The Anatomy of Violence

by Adrian Raine

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  107. Geschwind, N., Peeters, F., Drukker, M., van Os, J. & Wichers, M. (2011). Mindfulness training increases momentary positive emotions and reward experience in adults vulnerable to depression: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 79, 618–28.

  108. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005). Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness. New York: Hyperion.

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  111. Sherman, L. W., Gottfredson, D., MacKenzie, D., Reuter, P., Eck, J. & Bushway, S. (1997). Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising. A Report to the U.S. Congress. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.

  10. THE BRAIN ON TRIAL

  1. Burns, J. M. & Swerdlow, R. H. (2003). Right orbitofrontal tumor with pedophilia symptom and constructional apraxia sign. Archives of Neurology 60, 437–40.

  2. The pseudonym “Mr. Oft” was coined by my good friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Morse, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. Stephen first introduced me to the case. “Oft” is an acronym for “orbitofrontal tumor.”

  3. Burns & Swerdlow, Right orbitofrontal tumor with pedophilia symptom and constructional apraxia sign.

  4. Crick, F. (1994). The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Touchstone.

  5. Documents obtained by the defense team from Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., were at trial to prove how brutal his childhood beatings were.

  6. Gusnard, D. A. et al. (2001). Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: Relation to a default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98, 4259–64; Antonucci, A. S. et al. (2006). Orbitofrontal correlates of aggression and impulsivity in psychiatric patients. Psychiatry Research 147, 213–20.

  7. Freedman, M. et al. (1998). Orbitofrontal function, object alternation and perseveration. Cerebral Cortex 8, 18–27; Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. et al. (2005). Impaired “affective theory of mind” is associated with right ventromedial prefrontal damage. Cognitive Behavioral Neurology 18, 55–67.

  8. Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D. & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science 275, 1293–94; Damasio, A. R., Tranel, D. & Damasio, H. (1990). Individuals with sociopathic behavior caused by frontal damage fail to respond autonomically to social stimuli. Behavioural Brain Research 41, 81–94.

  9. Raine, A., Meloy, J. R., Bihrle, S., Stoddard, J., LaCasse, L., et al. (1998). Reduced prefrontal and increased subcortical brain functioning assessed using positron emission tomography in predatory and affective murderers. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 16, 319–32.

  10. It also has to be recognized that Donta Page could have left the house after going outside to take money from the car. The fact that he came back into the house instead of leaving the scene of the burglary suggests some degree of premeditation. This admixture of lack of planning combined with some degree of regulatory control is not uncommon in murderers, and it is a difficult task to clearly divide murders into “impulsive” versus “planned.”

  11. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). http://www.cdc.gov/std/pregnancy/STDFact-Pregnancy.htm.

  12. Raine, A., Brennan, P. & Mednick, S. A. (1994). Birth complications combined with early maternal rejection at age 1 year predispose to violent crime at age 18 years. Archives of General Psychiatry 51, 984–88.

  13. Farrington, D. P. (2005). Childhood origins of antisocial behavior. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 12, 177–90; Loeber, R. & Farrington, D. P. (2000). Young children who commit crime: Epidemiology, developmental origins, risk factors, early interventions, and policy implications. Development & Psychopathology 12, 737–62.

  14. Jackson, S. (2001). Dead reckoning. Denver Westward News. June 28.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2011). Uniform Crime Reports. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr#ucr_cius.

  17. Jenkins, A. C. & Mitchell, J. P. (2011). Medial prefrontal cortex subserves diverse forms of self-reflection. Social Neuroscience 6, 211–18. While the medial prefrontal cortex is the area most robustly associated with self-reflection and self-referential thinking, other brain areas have been implicated as well, including the anterior cingulate and the posterior cingulate, areas also found to be dysfunctional in offenders. In particular, the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex appear to underlie thinking about aspirations and hopes, while the posterior cingulate is particularly activated when reflecting on one’s duties and obligations. It has been hypothesized that the medial prefrontal cortex is more linked to an inward-directed focus, whereas the posterior cingulate is more associated with an outward-directed, social, or contextual focus. See also Johnson, M. K., Raye, C. L., Mitchell, K. J., et al. (2006). Dissociating medial frontal and posterior cingulate activity during self-reflection. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience 1, 56–64.

  18. You will recall that Mr. Oft did indeed tell the hospital authorities that he felt that if released he would rape his landlady. Bear in mind, however, that he was about to go to prison, and this could be construed as a simple con to remain in the more benign environment of a psychiatric hos
pital.

