The Return of Lombroso? Ethical Aspects of (Visions of) Preventive Forensic Screening

Munthe, Christian; Radovic, Susanna

It is not unlikely that the last-mentioned development will make use of findings from the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience, as specific structures, processes and/or components of the brain and nervous system may be easier to link to specific genetic factors than complex psychiatric diagnoses or behavioural patterns. Even if there is a significant degree of interaction between genetic and environmental factors, the latter may be specific enough to still allow for early detection together with genetic analyses (Pettersson et al., 2013) . If the thus predicted symptoms also substantially increase the risk of future criminality, a genetic T has been established. However, even without the genetic component, neuroscientific findings may by themselves serve as a T. This is the new Lombrosian vision of neurocriminology (Raine, 2013; Glenn and Raine, 2014) , where particular neuobiological phenomena are thought to be substantial parts of the cause of criminality, thus possible to detect in order to assess the risk of future criminal behaviour. Such a T would not facilitate the far-reaching prospect of selecting against future people on the basis of forensic risk promised by the genetic approach, albeit some structures might possibly be available for inspection prenatally.