The Anatomy of Violence (64 page)

Neurocriminology is now providing the foundations upon which to not just dissect the future Hannibal
Lecters and
Donta Pages, but to potentially prevent their very occurrence in the first place—if we act early. In the wake of the Newtown shootings, many officials and citizens were quick to point not only to guns as the culprit but to our general lack of mental health services. Can we do more for those all too often underserved children like Donta Page and prevent future disasters? After all, what’s so heinous about investing resources in better pre- and postnatal nutrition and care for the underserved, better elementary
school nutrition, reducing lead exposure, implementing education on parenting skills, and identifying children with serious behavior problems for benign interventions? Investing resources—costly though it may be—in the next generation of adolescents at risk for violence is not just a place on that slope where I am prepared to stand, but it’s where I hope you’ll stand with me.

Most positive societal advances somehow involve a so-called slippery slope. Can we not find ways to collectively and humanely move forward to reduce violence? Neurocriminology and a more profound understanding of the early biological causes of violence can help us take a more empathic, understanding, and merciful approach not just to the victims of violence but also to the prisoners themselves. In that process, would not the standing of all of us in an allegedly civilized society be raised?

As I sit writing here in a room in Churchill College, Cambridge, reflecting on our outlook on prisoners, my mind inevitably turns to
Winston Churchill, who himself had been a prisoner during the
Boer War. More than a hundred years ago, Churchill, as home secretary, stood up in the House of Commons and gave his
perspective on how we should treat criminals:

That was more than a century ago, and yet today how calm and dispassionate have the most civilized countries in the world become on this issue? Are we tirelessly pursuing curative and regenerative
processes for the cancer of crime? Do we genuinely desire rehabilitation? Or does our mood and temper move us in anger to the costly coinage of retribution that we saw served out to
Kip Kinkel, and societal protection above all cost? How would Churchill view us today if he could see where we currently stand in our treatment of prisoners?

We look back 200 years and are aghast at an age when
mentally ill patients were kept locked in fetters and chains, and treated little better than animals because of their unacceptable behavior. In a society that was in its time at the pinnacle of world knowledge, such treatment of patients seemed totally appropriate. It was a radical and revolutionary approach for the physician
Philippe Pinel to free mentally ill patients from their shackles in Paris in 1793 and place them under more humane conditions. Today the inhumane treatment of the mentally ill seems unconscionable to us. The critical question for us to consider is whether less than a hundred years from now, a much more advanced society than the one we live in will look back aghast at our current conceptualization of violence and our concomitant incarceration and execution of prisoners with the same incredulity with which today we look back at the earlier treatment of mental patients. They may well wonder how society could have countenanced such practices and overlooked the glittering gems—small though they may be—in each and every offender who had the potential to contribute positively to society.

In a wider context, others concur with Churchill’s early vision of the potential for living virtue in our society. As
Steven Pinker eloquently outlined in his book
The Better Angels of Our Nature
, our society is moving us to be more empathic, better able to control our impulses, and to reason rather than react. The result, he argues, is that over the course of history, despite periodic swings, violence has slowly
declined.
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The history of the world has also shown that as society becomes more ennobled and sophisticated, physical and mental disabilities such as
epilepsy,
psychosis, mental deficiency, and
alcoholism cease to be viewed in a moral or theological context and become perceived more in the humanitarian context of treatment.
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Just as mental disorders were once viewed as a product of
evil forces, will the evil behavior of violent offenders eventually be reformulated as treatable clinical disorders? Society may deny this perspective in the short term, but I believe that a future generation with a calmer and more dispassionate perspective will indeed take this conceptual leap.

Extreme views certainly require due caution, but we must not forget
that extreme views can be appropriate, and that moderate views can be erroneous. During the
witchcraft hunts of the Reformation era in Europe, a moderate view would have been to wake up one morning and decide not to burn too many witches that day. An extreme view would have been to wake up and decide not to burn
any
witches. The notion of recidivistic violence as a clinical disorder may currently seem ludicrous to you. We must, however, face the possibility that if we close the door to even considering this perspective, we open the gates to tragedy—that breakthrough advances in remediation and treatment of
crime will be foreclosed or hopelessly stalled, and
future lives will be lost. Some think the issues are too hot to handle, or, as one leading criminologist in good faith once confided to me, “No good can ever come of genetic research on violence.” We must indeed be ever mindful of how neurobiological research findings are interpreted, as such research can be misused. Yet if we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to consider new approaches for a better society, are we not all diminished by our blindness?

