Professor Jennifer Chandler discusses the “double-edged sword” of neuroscientific evidence in criminal law in a recent article entitled “The Brain, Guilt and Public Safety”, featured in The Lawyers Weekly.
The article offers a short overview of Prof. Chandler’s systematic study of all reported Canadian criminal court proceedings between 2008 and 2012, which was published in the Journal of Law and Biosciences from Oxford University Press earlier this year.
“When criminal behaviour is attributed to neurobiological abnormalities,” writes Prof. Chandler, “two reactions are possible. One is to reduce blame because the offender is perceived to have diminished capacity. The other is to increase concern for public safety, due to the perception that the prospects for successful treatment and risk management are poor. These two reactions produce the ‘double-edged sword’ of neuroscientific evidence in the criminal context, as it may be both mitigating and aggravating at once.