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Download a PDF of This Article THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE NOV | DEC 2013 29 “I worked there for four years,” received mostly high marks from his University City, which once belonged to says Raine, now 59. “And it wasn’t a peers and reviewers. legendary criminologists Thorsten Sellin research job; it was an applied job, treating “Adrian is such a good scientist—will- and Marvin Wolfgang Gr’55, and which, prisoners, assessing them, running hostage- ing to imagine where the field can go, he says, has been broken into multiple training courses for the prison officers. but still very careful not to overstate times since he arrived here in 2007. “I “I desperately wanted an academic job,” where it is now,” says Martha Farah, live near my data,” he notes wryly.) he adds. “I made 67 applications in those director of the Center for Neuroscience “I’d like to think that, more than other four years and got 67 straight rejections. I & Society and the Annenberg Professor scientists in the field, those four years in applied everywhere—not just to universities in the Natural Sciences. “Is the neurosci- prison helped in some ways,” he adds. but to what we call ‘polytechnics,’ which are ence in The Anatomy of Violence solid? “That, and being a victim of violence. It’s really teaching institutes in England. I Yes! What Adrian says about brain func- salutary, and it makes you stop and think.” applied for postdoctoral positions; I applied tion and antisocial behavior, you can to Australia, New Zealand—even Papua take it to the bank.” New Guinea—and got rejected. I thought In Sherman’s view, “we need a nation- Ina recent New Yorker review of I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. So—a al symposium on neurocriminology, with new books about neuroscience, curious wheel of fortune, anyway.” Anatomy as the centerpiece. Anatomy is Adam Gopnik suggests that those who Curious indeed. Today, nearly three decades very important for the field, if only write about the brain and the mind “tend after his 68th application sprung him from because it so accessible and clear.” to divide into Spocks and Kirks, either Frankland and into the psychology depart- Violent crime is an understandably embracing the idea that consciousness ment of the University of Nottingham, explosive subject, and the field, with its can be located in a web of brain tissue Raine is a high-profile criminologist, one search for causes and remedies that go or debunking it.” At the moment, he adds, whose interdisciplinary star power brought beyond the superficial and punitive, has “we have on our hands a sudden and him to Penn six years ago as a PIK (Penn long been strewn with IEDs. Especially severe Kirkist backlash.” Raine is defi- Integrates Knowledge) professor [“Proof given the emotions churned up in the last nitely a Spockist by that definition, and of Concept,” Sep|Oct 2008]. century by the eugenics movement and Gopnik, who describes The Anatomy of “Adrian is probably the most eminent proponents of creating one Master Race Violence as “belligerently pro-neuro,” biological criminologist in the world,” or another. While biological explanations clearly sides with him. says Stephen Morse, the Ferdinand of violence and other personality traits One of Raine’s more compelling case Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law, pro- are regaining credence, Raine knows that studies is that of Michael Oft, a school- fessor of psychology and law in psychia- many people would still prefer to keep teacher whose previously exemplary try, and associate director of the Center those ideas locked up for good. behavior began to change around the time for Neuroscience & Society. “Although it “One of the continuing problems is that he turned 40. First he began going to mas- makes a lot of people uncomfortable, I this research field borders on the politi- sage parlors; then he began collecting child think he makes a very solid case that cally incorrect,” he writes. “Liberals and pornography; then he began to touch and there are biological factors that are caus- center-left parties fear that the research fondle his stepdaughter when he put her ally implicated in criminal conduct. But will be used to stigmatize individuals and to bed. He became increasingly short- why should that surprise anybody? We’re take attention away from social problems, tempered, even violent. After he was arrest- biological creatures!” the true causes of crime. Conservatives and ed for pedophilia and sentenced to prison, Raine “holds a unique reputation as the the center-right are concerned that it will he began complaining about severe head- neurocriminologist,” adds Lawrence Sherman, be used to let offenders off the hook and aches. A brain scan revealed that he had a whose many titles include