The effects of Neuro Law and improving our criminal justice system

 

The effects of Neuro Law and improving our criminal justice system

Neuroscience is one of the biggest growing fields in science. Neuroscientists look into the inner workings of the mind and through their research we can help treat different types of issues. These issues range from mental health diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and major depressive disorders. Through this research, we can properly diagnose individuals dealing with these difficulties and find options to help them cope with these difficulties. Because of this neuroscience research has been used in many different fields besides science. One of those fields is law. Neuroscience and Law, often time referred to as neurolaw, has paved the way to helping fix our justice system in terms of better sentencing and better treatment for people dealing with mental health disorders. Though this may be the case there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to better our criminal justice system. This article goes into detail about how this link between the two fields can help better our criminal justice system.  

            To better understand how we can fix our criminal justice system we first must understand how neuroscience and law are linked. An article in the Journal of Neuroscience titled “Law and Neuroscience” by Owen D. Jones goes into detail about how neuroscience and law are connected. In the article, they explain that many legal officials such as lawyers and judges seek the aid of neuroscientists to answer questions such as “Is this person responsible for his behavior?”, and “How competent is this person”. More specifically they can help aid law by increasing juror confidence, calling into question or contradicting a case, identifying legally relevant facts, separating people into useful categories, illuminating decision pathways with information that may lead to more informed and less biased decisions, and improving law’s ability to estimate probabilities of future behavior. Overall this article helps the reader to understand the need for there to be a connection between neuroscience and law.            

            This can be seen in many different court cases and several news articles. One article in Times magazine written by Dr. Christine Montross, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University, calls into question the level of responsibility the criminal justice system has when tending to mental illness. In the article, Dr. Montross goes into detail about how she has witnessed the severe lack of care that is being given to people with mental health issues both in the prison system and in the number of resources that are being provided for these individuals. Policing is one of the biggest areas that needs to be reformed. During police arrest, it is required that the person remain obedient. However, people dealing with manic episodes may not be able to do so. Dr. Montross goes on to say “This misalignment between the expectation that people will follow commands and their medical inability to do so has the potential for disaster. Of the roughly 1,000 fatal shootings by police in 2018 approximately 25% of victims were mentally ill. People with mental illness are sixteen times more likely to be killed in a police encounter than people who are psychiatrically well” (Montross). This quote is very shocking because it shows that police must make the call when it comes to determining whether that person is mentally capable of being arrested and taken to jail, instead of a psychiatric facility. Often jail is one of the places where mentally ill patients end up because they have been wrongfully put into prisons instead of mental health facilities. Although it is the case that mentally ill patients need to be properly treated and facilitated there is an inability to due to the lack of funding that is being given to mental health care centers. The passing of acts such as the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 and the 2008 recession took away more than 5 billion dollars in funding for mental health services. This means that people don’t receive proper treatment and end up in the prison system.

            This article shows that there is a need for neuroscience when it comes to law enforcement and criminal justice. This article ties back to the 7 ways in which neuroscience can help in the legal field. With a better understanding of mental health, we are then able to make better decisions when it comes to sentencing and determine what is the correct facilitation for a person dealing with mental health issues. This article also calls for more action when it comes to providing the resources needed for the house people dealing with mental health issues. Through this research, we can improve our criminal justice system and further advance how we prioritize mental health.

References:

Jones, O. D., Marois, R., Farah, M. J., & Greely, H. T. (2013). Law and neuroscience. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(45), 17624-17630.

Montross, Christine. We Must Change How Our Criminal Justice System Treats People with Mental Illness, 2020, https://time.com/5876045/we-must-change-how-our-criminal-justice-system-treats-people-with-mental-illness/. Accessed 2023.