  19. Gorman-Smith, D., Henry, D. B. & Tolan, P. H. (2004). Exposure to community violence and violence perpetration: The protective effects of family functioning. Journal of Clinical and Adolescent Psychology 33, 439–49.

  20. Raine, A., Venables, P. H. & Williams, M. (1996). Better autonomic conditioning and faster electrodermal half-recovery time at age 15 years as possible protective factors against crime at age 29 years. Developmental Psychology 32, 624–30.

  21. Raine, A., Venables, P. H. & Williams, M. (1995). High autonomic arousal and electrodermal orienting at age 15 years as protective factors against criminal behavior at age 29 years. American Journal of Psychiatry 152, 1595–1600.

  22. It is ironic that the stimulus that led Page to slitting Peyton Tuthill’s throat was the fact that he could not stand her screaming. It was his own screaming as a baby that caused his mother to shake him vigorously and repeatedly. This shaking is one cause of prefrontal dysfunction, the risk factor we documented in Page and that we believe was instrumental in his killing of Peyton Tuthill.

  23. Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Fulda, B. (2009). Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic. Oxford University Press.

  26. CNN (2007). Amish grandfather: “We must not think evil of this man.” December 10.

  27. Gottlieb, D. (2006). Not Always Divine. Cross-Currents. October 17. http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2006/10/17/not-always-divine/.

  28. Jacoby, J. (2006). Undeserved forgiveness. Boston Globe. October 8.

  29. This seminar series was conducted by AAAS in collaboration with the Federal Judicial Center and the National Center for State Courts, with funding from the Dana Foundation. It has been ongoing since 2006, and there are concerted efforts to bring the judiciary up to speed on the latest advances in neuroscience, how new techniques and knowledge may inform legal decision making, and what their limitations are.

  30. Pedophilia is indeed viewed by the medical profession as a clinical disorder, and is a condition outlined in detail in DSM-4.

  31. Morse, S. J. (2011). Mental disorder and the criminal law. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 101, 885–968.

  32. Such affirmative defenses are not restricted to mental illness. Another example is acting in self-defense. You may have the “mens rea,” or guilty mind—you may know what you are doing—but you are acting in self-defense against a deadly aggressor. In this case, you are not a “responsible agent.”

  33. You would also not be held responsible if you were sufficiently coerced or compelled to commit a criminal act. For example, if somebody holds a gun to your head and threatens to kill you unless you perform a sex act on a third party.

  34. Mindshock: Sex on the Brain. (2006). Channel Four. Tiger Aspect Productions.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Damasio, A. R. (2000). A neural basis for sociopathy. Archives of General Psychiatry 57, 128–29.

  38. Morse, S. J. (2008). Psychopathy and criminal responsibility. Neuroethics 1, 205–12.

  11. THE FUTURE

  1. Kip’s anxiety after shooting his father was documented by a friend, Tony, who by happenstance called Kip after his father had been killed but before his mother arrived home. The call lasted an hour, and Tony sensed that Kip was on edge, pacing around his room, and repeatedly commenting that his mother was not home yet.

  2. Although Kip Kinkel injured twenty-five students at school, he was charged with an additional assault on an arresting police officer who had to use pepper spray to subdue him. This assault has been construed as an attempt by Kip to goad the police officer into shooting him.

  3. Konkol, R. J. (1999). Expert Witness Testimony. November. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/trial/konkol.html.

  4. The scan in question was a SPECT scan (single-photon emission computed tomography), a nuclear-medicine technique that uses a gamma camera and gamma rays to create a three-dimensional image of the functioning of the brain.

  5. Frontline: The Killer at Thurston High. (2000). WGBH Educational Foundation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Fitzgibbon, C. (2007). Sunshine and Shadows: Reflections of a Macmillan Nurse, pp. 31–32. Doncaster: Encircling Publications.

  8. The rapidity of Roma’s death may likely be the result of her having had acute myeloid leukemia, which is the most common acute form of leukemia that affects adults and is known to kill within weeks. See Vardiman, J. W., Harris, N. L. & Brunning, R. D. (2002). The World Health Organization (WHO) classification of the myeloid neoplasms. Blood 100, 292–302.

  9. Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as Metaphor. New York: Picador.

