Neuropsychology and the Criminal Responsibility of Psychopaths: Reconsidering the Evidence

Jurjako, Marko; Malatesti, Luca

doi:10.1007/s10670-017-9924-0

Cited by 25 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The law uses higher-order constructs such as 'justice', 'social dangerousness' or 'responsibility' that apply to the level of a person, while neuroscientists talk about neurons and neural networks that are described in biochemical and mechanistic terms (Campbell & Eastman, 2014). Often, it is not clear how constructs from one level or domain should be translated and implemented in the other (Buckholtz & Faigman, 2014;Jurjako & Malatesti, 2017). Thus, often the correlation of biomarkers with some behaviors has not clear implications for higherorder legal constructs.…”

Section: Ethical Concerns About the Bioprediction Of Antisocial Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Not because biomarkers associated with psychopathic and antisocial traits are essential or immutable. But because our moral and legal practices would treat such persons as choosing behaviors and ways of life (Jurjako & Malatesti, 2017) that cause in others understandable and justifiable attitudes of fear and a preference for social distance, which are often used in the operationalization of stigma (Haslam, 2014). Thus, due to their criminal and non-cooperative behavior, certain discriminatory reactions, such as restrictions of freedom and opportunities and compulsory forms of rehabilitative therapy, would be sanctioned by the law or morality (for a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Baccarini & Malatesti, 2017).…”

Section: Biomarkers and Opportunities For Changementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Some Ethical Considerations About the Use of Biomarkers for the Classification of Adult Antisocial Individuals

Jurjako

Malatesti

Brazil

2018

International Journal of Forensic Mental Health

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It has been argued that a biomarker-informed classification system for antisocial individuals has the potential to overcome many obstacles in current conceptualizations of forensic and psychiatric constructs and promises better targeted treatments. However, some have expressed ethical worries about the social impact of the use of biological information for classification. Many have discussed the ethical and legal issues related to possibilities of using biomarkers for predicting antisocial behavior. We argue that prediction should not raise the most pressing ethical worries. Instead, issues connected with "biologization", such as stigmatization and negative effects on self-image, need more consideration. However, we conclude that also in this respect there are no principled ethical objections against the use of biomarkers to guide classification and treatment of adult antisocial individuals.

show abstract

Section: Ethical Concerns About the Bioprediction Of Antisocial Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Biomarkers and Opportunities For Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Some Ethical Considerations About the Use of Biomarkers for the Classification of Adult Antisocial Individuals

Jurjako

Malatesti

Brazil

2018

International Journal of Forensic Mental Health

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hicks and Drislane 2018) with varying underlying etiologies (e.g. Jurjako and Malatesti 2018;Stratton, Kiehl, and Hanlon 2015).…”

Section: The Psychopathy Diagnosis and Its Forensic Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychopathy Treatment and the Stigma of Yesterday's Research

Larsen¹

2019

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Further, there is evidence that psychopaths may be able to appropriately adjust their top-down attention to better recognize and respond to affective cues (Koenigs and Newman 2013). In a recent article, Jurjako and Malatesti argue that although psychopaths seem to have trouble with cognitive tasks involving emotions, such as passive avoidance, response-reversal, and gambling tasks, the deficits are highly context dependent (Jurjako and Malatesti 2018a). When psychopaths are attentive to their goals on a passive-avoidance task, they score similarly to controls (Koenigs and Newman 2013).…”

Section: Affective Deficitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Psychopaths Legally Insane?

Jefferson

Sifferd

2018

EuJAP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The question of whether psychopaths are criminally and morally responsible has generated significant controversy in the literature. In this paper, we discuss what relevance a psychopathy diagnosis has for criminal responsibility. It has been argued that figuring out whether psychopathy is a mental illness is of fundamental importance, because it is a precondition for psychopaths’ eligibility to be excused via the legal insanity defense. But even if psychopathy counts as a mental illness, this alone is not sufficient to show the insanity defense is applicable; it must also be shown that, as a result of the illness, specific deficits in moral understanding or control are present. In this paper, we show that a diagnosis of psychopathy will generally not indicate that a defendant is eligible for an insanity defense. This is because the group of individuals subsumed under the diagnosis is so heterogeneous that while some psychopaths do show significant impairments in affect and control which may impact on their responsibility, many psychopaths are not incapacitated in a way relevant to responsibility.

show abstract

Neuropsychology and the Criminal Responsibility of Psychopaths: Reconsidering the Evidence

Cited by 25 publications

References 65 publications

Some Ethical Considerations About the Use of Biomarkers for the Classification of Adult Antisocial Individuals

Some Ethical Considerations About the Use of Biomarkers for the Classification of Adult Antisocial Individuals

Psychopathy Treatment and the Stigma of Yesterday's Research

Are Psychopaths Legally Insane?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About