by Adrian Raine
THE MINORITY REPORT
It’s now 2049 and the fifteenth anniversary of the LOMBROSO program. The nation is nine years into the NCSP. Together these programs are undeniably making a dent in the rates of juvenile and adult violence. They have also significantly reduced nonviolent crime. It has unquestionably been a dicey game to play, but cost-benefit analyses clearly document the winnings, which are invested back into welfare programs and have gained bipartisan political support for the program. The government is popular, but the opposition is ever present. Fortunately, the government’s research analysts have another card up their sleeve.
LOMBROSO and NCSP are certainly costly prevention programs even with investment from the private sector. There could be even greater savings. An avant-garde cadre of research analysts and neurocriminologists propose a controversial program that is outvoted by other advisors. But a minority report is written and submitted alongside the majority vote for senior government officials to consider. Following in the traditions of LOMBROSO and NCSP initiatives, the minority report proposes to stop crime before it starts. But this time it proposes that citizens get a license before they even have a child. After a very long and heated debate, there is a small majority vote in favor, and the policy becomes law.
The train of thinking in the minority report goes something like this: Poor parenting has undeniably been linked to later violence. Genetic studies documented not just that antisocial parents transmit their bad genes to their children, but that the negative social experience of having a bad parent is also a causal factor for antisocial behavior. The issue is not to use eugenics as a final solution to crime, advocates argue, but to create a social policy to promote positive behavior. Better parents, better children. The minority report’s perspective focuses on children’s rights—minors need to be protected and better treated, and would-be parents need to be responsible. They must report in for licensing.
Cars can be killers, and so you need a license before you can drive. Kids can be killers too. So the logic goes that you should also have a license before you can have a child. Just as you need to document practical skills in driving a car and also knowledge of the right way to drive, you also need to show theoretical and practical proficiency in rearing a child. It’s only right for the child and society.
Civil-rights activists remonstrate loudly against the minority report, claiming it is taking away a fundamental human right. In response, the government adds the caveat of compulsory classes in parenting skills in all schools. Now everyone has the potential to pass the licensing exam, they say. No child left behind. No more excuses.
Classes are structured to be age-appropriate and to start at a relatively early age. They teach children everything from the basics of reproduction to prenatal nutrition, stress reduction, the early needs of a developing baby, providing structure and support for the growing child, negotiation skills with teenagers, what psychological problems teenagers have, and how to help them. The broader context is on becoming a responsible citizen, with the curriculum covering knowledge-acquisition, social skills, decision-making, and emotion-regulation. The examination covers practice as well as theory, just like a driving test. What to do—and what not to do. The large majority of children pass and get their license.
Some parents are opposed, but what wins the day is that kids actually enjoy the one-hour Friday afternoon class far more than Monday morning’s matrix algebra. The teenagers love to talk about sex, intimate relationships, dealing with drugs, and peer-group pressures—all the stuff they are going through and will have to deal with in their own child. They enjoy the “good parent—bad kid” role-play pairings in which one of them acts as the good parent while the other one acts—well—at being basically themselves.
Some teenagers never knew that vigorously shaking a baby when it cries cuts the white fibers connecting the prefrontal cortex with the limbic system. They did not know that babies have to be fed in the middle of the night. They never knew the long-term financial cost of having to bring up a kid. They not only learn about how to be a better parent, but they also learn social skills that help them manage their current relationships with their parents, boyfriends, and girlfriends, as well as academic skills on human development, brain development, and behavioral control. Schoolkids like it, teachers like it, and parents actually learn a useful thing or two from their kids about parenting that they did not know. The kids themselves are actually becoming more manageable and understanding of their parents’ position. It is an all-around winner.
Yet the licensing program still has significant opposition from human-rights advocates. Civil liberty advocates remonstrate that the government is taking away the right to have children and essentially criminalizing pregnancy. The government’s retort is that any woman can become pregnant—she just has to pass the licensing exam before she gives birth.39 To make it enforceable, there have to be sanctions for illegal parenting—just as there are sanctions for dangerous driving. If she is unlicensed, a mother caught with a baby has her child taken away into a foster home but is also offered a crash course on parenting and the opportunity to take the examination. If she passes, her baby will be returned—although there are inevitably yearly follow-ups on her parental skills, given her documented lack of responsibility and law-breaking behavior. DNA banks also allow the biological fathers to be tracked and sanctioned if they are not licensed.
Opponents argue vociferously that the program is inherently eugenic, as those with learning disabilities are less able to pass the examination. The government has countered by arguing that only a small minority will fail, and, as in a driving test, they will be given a second chance. They can learn the skills if they really want to. There is also a surprising number of more privileged kids who in pilot testing showed themselves to be pretty clueless at parenting—it isn’t just the poor kids who have problems. In fact, quite a number of underprivileged kids have done very well on the exam—because they have already taken on the role of parenting their younger siblings. They know all the ropes of parenting already.
