Via Nature, the international weekly journal of science, the latest version of the Philip Dick’s 1956 sci-fi story, Minority Report has emerged.
[N]euroscientists have found a way to predict whether convicted felons are likely to commit crimes again from looking at their brain scans. Convicts showing low activity in a brain region associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again, and sooner.The research shows that the amount of activity in the “anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a small region in the front of the brain involved in motor control and executive functioning” correlated with the likelihood that a person would reoffend.
Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the non-profit Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his collaborators studied a group of 96 male prisoners just before their release. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the prisoners’ brains during computer tasks in which subjects had to make quick decisions and inhibit impulsive reactions.
Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes.I assume that the use of the word “rearrest” was an accidental, perhaps even impulsive word choice, and what they mean to say is commit a new crime that doesn’t involve teak and guitar fretboards.
This isn’t the first time someone has come up with a way to bring this particular flavor of dystopia in the real world of the criminal justice system. In 2010, Wharton professor Richard Berk announced he had developed an app for that, which had been put to use in parole supervision to identify individuals likely to reoffend for increased supervision.
The ethical, legal and logical problems with such approaches are obvious. Action taken in anticipation of a crime yet to be committed can never be proven wrong, and yet the inchoate criminals will suffer consequences for something they didn’t do. But will such theoretical concerns prevent the implementation of the Minority Report?
The fear, of course, is that our society, and particularly our politicians, so adore a magic bullet solution to intractable problems that the chance of this software being turned from an aid to a pre-emptive excuse to imprison people for what they have yet to do looms large. If this program works, it’s the perfect candidate for a slide down the slippery slope toward Minority Report. Quick, easy, and unless you or your loved one happens to be identified as inchoate criminal, a risk most people are prepared to take to stop crime.Bear in mind, its use, at least under both of these paradigms, applies to people already convicted of committing a crime. These are not the sort of folks for whom politicians or most of the public feel much empathy. Heck, most of the public would be happy to lock them away for life without any indication of a likelihood of reoffending. This just adds another layer of justification for perpetual sentencing.
“But it’s science, bro,” you say. Much as technology and science bring wonderful things to our lives, history (which is not science) teaches us that much of what science tells works perfectly hasn’t borne out over time. We are absolutely certain that today’s science is foolproof, and a generation or two later come to the realization that it was nothing more than repeatable voodoo.
We had vast experience with the reliance on “science” as a fix for all that ails the criminal justice system. From fingerprints to DNA, it’s been embraced as a way to remove the human element and replace it with a determination based on scientific certainty. We love certainty, and toss in the word science and minds shut down and a warm glow covers us as the responsibility for being right shifts to the prophets of empiricism. Of course, history has also shown that scientific certainty is anything but certain, as we continually learn how yesterday’s absolute certainty turns into tomorrow’s mistaken reliance on junk science.
At least the Kiehl study group recognizes that its ACC concepts isn’t ready to be marketed, as Berk has already done.
For the time being, this remains an area worthy of further research, but that doesn’t mean someone in a government position won’t seize upon it as a magic bullet to be fired before aiming. And while Kiehl may find comfort in the notion that “it is likely to flag only the truly high-risk felons,” that’s the sort of rationalization that obscures the problem if you or your loved one happens to land in that imaginary group.But the authors themselves stress that much more work is needed to prove that the technique is reliable and consistent, and that it is likely to flag only the truly high-risk felons and leave the low-risk ones alone. “This isn’t ready for prime time,” says Kiehl.
Wager adds that the part of the ACC examined in this study “is one of the most frequently activated areas in the human brain across all kinds of tasks and psychological states”. Low ACC activity could have a variety of causes — impulsivity, caffeine use, vascular health, low motivation or better neural efficiency — and not all of these are necessarily related to criminal behaviour.
Adding the words “truly high risk” to a person who hasn’t done anything wrong, yet, brings little comfort to the person who has paid his debt to society and is nonetheless denied the opportunity to live out the rest of his life as a productive, law-abiding citizen. And when science says this works, will anyone care that the feared future crime never happened, or will that be our reason to applaud Kiehl’s contribution to our safety?
H/T Keith Lee
The difficulty with such reports is the rabid manner in which many news outlets chomp (champ?) at the bit as soon as any study like this is released, heralding it as a unquestionable scientifically-proven truth with vast arrays of practical use, such claims often supported by an actual university professor that is willing to be interviewed and give a soundbite, even if he or she had to find time in their busy schedule by rescheduling the actual reading of the study. Then some politicians hear about this and propose laws named after children (whom heartless defense lawyers and civil rights advocates never seem to think about or do anything for) that would require all courtrooms to be equipped with fMRI machines, so that defendants (but never, of course, police officers) get their brains scanned to determine whether they are horrible monsters who are or will be clearly guilty of something, whether it is the offense in question or not.
Was the control group prosecutors?
History repeats itself. Those of a certain age may remember the case of Dr. Timothy Leary, first known as the namesake of the Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test and later as “the most dangerous man in America”.
Let us not say that the government has learned nothing since then however. You see, this time we already have an extradition treaty with Afghanistan in place.
fMRI studies are themselves questionable at all levels. In the demonstration of that, a group found brain activity in the corpse of a salmon.
The use of fMRI is open to interpretation, and appears to be, at least at the present time, of more use in obtaining grants than in actual science.