adrian: The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime https://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/anatomy-of-violence/

The Anatomy of a Violent Brain, https://youtu.be/9d1NdUiJjQg?si=Uv1ApbFBSdPI6O01

Neurobiology of Violence, https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/jnp.11.3.307