Despite strident debate, the majority of the public feels on balance that there is something inherently sensible in the government’s plan. Most people recognize that parents are not perfect and laud efforts to reduce child abuse, improve parenting skills, and prevent future violence. The school authorities are surprisingly oppositional. It turns out that they want as much class time as possible for traditional academic subjects because school evaluations are based on that. The government puts paid to that objection by mandating school evaluation based partly on grades in parenting—and school authorities are then suddenly in strong support. In 2050 the Parental License Act is passed.
In the first few years, parenting skills go up and unwanted pregnancies go down. Juvenile delinquency declines too, as adolescents achieve a greater sense of responsibility, empathy, and agency alongside slightly improved relationships with their parents. There are long-term reductions in child abuse and later adult violence as teenagers grow up to be more responsible parents. The result is a new generation of children more cared for and loved by their parents. It is a winner with the public, and the government continues to win its war on violence—and its battle with the opinion polls.
Let’s now step back from Big Brother and the impending glare—or glitter—of these hypothetical programs. Consider two quite different questions on the three future programs I have outlined. Could they happen? Should they happen? The practical, and the philosophical.
THE PRACTICAL—COULD THIS HAPPEN?
LOMBROSO could certainly come about in practice in twenty years, or something quite like it. Let’s face it, elements are already in place right now. The prison at Guantánamo Bay is just one example of how indefinite detention is being used by countries throughout the world in the name of national security. Indefinite imprisonment for dangerous criminal offenders—or “preventive detention,” as it is neatly packaged—is common in many countries.
You also know that al
l it takes is one tinderbox crime to set off a new law to protect society. That happened with Megan’s Law, which required the public registration of sex offenders after the rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994 by a man with prior convictions for sexual assaults against young girls.40 It also happened with Sarah’s Law, in England, after the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000 by a sex offender named Roy Whiting. As we learned earlier, physical castration is offered right now in Germany and some other countries as a treatment option for sex offenders—we don’t have to wait two decades for that to happen.
Society over the years is also becoming more controlling, with enhanced safety and security at all levels. I can check the Megan’s Law Web site for where I live with my wife and two boys, and I can see pictures of all the convicted sex offenders living near me, together with their addresses and what their offenses were. There are sixty-nine in my zip code right now.
On the other side of the fence there are ever-stricter safety and security measures in place. My boy Andrew asked me to bring him a potato gun back from England, as I had told him I had one when I was a kid. But now I find out that they are not sold anymore for health and safety reasons. My sister Sally, in Darlington, tells me she needed an Enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check so she could monitor children’s examinations at the school near her—a check on whether she has any registrations for offenses under the Protection of Children Act. You just never know what my sister could get up to with kids—although I’ve checked her convictions certificate and she seems clean. Kids cannot play conkers anymore at school for safety reasons.41 Are we too concerned about children’s safety? Are we wrapping them in plastic bubbles and not allowing them normal life experiences where they can grow? Or are we not being safe enough? In any event, society is certainly becoming more controlling over time—and that control can be subtly extended.
We also know all too well the political “something must be done” brigade. They never hesitate to introduce new laws supposedly to solve society’s problems and win power. Just look at what happened in relatively liberal societies like the United Kingdom in recent years. Tony Blair in 1997 won a landslide victory for the center-left Labour Party with his mantra to be “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.” In 2003, Blair’s party launched the Criminal Justice Act, which set in motion Imprisonment for Public Protection—the IPP program. Under the act, judges can sentence offenders to life in prison even though the crime they committed would not normally receive a life sentence. If they have previously committed one of a list of 153 offenses, and if they have currently committed a “serious” offense on that list, and if the judge feels they might commit another serious offense in the future, they will get life.42 In fact, the judge is legally compelled to give a life sentence if an offender meets these criteria.43 Judges are also required to say what sentence they would have given if they had not viewed the offender as potentially dangerous. In about a third of cases the sentence they would have received, the “tariff” sentence, is only two years in prison—and yet the offender will now get life unless a parole board decides to release him.
Crimes on the list are quite interesting. They range from “serious” offenses such as taking an indecent photograph of a child to attempting to procure a girl under the age of twenty-one.44 It covers quite a lot of ground. Prisons swelled, and 5,828 had been given the IPP life sentence by 2010. Even though about 2,500 of them had served their tariff sentence, only ninety-four—or 4 percent—were released. Even then, of this tiny number of released offenders, a quarter were dragged back into prison after initial release.45 They had served their time and yet are locked up for life.
