Lecture Summaries: Crimes, Violence, and Race

Lecture Summaries
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Lecture Summaries
Robina Institute. (2016). Treating the criminal offender's brain. YouTube
In the video, the potential for leveraging the advances of cognitive neuroscience to treat the nearly 7 million incarcerated offenders is explored. Notably, some offenders are already under mental health treatment for psychopathy. In the video, Dr. Michael Caldwell describes a study where he exposed juvenile criminal offenders to a therapy targeting psychopathic characteristics in adolescents. The study showed that the group exposed to the therapy reported lower rates of all crimes compared to the control group in five years. The difference was especially marked in violent felonies. However, the treatment effect was minimal in misdemeanors between the control and the comparison group. While the video does raise an important point about the potential for brain treatment to deal minimize offending, ethical issues arise. Specifically, my concern about such approaches is the extent to which consent will be sought from the criminal. In addition, it would be interesting to determine whether such treatment would be effective over a long period.
Robina Institute. (2016). American youth violence. YouTube
In the video, Franklin Zimring explores the levels of adolescent violence as a social problem that is exacerbated by the justice system's response to adolescent offending. Tracking the rate of juvenile homicide arrests from 1980 to 2009 shows that the rate increased from 1985 to 1994. The rate decreased starting from 1985 to 2009, reaching the 1980s levels by 2009. Zimring attributes the variation in rate was due to variation in the adolescent population. However, he notes that the media has contributed to a misinformed narrative that ignores population change and its interaction with adolescent violence. To this end, Zimring notes that the perception that adolescent violence is on the increase fails to take into account the structural changes in the population. It was interesting to learn that population change can influence the rate of crime. I agree with the points raised in the video on the need to ensure that the public is properly informed.
Robina Institute. (2016). Race and crime. YouTube
In the video, Jeffrey Fagan explores the treatment of race in justice scholarship. He started by observing that many scholars avoid highlighting the importance of race in incarceration due to several potential factors such as lack of interest or maybe racial blindsight. However, Fagan emphasizes that the importance of race in crime should not be ignored and it is important for scholars to develop an explanatory framework for why race is underemphasized by justice scholars. To this end, Fagan believes that the review of American history from the period of slavery to the era of mass incarceration can yield insight into why race is ignored by justice scholars. The explanatory factors that can be used to explore the subject inc...