editorial
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17465729200500018 |
| Pages | 2-7 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | Felicity Callard |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
2journal of public mental health
vol 4 • issue 3
©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd
editorial
‘Until recently it was thought that the causes of
crime lay just in social factors like poverty and
unemployment. Yet repeat offending criminal
behaviour is a clinical disorder, with brain
impairments playing a key role. New research is now
showing that genetic and biological factors play an
equal, if not greater, role than social factors in crime
causation. Within this new field of biocriminology,
brain imaging findings are revealing dramatic new
insights into the criminal mind... Violent offenders
just do not have the emergency brakes to stop their
runaway aggressive behaviour. Literally speaking,
bad brains lead to bad behaviour.’ (Raine, 2004)
‘There is some evidence that children with a
particular genetic mutation, if brought up in an
abusive environment, are more likely to be violent
or abusive in turn when they become adult. But the
crucial factor is the interaction between gene
(which is rare) and environment (which is
common), so if we want to do something about it we
should try to prevent any child, with or without any
particular gene, from being abused. There is also
some evidence that some people diagnosed as
psychopathic may show particular brain
abnormalities. But many people so diagnosed do not
show such abnormalities, and many people who are
behaviourally not violent do show them. So the
predictive power of such a brain scan is pretty much
zero.’ (Rose, 2004)
These statements – by Adrian Raine, professor of
psychology at the University of Southern California,
and Steven Rose, professor of biology at the Open
University, are taken from commentaries by both
researchers published online by the BBC in association
with its drama documentary If … we could stop the
violence.This was one of a series of documentaries
exploring fictional scenarios 10-15 years into the future,
based on existing trends and technological advances.
The programmes were designed to suggest ‘potential
solutions’ to intractable societal problems: If … we could
stop the violence staged a drama around the premise, ‘If
we can identify the violent gene, can we stop the
criminal before he commits the crime?’ For many
viewers, the drama, far from offering a ‘potential
solution’ to the problem of crime, might well have
offered a deadly dystopian vision. At the heart of the
story lay a schoolboy whose parents had been persuaded
he needed to attend a dedicated youth centre for
treatment of his unruly and ‘antisocial’ behaviour,
offering specialist medical assessment (during which
brain scans identified the biological markers of his
predisposition towards violence), behavioural
medication, and extreme ongoing surveillance by the
state. The documentary created an imaginary society
beholden to the power of biomedicine – and one
prepared to use radical interventions to reduce the
supposed risk of certain individuals performing
unacceptable acts in the future. Both Raine and Rose
appeared in the course of the fictional documentary,
alongside other researchers and experts – each of them
commenting on the contributions that the biosciences
are and ought to be making to today’s societal debates
on behaviour, criminality and aggression.
This special issue of the Journal of Public Mental
Health features scholarship reflecting on some of the
many implications for society of bioscience and
biomedicine. Raine’s and Rose’s commentaries
excerpted above allow us to see just how much is at stake
when considering some of the implications that fall
within the terrain of public mental health. For both
Raine and Rose, the concepts of prediction and risk are
central in their assessment of technological and
scientific advances. And both of them focus on the
question of whether and how society ought to intervene
in response to the ‘facts’ that technologies and science
produce. The conclusions each reaches are, of course,
very different.
If we were to take Rose’sposition, we might
concede that research exists that shows a genetic
mutation can in certain scenarios contribute to violent
or abusive behaviour.But we would be careful not to
over-valorise the results of genetic research, nor to set
any store on the powers of brain scans to predict
behaviour. If we wanted to reduce levels of violent
behaviour in adults, we would in no way direct public
health strategies towards targeting the supposed genetic
mutation. Rather,Rose’sformulations imply that
appropriate societal responses would include those
familiar to people working in public mental health: for
example, strengthening the support given to families
with young children in an attempt to reduce the
frequency of child abuse (Sanders et al, 2003).
Felicity Callard
Editor
felicity.callard@virgin.net
EDITORIAL
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