BOOK REVIEW: THE ANATOMY OF VIOLENCE

After having read the Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine, I first felt an immense sense of accomplishment. This Is because even though, I take a keen interest in Biology and the natural sciences, I do not study them full time, and I was able to understand the underpinnings of Raine’s arguments for the Biological roots of crime.  

Adrian Raine was born in Darlington 1954, he is currently Professor of Criminology at the Richard Perry University Pennsylvania. His current research is based around Biological interventions for Anti-social behaviour, part of this research involves structural brain scanning to identify patterns in the brains of violent offenders. Raine also specialises in Neurocriminology and is in my opinion, the future of the movement of the discipline along with his previous PhD supervisor Peter Venables. 

Throughout the book, Raine would talk about a leading argument and weigh it with substantial evidence. Much of this evidence I did agree would be a factor for the driving cause of violence. Raine took an approach in his research which encompassed all ages and types of people based on Quantitative data findings on those incarcerated for violent crimes. He also compared different models of incarceration systems and critically looked at how they impact on the psychological welfare of the prisoners.

There were a multitude of notable points of significance which in my opinion were a mixture of controversy between the academic stand off between social scientists and Neuroscientists, and also promising if researched further. On page 330-331, Raine cites a known murder case study, Kip Kenkel was a 15-year-old school boy in Springfield Orogen, who had a fascination with guns. This is of course very common place due to the culture surrounding firearms, particularly in the Southern States of America. After been given a 9mm Glock handgun by his farther, Kip decided to keep the gun loaded in his locker at school. He was found out and faced immediate expulsion. Kip was given the gun by his farther primarily because his father wanted to reconnect with his son, and the purchase of a gun for the fifteen-year-old was a positive way of rekindling this connection. This soon ended in tragedy, after having killed both of his parents by repeatley shooting at them in the back of the head and the heart, Kip then focused his targeting attention on his school, where he returned one morning, open fired on his classmates as they sat for breakfast in the school canteen, he killed 2 children and severely injured a further 25 others. However, he was arrested, after being tackled to the ground by a wounded member of the wrestling team. Kip was of course arrested and the whole legal process for his conviction and incarceration began. Kips defence attorney was Richard Konkol, who was also a paediatric Neurologist. Richard Konkol had conducted a brain scan on Kip, the results showed that there was a severe brain dysfunction, on the prefrontal cortex. 

To summarise, the prefrontal cortex, according to Raine is responsible for the development of personal characteristics such as planning, attention span and emotive responses and holds the development for complex behaviours. The brain scan showed evidence of there being holes in this region of the frontal lobe, which Richard Konkol argued, was a reason as to why Kip Kenkel decided to murder his parents in cold blood and conduct a mass shooting on his school. In this case scenario, I felt slightly repulsed after reading that Kenkel entered an insanity plea and as a result got offered a maximum of 25 years to be served consecutively. Even though I am aware that Brain temperament and chemistry hugely impacts the actions, feelings thoughts and behaviours of an individual, I did however feel that there was more justice to be done, not only for the individual victims, but also for the sake of showing these acts of violence are to be met with harsh consequences. This case also took my mind back to what I wrote about in my first blog post- Criminal- by Tom Gash.  I referred to the Herbert Weinstein case, and how he was found to have a cyst In his Arachnoid membrane, this blocked blood flowing from the middle layer of the central Nervous System- known as the dura mater. This part was responsible for the cognitive, and emotive regions of the brain. Lack of blood going to this part of the brain would also lead to more psychopathic and pathological tendencies. 

After considering these factors, I began to consider more and more that these brain abnormalities in these violent criminals are not mere coincidences but are factors which lead to the behaviours within the individual in the first place. This also led me to consider the future of this research and what is the most effective way to deal with these individuals. I simply don’t accept the concept of locking them up and throwing away the key, even though I do believe that prison is necessary for those most dangerous to society, I feel that more needs to be done in terms of Neurocriminology research, to ultimately identify the warning signs of a violent offender, and even see if we can prevent it from developing, This is one of the factors in the book which I feel shows genuine academic and research potential.

Later, in the book, Raine also talks about eugenics and how violence be a mental disease. Even though some social scientists would disagree and could argue that violence is a learned behaviour stemming from our experiences and lack of moral instruction, this stem of violence must have stemmed from the brain, and the way we are wired as humans. Therefore, I strongly support Raines argument which suggests that violence should be treated as a mental disease. This way, we can look at the brain and human functioning on a more researched and widespread level which overall would increase our understanding of the anatomy of violence and the early warning signs. Furthermore, those deemed to be affected can get the best help from the very start. However similarly to what I have just mentioned, Raine talked on page 349 about the futuristic idea of the minority report, Raine discusses that the future of Neurocriminology and social policy can result in all males over 18 receiving a brain scan to identify if they are likely to become a serial offender and a violent criminal. This report is subjective, the targeted individuals would be male. What about female violent offenders? This idea of eugenics is I believe unnecessary and unethical. Raine also talks about how new parents should be made to take classes on child rearing before they would be permitted by the state to have children, a licence if you like.  This is also in my opinion unethical and unnatural. If implemented as futuristic social policy, we would be taking something as natural and evolutional as childbirth and making it into an idealistic, robotic way of living. Even though I agree that we should be able to detect the warning signs of violence through early brain scans, we should not however take away basic civil liberties in the name of what could potentially be a way of stopping criminals before they are born.

To summarise, I feel that Adrian Raine has a lot of unique ideas which have been backed up through his extensive research on the anatomy of Violence. As an Psychologist and a Neurocriminologist, he takes an anti-retribution stance which I do agree with, I feel as a society, on a global level, development is so important and I feel that we need to look not so much at incarceration as a viable solution for every misdemeanour and crime, but to really go into depth about these types of violent crimes and encourage research which can help with rehabilitation and behavioural changes, whether that’s on a social, societal or Biological level. To do this, we need stronger unity between social and natural scientist in this regard. A unity of a biosocial approach if you like.

I look forward to reading more research by Adrian Raine and seeing the development In this essential field of Neurocriminology continue.