We live today in the most scientific and intellectually advanced society in the history of the world. We aspire for heavenly knowledge and have formulated firm convictions that we hold to be true. History has shown, though, that societies at different stages in history with a similar thirst for science have made grievous misjudgments under the banner of absolute knowledge. We have to cure ourselves of that irritating itch for absolute knowledge and certainty. I must consider the possibility that I err in creating a bridge between crime and
cancer. Violence may not be a clinical disorder. I do not have the answers on some issues; I am not even sure where I stand on others. Some of my scientific views are tinged with personal perspectives, and like all scientists I stand on the edge of error in my empirical research. In the same spirit of humility, I hope that in your own mind and heart you can at least consider this new zeitgeist.

What is the main message I want to leave you with? I want to suggest that society’s willingness to firmly grasp the neuroethical nettles that entangle neurocriminology, and to sensibly and cautiously integrate innovative clinical neuroscience findings with
public policy, will be a critical ingredient for our future success in violence prevention. Building further on a public health approach to violence truly has the capacity to create a healthier future. We can seize the day, change tomorrow, and create a safer world for the next generation. An open
and honest dialogue on the issues raised here will prepare the public for future developments—whatever they may be—and help facilitate future success in violence prevention.

When we finally get to 2034, will it be
utopia or dystopia? You may think that the future landscape I have painted has an
Orwellian echo—but it need not have a bleak Orwellian ending. You may recall the chant from Orwell’s
Animal Farm
of “Four legs good, two legs better,” as the privileged pigs tottered around their underling animals on two trotters. Their propaganda had closed down the minds of their comrades and created a class-based, inequitable society. Winston
Smith in the end of
1984
was reduced to doublethink—believing in two contradictory views. Perhaps the government’s
LOMBROSO program, which would tell us we can protect society and rehabilitate offenders at the same time is a similar contradictory double message. Yet if we retain an open dialogue on these issues we can prise apart doublethink and both keep our cake and eat it too.

I do believe that in tomorrow’s world we can rise above our feelings of retribution, reach out for rehabilitation, and engage in a more humane discourse on the causes of violence. After all, while we may disagree on the finer points, I believe we can all agree on our priority of
preventing
future violence. We can have a braver new world where sunshine replaces shadows. You can either stay where you are in the dark with our retributivist perspective, as I myself have been, or you can move ahead into a new day. We do have a choice—and you can choose.

We cannot continue to maintain an uncompromising mind-set, where one perspective—social or biological—dominates the other in a stranglehold over who calls the shots in curbing violence.
Amy Gutmann and
Dennis Thompson in
The Spirit of Compromise
argue that in the
polarized political arena, all sides need to give up ground in a mutual sacrifice for sound governance, adjusting long-cherished principles for the greater good.
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Achieving this in academic criminology is an enormous challenge, requiring traditional social scientists to reverse-thrust on their long-held beliefs and embrace the anatomy of violence—a new body of knowledge that can be suffocating to some in its sophistication. Yet standing steadfast on social principles can equally stifle progress. It is up to you the reader today to help us scientists surface for air, and with your civic perspective move us forward in reevaluating where we should stand tomorrow on the seething hotbeds of violence prevention.

In the final analysis, you may decide to stand your ground and turn a blind eye to the science this book has summarized and the societal issues I have raised. You may want to believe that a biological basis to violence does not exist, or it’s going to be explained away in some manner. Like an ostrich evading the hunter, you may decide to bury your head in the sand. But if we do not make a move and act on the anatomy of violence, I believe this cancer will continue. And you had better watch out—the ostrich may get shot.

My sincere hope is that you will not turn a blind eye to the science—I want those ostriches to be alive and well. Nevertheless, you may be completely convinced that the fundamental message of the anatomy of violence is profoundly misguided. But if you happen to be a Christian, consider the words of
Oliver Cromwell when he spoke to the Church of Scotland against its intended alliance with King Charles II:

And if you are not a Christian, I beseech you in your own bowels—or any other part of your anatomy that you choose—to consider that we all have the capacity to be wrong. In dissecting the anatomy of violence, I have that capacity—don’t you too? More important than persuasion and conviction is open discussion, laying forth scientific reality, and allowing society to judiciously choose how to act in the ensuing light. My sincere hope is that our discussion will continue in the forthcoming decades and move us all into a safer and more humane society.