Warrior gene chit chat
Big limitations in the use of genetics to mitigate crimes
MAOA (Monoamine oxidase A) is receiving quite a bit of media attention at the moment. Here’s a useful BBC Radio 4 programme. The general thrust, simply put, is that variations in the function of MAOA in humans leads to varying levels of aggression leading to violence. It’s a long shot at the moment, and it might well remain so. But it’s worth briefly considering a three of the things which drive the discourse.
First, lawyers mitigating for serious offenders need to clutch at anything which might minimise the sentence imposed by the judge; experiences in childhood are raised routinely. Neuroscience is sometimes employed too: The MAOA argument ploughs a similar furrow by arguing that some people have an increased propensity to commit particular types of offences. The risk of this argument is of course that while at the margins it might be possible that a court would take this into account in a decision, say, not to sentence someone to death, in other cases it might have a very different effect. Judges (in theory) take retribution, public safety and scope for rehabilitation into account. Convincing the judge that a convicted person has an unavoidable propensity to be a more serious risk to public safety and to be hard to rehabilitate might reasonably result in a longer, not shorter, sentence.
Second, MAOA is a good example of understandable excitement around new scientific discoveries overtaking the ongoing scientific research. There are many fascinating correlations to be found in behavioural genetics; some of them might turn out to have considerable explanatory power. But, for now at least, there is little or no explanatory power provided by the bare facts of MAOA function in any human. Over time, it might be possible to build in other variables, such as interaction with life experience (essentially, epigentics) and other bits of the individuals genetic make-up. For now, at least, it’s pretty close to fantasy science as far as use in the courtroom is concerned.
Third, while the courts do of course pay a great deal of attention to mitigation, in the end the underpinning assumption of liberal democratic justice systems is that unless extreme conditions apply, such as personal incapacity, we are all in the end responsible for our actions. In theory, t might one day be possible to deconstruct all personalities and situations to explain in objective terms why any particular offence took place; behavioural genetics might indeed be increasingly able to help in this respect. But if this is not distinguished from individual mitigation then it risks invalidating democratic crime and justice system processes altogether through undermining the central tenet of personal responsibility.
