The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime

The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime is an outstanding, in depth novel written by Adrian Raine who is a British Psychologist. He received his bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology at Oxford University and his Doctor of Philosophy in psychology at York University. He is currently the chair Richard Perry University Professor of psychology, psychiatry, and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent four years in two different prisons in England working as a prison psychologist. While there, he studied prisoners to try to understand why some people become violent criminals and psychopaths. In the book, Raine really stresses what anatomical and biological processes are taking place in the brains of violent criminals and psychopaths. Ultimately concluding that biology is not necessarily destiny.Raine has three objectives in this book. His first objective is to inform the readers about new scientific research conducted by him and other scientists, which focuses on the biological and anatomical issues leading to violence and crime. His second objective is to discuss how social and environmental factors interact with the biological factors that can lead to crime or predispose people to violence. His final objective is to explore the new field of neurocriminology, which applies neuroscience techniques to understand the origins of criminal violent behavior; this involves treatments and the legal system.Raine opens the book with a personal experience of his encounter with a criminal. Raine was on vacation in Turkey with his girlfriend. One night in his hotel room a person broke in and was standing above him in his bed. The intruder and Raine got into a violent fight, and the intruder cut Raine’s throat with a broken blade before he jumped out the window. This really attracts and interests the reader into wanting to know more. Specifically, to know more about why people do crazy, violent things. This also gave good insight to how he initially felt as a victim of a criminal assault and how he felt towards criminals in general. The main argument of the book is that anatomical and biological factors are critical in understanding violent behavior and treating violence and crime. Since biology is not destiny, social and environmental factors impact the biological factors that can lead to an increase of violent behaviors and criminal activities in individuals.When Raine talks about the biological roots of crime he talks about genetics. He explains that our genes shape our physiological functioning. This affects our thinking, our personalities, and our behavior. He uses case studies of identical twins and adoptions to back up his claims on genetics predisposing individuals to crime and violence. He opens Chapter 2, the genetic basis to crime, with the Jeffery Landrigan adoption case study. Landrigan never knew his parents and was adopted at a young age by a good family. In adulthood, he ended up on death row and met his biological father, who was on death row as well. Both of them had committed similar crimes throughout their lives and ended up on death row to pay for them. Raine uses this case study, among many others, to illustrate the basic message that genes definitely matter and they have a big influence on our behavior.After discussing the biological roots of crime, and how they can change to predispose individuals to crime, Raine goes on to talk about the important anatomical malfunctions of the violent brains of murderers. Raine shares his personal research study of the brains of 41 murderers. He used a PET scan to scan all of their brains. He concluded that the murderers had poor prefrontal brain functioning and this correlates with antisocial and violent behaviors. Then he discusses how on the other hand, serial killers and psychopaths have good prefrontal brain functioning. He concludes how the limbic system, specifically the amygdala is malfunctioning in these types of individuals that have good prefrontal brain functioning. To support his claims, he uses the case studies of Antonio Bustamante and Randy Kraft to show the differences in the prefrontal cortex functioning and how they relate to violent and criminal behavior. Bustamante was an impulse murderer and his brain scans showed no functioning of the prefrontal lobe. Kraft on the other hand, is a serial killer who hasn’t got caught in a long time, and his scans showed good functioning in the prefrontal lobe. Raine also used Jane Toppan’s case study to illustrate the amygdala malfunctioning in psychopaths.Raine talks about the social and environmental factors that can influence and predispose individuals to violent criminal behavior. Raine discusses how prenatal care, malnutrition, exposure to toxic materials, and bad parenting can cause brain damage and lead to violent behavior and criminal activity. The environment can lead to brain injuries, which relates to anatomical brain malfunctioning. He uses Phineas Gage’s brain injury as an example of how a brain injury caused by the environment can change behavior. Gage was a railway worker. One day while working, a metal rod entered through his lower left cheek and exited from the top middle part of his head. Surprisingly he was still alive, but because of the damage to his prefrontal cortex his personality and behavior dramatically changed. Gage’s behavioral change was caused by his environment. He also talks about the controversial debate of nature vs. nurture. Some individuals may be genetically predisposed to violent behavior, but it depends on how the social and