Fabrie_BWR_Legal:Corporate_Crime_Studies

Criminal Studies for BWR Students studying International Corporate Crime

Study finds psychopaths have distinct brain structure

By Kate Kelland LONDON | Mon May 7, 2012 4:35pm EDT (Reuters) - Scientists who scanned the brains of men convicted of murder, rape and violent assaults have found the strongest evidence yet that psychopaths have structural abnormalities in their brains. The researchers, based at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the differences in psychopaths' brains mark them out even from other violent criminals with anti-social personality disorders (ASPD), and from healthy non-offenders. Nigel Blackwood, who led the study, said the ability to use brain scans to identify and diagnose this sub-group of violent criminals has important implications for treatment. The study showed that psychopaths, who are characterized by a lack of empathy, had less grey matter in the areas of the brain important for understanding other peoples' emotions. While cognitive and behavioral treatments may benefit people with anti-social personality disorders, the same approach may not work for psychopaths with brain damage, Blackwood said.

"To get a clear idea of which treatments are working, you've got to clearly define what people are like going into the treatment programs," he said in a telephone interview. Essi Viding a professor in the psychology and language sciences department of University College London, who was not involved in Blackwood's study, said it provided "weighty new evidence" about the importance of distinguishing psychopathic from non-psychopathic people rather than grouping them together. The findings also have implications for the justice system, because linking psychopathy to brain function raises the prospect of arguing a defense of insanity. Interest in what goes on inside the heads of violent criminals has been sharpened by the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who massacred 77 people last July. Two court-appointed psychiatric teams who examined Breivik came to opposite conclusions about his mental health. The killer himself has railed being called insane. LESS GREY MATTER IN BRAIN'S "SOCIAL" AREAS Blackwood's team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 44 violent adult male offenders in Britain who had already been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorders. The crimes they had committed included murder, rape, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. Of the 44 men scanned, 17 met the diagnosis for ASPD plus psychopathy and 27 did not. The researchers also scanned the brains of 22 healthy non-offenders. The results showed that the psychopaths' brains had significantly less grey matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles than the brains of the non-psychopathic offenders and non-offenders. These areas of the brain are important for understanding other people's emotions and intentions, and are activated when people think about moral behavior, the researchers said. Damage to these areas is linked with a lack of empathy, a poor response to fear and distress and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment. Lindsay Thomson, a professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in this study, said Blackwood's findings add to evidence that psychopathy is a distinct neurodevelopmental brain disorder. Research shows that most violent crimes are committed by a small group of persistent male offenders with ASPD. In England and Wales, for example, around half of male prisoners meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD. A major review of studies covering 23,000 prisoners from 62 countries conducted in 2002 found that 47 percent had anti-social personality disorder. Such people typically react in an aggressive way to frustration or perceived threats, but most are not psychopaths, the researchers wrote in a summary of their study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal.

There are clear behavior differences among people with ASPD depending on whether they also have psychopathy. Their patterns of offending are different, suggesting the need for a separate approach to treatment. "We describe those without psychopathy as 'hot-headed' and those with psychopathy as 'coldhearted'," Blackwood explained. "The 'cold-hearted' psychopathic group begin offending earlier, engage in a broader range and greater density of offending behaviors, and respond less well to treatment programs in adulthood compared to the 'hot-headed' group." (Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Biology gives American psychopaths a legal break

By Kate Kelland LONDON | Thu Aug 16, 2012 2:02pm EDT (Reuters) - Criminal psychopaths in the United States whose lawyers provide biological evidence for their brain condition are more likely to be sentenced to shorter jail terms than those who are simply said to be psychopaths, according to new research. A study published in the journal Science found that if judges were told a criminal was a psychopath, they considered it an aggravating factor. But if they also heard biological explanations for the disorder, they gave shorter sentences. Researchers from the University of Utah who conducted the study said the findings were surprising and worrying, and external experts said they had problematic implications for how brain science might affect criminal justice in future. "In the coming years, we are likely to find out about all kinds of biological causes of criminal behavior, so the question is, why does the law care if most behavior is biologically caused?" said Teneille Brown, an associate professor at the university's college of law. Seena Fazel, a clinical senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry at Britain's Oxford University, noted there are already known biological bases for many disorders criminals suffer from, including drug abuse, alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder. "So if psychopathy reduces your sentence because it has a biological basis, why shouldn't these other more common conditions also result in reduced sentences?" he said. MITIGATING FACTOR The Utah team carried out a survey of 181 judges in 19 U.S. states who were given a hypothetical case of aggravated battery to consider. They found that when judges were given

a "biomechanical" explanation for a criminal's psychopathy, they saw this as a mitigating factor and reduced the sentence, on average by about a year. "Judges that heard information about the genetic and developmental causes of psychopathy gave significantly shorter sentences," said Lisa Aspinwall, a psychologist who worked with Brown on the study. Brown said what was "so striking" about these results in psychopaths was that it was likely there may be even sharper reductions in sentences for defendants with more sympathetic diagnoses such as mental retardation or schizophrenia. Several studies in recent years have found that psychopaths who have committed serious crimes like murder and rape have faulty connections in their brains which show up on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. These and other advances in neuroscience have led some to worry that such scientific evidence may be used increasingly in court to explain criminal actions or argue mitigating circumstances. BREIVIK'S SENTENCE In a report earlier this year by Britain's national academy of science, the Royal Society, leading scientists and lawyers advised extreme caution on the use of brain scans and genetic data in court. Interest in the minds of violent criminals has also been sharpened by the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people in Norway in July 2011, in which the prosecution argued Breivik was insane. If judges agree, he will go to a mental institution instead of a prison. The verdict in his trial is due to be announced on Aug 24. Brown and her colleagues said their study raised ethical questions: Whether it was right to reduce a criminal's sentence because defective genes or brain function meant he had less selfcontrol and ability to tell right from wrong. Or whether such evidence should be an argument for a harsher sentence because the criminal may be more likely to reoffend. The study's results showed that judges who were given a biological explanation for a convict's psychopathy imposed sentences averaging 12.83 years - about a year less than the 13.93-year average imposed by judges who were only told the defendant was a psychopath. Even though a year is a relatively small reduction, Brown said she was "amazed the sentence was reduced at all given that we're dealing with psychopaths, who are very unsympathetic". Fazel said he would be very concerned about the reliability in legal terms of the idea of psychopathy. The condition is not currently in diagnostic classification systems, he said, and two separate experts may come to very different conclusions about whether or a not a criminal is psychopathic. "If a condition or disorder is going to be used to mitigate sentence length, it should have high levels of reliability, as found with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia," he said. (Editing by Ben Hirschler and Pravin Char)