director of the take away responsibility and retribution.” large tumor at the base of his orbitofrontal Institute of Criminology at the University Neither side can accuse Raine of con- cortex, “compressing the right prefrontal of Cambridge and former director of the ducting his research from an ivory tower. region of his brain.” When the tumor was Fels Institute at Penn [“A Passion for In addition to his years of work with surgically removed, his “emotion, cogni- Evidence,” Mar|Apr 2000]. “He has basi- violent offenders in prison, he was tion, and sexual activity returned to nor- cally invented the field, despite early attacked and nearly killed during an mal,” notes Raine, and the “pangs of guilt resistance two decades back, and he has attempted robbery in Turkey some years and remorse at what he had done to his just kept on working, with amazing pro- ago—an experience that got him in touch stepdaughter at last set in.” For several ductivity. Few criminologists are even with his inner Rambo, even if his pre- months Oft was fine. Then the headaches aware of all he has done, especially since frontal cortex appears to be keeping returned, and so did the child pornography. much of his key work on violence is pub- those vengeance impulses under control. When his brain was again scanned, it lished in psych journals.” “I have got my hands dirty with prisoners, showed that the tumor had grown back. This past spring Pantheon published with rapists, psychopaths, murderers, pedo- Again it was excised. Since then, “his Raine’s richly detailed The Anatomy of philes,” says Raine during a long phone sexual urges and general behavior have Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime interview from the University of Cambridge, been totally appropriate.” (see excerpt on p. 36), which has not only where he is on sabbatical with his wife and As Gopnik notes, “there is probably no sold surprisingly well for a work of twin boys. (Next summer he will return to precise connection between the bit of the wonky popular scholarship but also his house at 41st and Pine streets in brain the tumor pressed on and child lust. 30 NOV | DEC 2013 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE The same bit of meat-matter pressing on the same bit of brain in some other head might have produced some other transgres- sion—in the head of a Lubavitcher, say, a mad desire to eat prosciutto.” But, he con- cludes: “You have to respect the power of the meat to change the morals so neatly.” So many things can go wrong in the great mass of soft tissue known as the human brain, and most of them are not so easily pinpointed as Oft’s tumors. But some predispose the owner of that brain to violence, Raine and others argue. They might be the result of physical accidents (a flying chunk of metal to the head, say) that change the very personality of the owner. They might stem from insults in the womb (fetal alcohol syndrome) or dur- ing delivery. Some are believed to be mod- erated by genetic factors, though the expression of the relevant genes may be influenced by environmental factors. Neuropsychology is still a relatively new science, and Raine would be the first to say that brain imaging and other biologi- cal indicators cannot, by themselves, be seen as foolproof diagnostic tools. But, he believes, they should be part of the mix. Every day, for example, prison officials “It’s the social have to make hard decisions about which offenders should be released early, on horse leading the parole. And those decisions are “based on sometimes-terrible information.” biological cart “In California they have, like, 20 indi- cators,” notes the English-born Raine, that drags some who migrated to Penn by way of USC. “They’re all social and behavioral: being people into the male, having a poor employment history, past criminal behavior. What I’m sug- gutter and into gesting is that, if biological variables— which are never added to the prediction prison.” equation—give added value to prediction, shouldn’t we begin to implement them?” He points to two brain-imaging studies that appeared after he sent the manu- script of The Anatomy of Violence to his “and that’s prediction over and above years,” says Raine. “And what we found publisher. In the first, a team from the the usual variables that are used to pre- is that people with a small volume to the nonprofit Mind Research Network dict future offending.” amygdala, the part of the brain that gen- scanned the brains of 96 prisoners just Another paper, published in the May erates emotions—those individuals were before they were released, then followed 6 issue of Biological Psychiatry (Raine three to four times more likely to commit up on them for several years. The results was a co-author), began with a longitu- a violent act in the next three years.
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