NCJ Number
184118
Journal
Journal of Offender Rehabilitation Volume: 31 Issue: 1/2 Dated: 2000 Pages: 87-99
Date Published
2000
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study reports on ratios between the relative incidence of brain dysfunction among different types of violent offenders and the general population.
Abstract
The authors developed a tinder-box model for the analysis of criminal aggression and have maintained a count of empirical studies published in the past 40 years that have examined violent criminal offenders for the presence or absence of brain dysfunction. They also have reported on ratios between the relative incidence of neuropathology among offenders arrayed by type of violent crime and the overall incidence in the general population. The Federal Centers for Disease Control in the spring of 1999 reported that incidence of neuropathology in the general population as slightly more than 2 percent. Thus, the relative ratios for neuropathology among violent offenders range from highs of 47 to 1 for homicide offenders and 48 to 1 for sex offenders through midrange levels of 43 to 1 for juvenile offenders, 39 to 1 for assault offenders, 33 to 1 for incest offenders, to lows of 6 to 1 for 1-time aggressives. These findings suggest the likelihood that neuroscience research will soon demonstrate conclusively that criminal aggressive behavior is triggered by primitive neurophysiological or neurochemical processes over which the individual can be expected to exert little volitional control. Therefore, advances in knowledge about the neurogenesis of violence will inevitably shrink the scope of criminal law much as happened when then-current scientific knowledge led to the initial formulation of the M’Naghten Standard in 1843. M’Naghten’s crime occurred nearly 45 years after Hadfield was determined non-culpable of his attempt to assassinate George III in what is perhaps the earliest clearly documented evidence linking disordered neurology to criminal violence. Table, figure, and 47 references