most of it on incarceration<\/a>. \u201cIt costs so much to put people in jail and we know it has very low utility \u2013 you\u2019ve broken their social circles, their employment opportunities \u2013 so they\u2019ll come right back round through that revolving door.\u201d<\/p>\nThe changes open up the possibility of other factors being taken into consideration sentencing. For example, roughly a third of US prisoners have a mental illness. Some also have drug addictions. Both are poorly tackled by the criminal justice system, says Eagleman who argues the prison system has become the \u201cde facto mental health system\u201d.<\/p>\n
Addiction fundamentally changes the reward system in an addict\u2019s brain, which means he or she no longer responds to the threat of punishment in the same way, says Nora Volkow, the director of the Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. \u201cThis explains why the threat of a judicial punishment cannot stop drug-taking,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
That potential for change, even in adult brains, is why people like Eagleman advocate treatment over punishment. His team is running an ambitious programme to improve impulse control in drug addicts. \u201cThe brain is like a team of rivals, all of whom are trying to be in control,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a battle between parts of the brain that want the drug and the parts that are engaged in long-term deliberative thinking and forgoing the drug.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eagleman and his colleagues are using real-time neuroimaging feedback to strengthen people\u2019s short-term capacity to resist impulses. He places someone with a drug addiction in an fMRI scanner and shows her a picture of whatever it is she is trying to resist; cocaine, for example. At first, he asks her to allow the craving to proceed, and he measures her brain activity. On a screen inside the scanner, the volunteer watches a bar that represents her craving level. Then Eagleman asks her to try to force the bar to go down. \u201cBy squelching that craving, you are strengthening the frontal lobes, which allow you to override impulses,\u201d says Eagleman. \u201cPracticing this over and over means you then know how, even if you don\u2019t quite understand it, to make that bar go down.\u201d<\/p>\n
This study is only just underway, and has yet to show if mental strengthening could be a more rational approach to treatment \u2013 and prevent habitual reoffending \u2013 than imprisonment alone. But it has its supporters. \u201cAnything that can teach people how to control their impulses is a much more sensible way to deal with highly impulsive behaviour than just locking someone up,\u201d says Mackintosh.<\/p>\n
In moving towards legal systems that focus as much on treatment as on punishment, societies will nevertheless have to confront an uncomfortable truth, says Eagleman: retribution is built in to our systems. We don\u2019t imprison people just to prevent them from committing a similar crime or to keep society safe, but to punish them and make them pay for what they did.<\/p>\n
In the case of Grady Nelson, one of the jurors who voted to imprison him for life rather than execute him did so not because he was persuaded by the neuroscientific evidence of Nelson\u2019s brain abnormality, but because he wanted him to live with the stigma of being a child rapist. It shows that human beings are hardwired for retribution, says Eagleman. \u201cPeople will give their own resources to punish others even when they\u2019ve not been affected themselves. Even if someone was driven to paedophilia because of a brain tumour, we\u2019ll probably need a minimum amount of sentencing. Just extracting the tumour won\u2019t slake the bloodlust of society.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0By Priya Shetty<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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