  10. Fitzgibbon, Sunshine and Shadows, p. 32.

  11. Raine, A. (1993). The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical Disorder. San Diego: Academic Press.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Spitzer, R. L. (1999). Harmful dysfunction and the DSM definition of mental disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 108, 430–32.

  14. At the time of writing, DSM-4 is being revised for the 2013 publication of DSM-5.

  15. American Psychiatric Association (2012). DSM-5 Development: Definition of a Mental Disorder. http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=465.

  16. The proposed revision to DSM-5 further adds to its definition of mental disorder as follows: “A mental disorder is not merely an expectable or culturally sanctioned response to a specific event such as the death of a loved one. Neither culturally deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) nor a conflict that is primarily between the individual and society is a mental disorder unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.” This in no way rules out violence as a disorder, unless one is specifically referring to terrorism, which can be construed as a conflict between the individual and society. Nevertheless, if such terrorists were found to also present with dysfunction that is caused by a biological or psychological condition, then even they would be viewed as clinically disordered. The question that we do not have an answer to at present is whether terrorists do have the type of biological characteristics we see in violent offenders.

  17. Manderscheid, R. W., Ryff, C. D., Freeman, E. J., McKnight-Eily, L. R., Dhingra, S., et al. (2010). Evolving definitions of mental illness and wellness. Preventing Chronic Disease 7. http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2010/jan/09_0124.htm.

  18. Raine, The Psychopathology of Crime.

  19. Herbert, E., Kennedy, M., Licht, J. & Mandra, J. (2008). Using genetics to treat leukemia: How Gleevec works. Science in Society, Northwestern University. scienceinsociety.northwestern.edu/sites/default/files/chisholmani1.swf.

  20. Lichtenstein, P., Holm, N. V., Verkasalo, P. K., et al. (2000). Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer: analyses of cohorts of twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. New England Journal of Medicine 343, 78–85.

  21. Lodish, H., Berk, A., Matsudaira, P., Kaiser, C. A., Krieger, M., et al. (2004). Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman. Technically, the changes taking place consist of damage to the molecular DNA that produces errors in DNA synthesis, and this in turn results in mutations.

  22. Landenberger, N. A. & Lipsey, M. W. (2005). The positive effects of cognitive–behavioral programs for offenders: A meta-analysis of factors associated with effective treatment. Journal of Experimental Criminology 1, 451–76.

  23. Sampson, R. (2012). Great American Cities: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  24. Raine, A., Brennan, P. A., Farrington, D. P. & Mednick, S. A., eds. (1997). Biosocial Bases of Violence. New York: Plenum.

  25. Laub, J. & Sampson, R. J. (2003). Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

  26. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2010). Uni
form crime reports: Offenses cleared. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/clearances.

  27. Blow, C. M. (2010). The high cost of crime. New York Times. October 8, editorial, p. A21. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/09blow.html?_r=1.

  28. Anderson, D. A. (1999). The aggregate burden of crime, Journal of Law and Economics 42, 611–42.

  29. Malvestuto, R. J. (2007). Testimony to Committee on Public Safety. Council of the City of Philadelphia, February 13.

  30. Berk, R., Sherman, L., Barnes, G., Kurtz, E. & Ahlman, L. (2009). Forecasting murder within a population of probationers and parolees: A high stakes application of statistical learning. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) 172, 191–211.

  31. In the study by Berk, Sherman, and colleagues, the authors recognized their high false-positive rate. For every true-positive case identified, there were twelve false-positives. They point out, however, that there is nevertheless an eightfold increase in prediction accuracy using random-forest statistical learning procedures.

  32. The futuristic scenario I have drawn out was inspired by a novel that Marty Seligman sent me after I visited the University of Pennsylvania in October 1994 to give a talk on brain imaging and homicide. The novel, by Philip Kerr, is set in London in 2013 and involves a cat-and-mouse game between a detective and a serial killer typed under the Lombroso program as a potentially dangerous killer. Kerr, P. (1993). A Philosophical Investigation. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

  33. The Academy of Experimental Criminology. http://www.crim.upenn.edu/aec/index.html.

  34. Kringelbach, M. L., Jenkinson, N., Owen, S.L.F. & Aziz, T. Z. (2007). Translational principles of deep brain stimulation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8, 623–35.

  35. Ridding, M. C. & Rothwell, J. C. (2007). Perspectives: Opinion—Is there a future for therapeutic use of transcranial magnetic stimulation? Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8, 559–67.