Psychopaths, Justice & the Brain Scan Imaging Debate - A Wasted Opportunity

Scientists can now detect a psychopath using functional brain imaging. I think this news should be celebrated as a monumental victory world over in the sense that there is now a tool that can be effectively used to distinguish victims from perpetrators, to ensure justice prevails in the multitude of cases (particularly in family violence/child abuse cases in civil & family court) where the lack of evidence allows sadistic, calculating, premeditating and dangerous predators to continue perpetrating by simply mirroring their victims' allegations and being charming enough to camouflage their guilt with big shadows of doubt.

But instead the news has led to a debate over whether convicted psychopaths guilty of horrific crimes should receive reduced punishment due to their lack of emotions. Does anyone else think there is something wrong with this picture? A mentally challenged person may be unable to understand the wrongness of their crime, however psychopaths are very much aware that what they are doing is wrong. They just don't give a sh!t.

It is the lack of emotions that allows these people to continue to commit crimes for years without being caught. They are mostly very intelligent, and therefore more able than most to hide the trail of evidence, and because they don't feel guilty for what they have done, any attention they do attract is usually neutralized when the investigators detect not the slightest hint of guilt driven nervousness at being questioned.

FUNCTIONAL brain imaging scans are the ones used to determine psychopathy. The article Inside A Psychopath's Brain: The Sentencing Debate describes the process:

" On the screen flashes three types of pictures. One kind depicts a moral violation: He sees several hooded Klansmen setting a cross on fire. Another type is emotional but morally ambiguous: a car that is on fire but you don't know why. Another type of photo is neutral: for example, students standing around a Bunsen burner.

The subjects rate whether the picture is a moral violation on a scale of 1 to 5. Kiehl says most psychopaths do not differ from normal subjects in the way they rate the photos: Both psychopaths and the average person rank the KKK with a burning cross as a moral violation. But there's a key difference: Psychopaths' brains behave differently from that of a non psychopathic person. When a normal person sees a morally objectionable photo, his limbic system lights up. This is what Kiehl calls the "emotional circuit," involving the orbital cortex above the eyes and the amygdala deep in the brain. But Kiehl says when psychopaths like Dugan see the KKK picture, their emotional circuit does not engage in the same way. "

This technology NEEDS to be used in court, but to protect victims, and help ascertain the truth, instead of to provide excuses for perpetrators. This is a tool that can and should be used to serve in the course of justice, not to pervert it! Justice can only be served when the real truth is established. Law is about protecting society and sentencing of a convicted criminal should be very much secondary to that.

To establish the truth of a situation is the whole point of any court case is it not? Here is the tool that would prove invaluable in determining truth in cases of family violence, but instead the only people using it are the lawyers of convicted criminals who are trying to get the lightest sentence for their clients.

We need to demand that the courts start using this technology. If you have a tool that could clearly demonstrate who has been traumatized and who is incapable of emotions such as guilt, remorse or even strong, unconditional love, then not using that tool could only mean that it would not suit the agenda of those meant to protect innocent victims from callous, hyper-selfish abusers, in which case, they should be made to explain exactly what their hidden agenda is.

This is something we should all be pushing for. If a judge or magistrate says your allegations are false and the other party's are true, when it was a case of family violence, you should be able to tell the judge to prove it with brain scans. It is not a psych evaluation that a skilled / knowledgeable psychopath or sociopath could "fake". It does not rely on the person providing truthful answers about their state of mind/feelings etc... It shows exactly what is going on in the brain.

If a victim claims to suffer from PTSD and really has the disorder, the scans of that victim's brain will prove it. If they are a vengeful, liar, they will show a different result, personality disorder etc... If a remorseless, violent perpetrator claims to be the victim and is lying, their scans will show that their brain does not work properly, and resembles the brain of convicted serial murders or child rapists. If both parties have the scan, the images will certainly tell a story of their own, OR if one party wants to have scans done, and the other refuses, then the judge would have to ask what they were trying to hide.

I would like to clarify that I only think this would be useful in instances where there are 2 people who both claim that they are the victim and the other the perpetrator of violence. Considering the high rate of PTSD in victims/survivors of family violence, and the high rate of psychopathy (albeit in varying in degrees) in serial perpetrators (studies have shown that up to 70% of repeat offenders succeed in fooling experts, including psychiatrists, into believing they are innocent), then in such cases, functional brain imaging scans of both parties would SUPPORT testimony and circumstantial evidence of the party telling the truth, because the perpetrator would be shown to NOT have PTSD, but an abnormality in the parts of the brain responsible for moral ethics and impulse control, whereas the opposite would be shown in the victim. I know I would be more than happy to have a scan. I know what my scans would show and I know Mr psycho's scans would certainly render his psychiatrist speechless...

I guess the point is moot however, because the family courts are a corrupt, money making machine, and this technology would put thousands out of a job. Child abuse and family violence are profitable in modern society.

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