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

Munthe, Christian; Radovic, Susanna

In health screening, there is often a tension between emphasizing the severity or the prevalence when choosing target condition. Therefore, there is a basic screening ethical issue regarding which of these aspects of 'seriousness' should be given priority when designing and assessing programmes (Juth and Munthe, 2012 ). An analogous issue seems to appear in the new Lombrosian case, as a Lombrosian screening may choose between targeting either especially serious crimes (which are typically rare) or more commonly occurring offenses (typically less damaging to victims or society). It is quite conceivable that an I, who would (based on some T and F) be classified as high risk for a crime type that is serious in one of these senses, would not be high risk for crimes, which are serious in the other sense. As described in connection to the epidemiological approaches earlier, it may also be possible to identify targets, where severity and prevalence come together somewhat, such as in the case of persistent violent crime. The choice of target would, in any case, not only be a choice of what criminality is more important to prevent, it may also affect what people are being targeted, burdened, protected and so on. In all, therefore, this issue seems to be a very important one to address thoroughly for any sort of new Lombrosian approach to be justified.