The dream of criminologists is to find a physical characteristic or set of characteristics that can predict with certainty which children will grow up to be sociopaths. In particular, the issue is what causes “bad seeds," that is, individuals who are predestined to commit crimes, especially murder.

Psychologists have long studied people who lack emotional responses to other human beings, the sort of people that tend to be criminals. In high-profile televised trials, mental-health and FBI profiter commentators typically identify these people as displaying “a flat affect” when confronted with proof of human suffering. You may recall, for example, psychologists describing Scott Peterson’s flat affect (expressionless face) when confronted with photos of his wife’s torso. (Since the Peterson trial was not televised, we have only these commentators’ word for how the defendant looked.)

For over a century, biologists have attempted to find specific defects in the human brain that lead to anti-social behavior. Neurologists in particular have wanted to determine whether genetic defects can be identified in young children.

Why would anyone want to predict criminality in a child? Dr. Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania says, “[I]f I could tell you, as a parent, that your child has a 75-percent chance of becoming a criminal, wouldn’t you want to know and maybe have the chance to do something about it?”

Dr. Raines does not offer any advice for parents of such children, however.

Recently The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Dr. Raine has proposed that he has found two or three physiological brain defects that are early-childhood indicators of “dangerous minds.” According to Dr. Raine’s theory, sociopaths can be spotted in infancy and sometimes even in the womb.

Studies of the heads of criminals date back to the 1800s. Phrenologists mapped the bumps on human skulls and claimed to be able to determine personality traits of individuals based on their unique bump patterns.

Anthropologists compared human skulls and purported to be able to identify racial differences in bones and particularly in skulls. Paul Broca developed craniometry and believed he could predict personality based on the size and shape of a skull. In addition, this field of anthropology proposed some racist theories about intelligence, too.

During the 20th century, numerous studies were conducted of possible biological causes of aberrant human behavior. In the 1990s, neuroscientist Dr. Antonio Damasio demonstrated that the size of the amygdala (a part of the brain responsible for many emotions) is a predictor of certain behaviors in humans.

In 1997 Dr. Raine applied both Damasio’s theory and another of his own observations involving damage to the prefrontal cortex of the human brain: Raine PET-scanned the heads of 41 convicted murderers with those of 41 “normal” people. Dr. Raine looked at the number of convicted criminals from “good homes” who also had brain abnormalities. He concluded that genetic and biological factors were more influential on criminal minds than were “nurture” factors. In other words, the criminals he studied were born bad. (I have no idea how he defined a “good home.”)

Earlier in his research career, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dr. Raine studied the possibility of predicting specific acts of violence by criminals. He taped electrodes to a number of convicts heads and then locked himself in the back of a van with them. At that point—with prison guards stationed outside to rescue him if necessary—Raine proceeded to do his best to irritate the prisoners in hopes they would snap and try to beat him up. He believed he could predict the moment they snapped using their brainwaves. The experiment was a failure: nothing he did got a rise out of any of them.

In addition, Dr. Raine has found what he refers to as a “hole” known formally as a cavum septum pellucidum. He has found this hole in fetal scans as well as scans of adult criminal brains.

To What End?

First, I would like to point out that Adrian Raine is a private-sector researcher. He conducts his research under the auspices of universities (and in this context even state-owned universities are not public-sector). In addition, while Raine’s research is potentially applicable to forensics, it is not intended to produce evidence of criminality that can be presented in court. His aim is to help caregivers (parents, teachers, mental health professionals) identify potentially problem children in order to provide therapy before they develop sociopathy.

However, it is inevitable that his studies (and similar ones) will be used for highly dubious social engineering purposes. The only acceptable use for this research IMHO is in gene therapy to prevent the development of fetal brains that exhibit these abnormalities.

Casey Anthony’s Mind

I suspect that if the State of Florida could produce brain-scan evidence of Casey Anthony that demonstrated she had a small amygdala, a large frontal cortex, and a hole between the  halves of her brain, they would. Both Ms. Drane-Burdick and Mr. Ashton appear to me to have a visceral dislike of Casey Anthony. And this is what most troubles me about their prosecution of the case:

Why do the prosecutors not want Casey Anthony to be able to put on a defense? Why do they object to almost every witness for the defense and to almost every item of evidence the defense puts forward?

If I were on the Casey Anthony jury, I would resent what seems to me to be the prosecution’s attempt to prevent me from hearing her side of the story.