A good chuck of criminal's are currently diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder (wiki).
And while I'm not technically supposed to reproduce these, I can't find a source you don't have to pay to see, here's a graph my professor put together to show the correlation between gray matter in the prefrontal cortex (the most anterior region of your brain, behind the forehead area).
The prefrontal cortex, among many things, is believed to control social cognition, morals, empathy, etc. (Google Phineas Gage, if you don't know his story to see a good example of what happens with prefrontal damage). I don't know the exact story, but I do know that, recently, a DA used the defense that his client wasn't as fault-- the gray matter deficiencies impaired his moral judgment. And while the jury called BS, I think that, eventually, an argument may be made.
I also wonder how this could effect rehabilitation. If criminals are inclined to be criminals because of a deficiency at birth, can a social institution alone fix the problem?
[edit] Fixed the quality of the graph.
And while I'm not technically supposed to reproduce these, I can't find a source you don't have to pay to see, here's a graph my professor put together to show the correlation between gray matter in the prefrontal cortex (the most anterior region of your brain, behind the forehead area).
The prefrontal cortex, among many things, is believed to control social cognition, morals, empathy, etc. (Google Phineas Gage, if you don't know his story to see a good example of what happens with prefrontal damage). I don't know the exact story, but I do know that, recently, a DA used the defense that his client wasn't as fault-- the gray matter deficiencies impaired his moral judgment. And while the jury called BS, I think that, eventually, an argument may be made.
I also wonder how this could effect rehabilitation. If criminals are inclined to be criminals because of a deficiency at birth, can a social institution alone fix the problem?
[edit] Fixed the quality of the graph.
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