Prison Report: Brain Scans (claim to) Identify Those Likely to Reoffend

Headline from a 2013 Wired story: Brain Scans Predict Which Criminals Are Most Likely to Reoffend (March 26, 2013)–not quite a Minority Report pre-crime scan, but a pre-release prediction from evidence of inmates’ reduced impulse control:

BRAIN SCANS OF convicted felons can predict which ones are most likely to get arrested after they get out of prison, scientists have found in a study of 96 male offenders….

The test targets impulsivity. In a mobile fMRI scanner the researchers trucked in to two state prisons, they scanned inmates’ brains as they did a simple impulse control task….

Based on previous studies, the researchers focused on the anterior cingulate cortex, one of several brain regions thought to be important for impulse control. Inmates with relatively low activity in the anterior cingulate made more errors on the task, suggesting a correlation with poor impulse control.

They were also more likely to get arrested after they were released. Inmates with relatively low anterior cingulate activity were roughly twice as likely as inmates with high anterior cingulate activity to be rearrested for a felony offense within 4 years of their release, even after controlling for other behavioral and psychological risk factors.

Separate from brain scans looking to measure impulse control are scans looking for brain trauma, and how past brain injuries might help explain or predict violent behavior.

Some 14 million have now watched the 2013 talk: The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans | Daniel Amen | TEDxOrangeCoast. And a 2020 video update lists 160,000 brain scans.

Brain scans for prisoners can be a double-edged sword. For prisoners requesting drugs for headaches and other conditions, brain scans can provide confirmation. But they could also be used later in parole hearings. Brain Imaging Research Conducted on Prisoners (Prison Legal News, October 15, 2013):

Prisoners might not be able to obtain aspirin for their headaches or insulin for their diabetes while incarcerated, but if researchers get their way, an MRI for brain imaging may be free of charge. That is no cause for celebration, though, because the MRI results could someday be introduced as evidence at trial or used to deny parole.

Researchers at Mind Research Network (MRN), a nonprofit organization, have been conducting brain imaging on prisoners in Wisconsin and New Mexico since 2007. The goal of their research is to determine if MRIs can detect changes in brain activity that might indicate a person’s propensity for being a psychopath. Thousands of prisoners have thus far volunteered for the research; in exchange they receive a small hourly payment and a copy of their brain scan.

In a July 2013 article, Dr. Kent Kiehl, an executive science officer at Mind Research Network, told the Los Angeles Times, “The trove of data they have gathered has revealed telltale abnormalities in the structure and functioning of psychopaths’ brains. On the whole, they have less gray matter in the paralimbic system – believed to help regulate emotion – which may help account for their characteristic glibness, pathological lying, lack of empathy and tendency to act impulsively.”

I’d recommend caution–everyone tends to act impulsively at times. There are many paths to help people (those in prison and out) to improve the choices they make.

A better path forward for criminal justice: Training and employment for correctional populations (Brookings Institution, April 2021). Research shows additional education helps people (including prisoners) understand and better control their behavior:

Meta-analyses of prison education research have shown that it reduces recidivism, although the effect sizes have ranged from modest[9] to relatively large.[10] Prison education has been found to be more effective in lowering recidivism when participants complete the course or program,[11] and individuals with the largest education deficits tend to benefit more from this type of programming.[12] Although participating in secondary-degree programs has been found to reduce recidivism by 30 percent,[13] better results have often been observed for postsecondary education programming.[14] [reference links in article]

A better path forward for criminal justice: Training and employment for correctional populations

And with regard to brain scans looking for psychopaths, there is the cautionary tale: The Scientist and the Psychopath (NPR, July 10, 2015):

[James Fallon, professor of psychiatry] I started receiving PET scans from the early-90s, and those included killers who were psychopaths. And so I looked at them and then took notes on what areas of the brain were kind of dysfunctional. Turns out that the psychopaths had this pattern and I went, oh, man. It was like this – you know, for a neuroanatomist like me, seeing patterns is everything. And so when I saw that I said oh, man, there’s a pattern. And nobody had ever really talked about it.

DEWITT: James had a lab of techs and students working with him on this. And on this day, one of them came to his office with a PET scan. The tech was confused about something. This brain was supposed to basically be a healthy brain. The scan should have been glowing with activity.

FALLON: They’re colored. They’re – you know, they have red and they have blue and they have yellow, they have green, and the buzzer went off, and I went oh, man. And I called in the technician – there were two of them – and I said, this came out of the scanner. It’s in the wrong pile – it’s obviously one of the murderers here.

DEWITT: The scan he had in his hands had all those big, telltale dark spots on it.

FALLON: And I told the technicians to check the machine and the providence of, you know, all the data as it got to me. I said this is obviously from the pile of these murderers or psychopaths. It looked exactly like it. It was just a pure case. I said, you’ve got to check this out because somebody’s walking around in society who probably shouldn’t be walking around – potentially a very dangerous person.

DEWITT: James peeled back the scan to find out who this person was.

FALLON: And I peeled back that last name, and it was my name.

DEWITT: The psychopathic brain belonged to James.

So, though brain scans may identify those more likely to reoffend, they also reveal those more likely to be a psychopath and offend a first time. But those crazy mixed up brains may also drive entrepreneurs to success in business or research. If we appreciate that these scans shouldn’t be used to incarcerate before crimes, maybe they shouldn’t be used after crimes to decide who gets parole and when.