Will we lock up offenders in the future longer than their “just deserts” if we feel there is a chance they might commit another violent or sexual offense? Of course we will—we do it now! Did the public kick up a fuss with IPP? No, they didn’t! If you think the legislation that launches LOMBROSO in 2034 is a tad hasty and not all that well thought out, bear in mind that IPP has been lauded as “one of the least carefully planned and implemented pieces of legislation in the history of British sentencing.”46 More bungled legislation can follow even sooner than 2034.
My socialist country went one better than IPP. In 2000, magicians in the government conjured up from nowhere the label of “dangerous and severe personality disorder”—in the face of overwhelming opposition from psychiatrists.47 Under this new legislation, the police have the power to whisk potentially dangerous people off the streets and into holding institutions for further assessment and treatment—even if they have committed no crime. More commonly prisoners who have served out their sentences can be detained further “for the public good.” The practice is still ongoing, with the British government contemplating increasing and diversifying its operations.48
Forensic psychiatrists in both the United Kingdom and the United States, meanwhile, are remonstrating strongly against the increasing pressure to use forensic psychiatry to protect the public.49 Yet the public doesn’t seem to mind, and my family in England did not even know about the existence of these programs when I asked them. The essence of the LOMBROSO program has been essentially alive and well for years in countries like England, which has far less of a retributivist stance than the United States, China, or Singapore, all of which impose the death penalty. Yet, paradoxically, it was not tough enough for judicial officials, with the Lord Chief Justice complaining in 2004 that Tony Blair had not been tough enough on the causes of crime.50 Blair slipped up—he really should have launched the LOMBROSO program if he had wanted to stay in power.
Using neuroscience to aid risk assessment has its advocates in the most foremost intellectual circles. The Royal Society in the United Kingdom commissioned leading academics to examine whether neuroscience technologies now or in the future could help law courts decide the fates of offenders. The ensuing report was appropriately cautious, yet at the same time suggested that neurobiological markers might indeed be shown to be useful, in conjunction with other risk factors, to identify risk for violence when making decisions about probation or parole.51 It further suggested that neuroscience may be used more widely in the future to decide which potentially dangerous offenders should be detained to protect society. Let’s reflect on this. If the scientific potential is being envisioned in 2011, it’s not entirely unreasonable to imagine the field moving futher, albeit precariously, in that future direction.
What about the National Child Screening Program? Could that nefarious venture come about? Let’s look back to Kip Kinkel. Just after his killings, in June 1998, President Clinton toured the school corridors and cafeteria at Thurston High, where Kip had gunned down his classmates. It was not too dissimilar to President Obama’s visit to Newtown after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. He met with the surviving victims and gave them more than presidential comfort. Clinton instructed the attorney general to generate a new school guide entitled “Early Warning, Timely Response” that would help keep kids out of harm’s way. Scientists and practitioners got in on the act too, with the American Psychiatric Association announcing “22 warning signs” of dangerous kids.52 Do you see some of these same signs in your own child or younger sibling? Things like:
• angry outbursts
• depression
• social withdrawal and isolation
• peer rejection
• fascination with guns
• poor school performance
• lack of interest in school
Kip had them all—and a lot more besides, including cruelty to animals, attention deficit, and recorded juvenile delinquency.53 There is almost always a reasoned sociopolitical response to national tragedies, and such tragedies will continue to cultivate new policies out of current-day events. The Minnesota Department of Health, in conjunction with the Minnesota Department of Education, has a brief and simple screening program to identify not just health problems in children, but also social and emotional problems like emotion reg
ulation difficulties.54 Instead of starting at ten years it starts very early, screening children aged zero to six years. It’s an excellent program, there are many like it, and neither I nor anyone else is complaining. Yet can we not see this and other screening programs like it creeping further along as violence is already viewed as a public-health problem by the World Health Organization55 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?56
Is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to conceive that private investors would actually foot the bill for a LOMBROSO program, as I suggested? Not if they are already doing it. Tracy Palandjian is the charismatic chief executive officer of Social Finance, a nonprofit organization that is drawing in investment capital to finance social benefits like stopping crime. In 2010, Social Finance57 launched the first Social Impact Bond, aimed at preventing male prisoners from re-offending upon their release in Peterborough, England. If it reduces re-offending by more than 7.5 percent, the financial savings get returned to investors. So far, savings range from 2.5 percent to 13 percent.58 President Obama in 2012 slated $100 million for Social Impact Bonds, and Boston is currently the first to show interest in helping juvenile offenders successfully transition into productive lives.59 If the capital-cost side of crime-prevention programs is being handled by the private sector right now, why not in twenty years’ time for the LOMBROSO prevention program?
As for parental licensing, this has been debated in both the popular press60 and the academic press61 for some years. Articles point out that poor parenting is a well-replicated risk factor for adult violence. Indeed, some governments have already acted to do something about it. In May 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the Conservative-Liberal coalition party in the United Kingdom, committed over $5 million for a state Web site to advise parents on how to raise their children. Cameron argued: