University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 2021 Indoctrination and Social Influence as a Defense to Crime: Are We Responsible for Who We Are? Paul H. Robinson University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Lindsay Holcomb University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Cognitive Psychology Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Human Factors Psychology Commons, Law and Psychology Commons, Law and Society Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, and the Social Psychology Commons Repository Citation Robinson, Paul H. and Holcomb, Lindsay, "Indoctrination and Social Influence as a Defense to Crime: Are We Responsible for Who We Are?" (2021). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 2153. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2153 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Indoctrination and Social Influence as a Defense to Crime: Are We Responsible for Who We Are? Paul H. Robinson* and Lindsay Holcomb** ABSTRACT A patriotic prisoner of war is brainwashed by his North Korean captors into refusing repatriation and undertaking treasonous anti-American propaganda for the communist regime. Despite the general abhorrence of treason in time of war, the American public opposes criminal liability for such indoctrinated soldiers, yet existing criminal law provides no defense or mitigation because, at the time of the offense, the indoctrinated offender suffers no cognitive or control dysfunction, no mental or emotional impairment, and no external or internal compulsion.