Location:
Berg Family Foundation Seminar Room, Level 6, Wallace Wurth Building, Kensington Campus, UNSW Sydney
Contact for enquiries
Rata Joseph, +61 (2) 9385 0900 or recpt@kirby.unsw.edu.au
Kirby Institute Seminar Series presents
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Richard Perry University Professor, Departments of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, University of Pennsylvania |
About your speaker
For the past 39 years, Dr Adrian Raine’s interdisciplinary research has focused on the biosocial bases of antisocial and violent behaviour in both children and adults and prevention implications. In 1986 he became Director of the Mauritius Child Health project, a longitudinal study of child mental health that today constitutes one of his key research projects. His latest book The Anatomy of Violence reviews the brain basis of violence and draws future implications for the punishment, prediction, and prevention of offending, as well as the neuroethical concerns surrounding this work.
Abstract
The rapid developments taking place in neuroscience research on crime are creating an uncomfortable tension between our concepts of responsibility and retribution on the one hand, and understanding and mercy on the other. This talk provides a brief overview of this growing body of knowledge and its implications for our future conceptualization of moral responsibility, free will, and punishment. If the neural circuitry underlying morality is compromised in offenders, how moral is it of us to punish prisoners as much as we do? Should we use biology to better predict who amongst us are predisposed to future violence? And how can we improve the brain to reduce violence?