environmental factors influence those genes.At the end of the book, Raine talks about different treatments that can be offered to criminals as well as the legal system and its implications. He also talks about what the future might or could look like. He isn’t making an excuse for criminals, but he is trying to provide understand and logic to how the brain plays a major role in criminal activity. He tries to provide solutions that can help criminals and possible prevent future crime from happening. Some solutions he provided are castration and different types of drugs. He showed how both of these have had positive influences on criminals.This book was extremely fascinating and informative. I feel like Raine was very organized, which made it easy to read and follow along. He also used appropriate language which non-science readers would be able to understand. He supported his claims and theories with evidence using various case studies along with some of his own personal research and other well-known historical case studies. He would tell a story about a famous murderer or case study that directly related to his topic or point; it really helped me to better understand what he was referring to. Even though these stories were horrid and hard to imagine, they made the book all the more interesting. It propelled me to keep reading further because I wanted to understand how people could do such horrible things. Raine also used multiple visuals such as charts, pictures, and brain scans! Referring to the brain scans allowed me to understand exactly what parts of the brain he was referring to. I thought it was good that he included a lot of personal connections. He related himself to a psychopath showing the similarities in their lives including their brain scans, their personalities, their families, their backgrounds, and their hobbies. He used himself to demonstrate certain points and how the points relate to everyone. He brings up and discusses very controversial topics, but supports his claims with evidence. You don’t have to agree with the points he makes, but his evidence and reasoning make you question your thoughts and make you think about what you believe and why. In the end, Raine also leaves you to think about the future. This made me think about how the future of criminals and the legal system may change due to new research, as well as how these findings and changes can affect my life.Overall this book deserves a 5/5 star rating. Adrian Raine is an incredible author with an incredible mind. People who are interested or studying crime or neuroscience should definitely pick up this book. It gives great theories and details on how the brain works and what causes it to not work properly in criminals. It definitely makes you critically think and question different things.

Do murderers, psychopaths and criminal offenders have different brains than normal people? Famous neuroscientist, psychologist and criminologist Adrian Raine provides the answer to this question and so much more in his book The Anatomy of Violence. In it he provides plenty of detailed information ranging from short life stories of psychopaths like Randy Kraft and Jane Toppan to research from around the world as well as a bit of his own work. Engaging and at times sprinkled with a bit of humor, Raine hopes to convince the skeptical reader that both biological and environmental influences have an important role in the shaping of a violent offender’s brain.While the book isn’t split into any obvious sections, you can essentially split the books by the topics that he covers. The topics that he covers are as followed: The genetic basis to crime, The neuroanatomy of violence, The environmental factors that play a role, and the possible solutions and ethical problems that this imposes.The first topic that Raine focuses on is how crimes like cheating, stealing, homicides and others can be seen from an evolutionary perspective. According to Raine these acts of antisocial behavior are cheating strategies that people use in order to promote their own genes within the genetic pool. Men for example, have evolved to use physical aggression to increase gene fitness and receive the parental investment for their offspring that women offer. Likewise women have evolved to use more subtle forms of violence like gossip in order to drive off potential rivals and lower the chances of losing the protection men provide for them and their offspring. The offspring themselves in turn can inherit certain aspects from their parents that can give them higher chances of becoming violent offenders later in the future. Raine then points out some potential culprits like a defective MAOA gene which can cause loss of impulse control and attention. Another culprit Raine mentions are low levels of serotonin and dopamine. Raine does warn, however, against the overestimation the role of inheritance plays.The second major topic that Raine covers is how the brain of a violent offender functions very differently from a normal person’s brain. He points out that the prefrontal cortex (area associated with cognitive functioning) is less active in murderers when compared to non-murderers. This impairment is what causes offenders to be more aggressive, and less able to control their emotions as well as being less capable at intellectual tasks. Having lower intellectual abilities result in factors that predispose them to the criminal way of life (failing school etc.). Surprisingly Raine also discovers that multiple time murderers (serial killers) don’t have this impairment but rather contain impairments to other areas to the brain. These impairments may be a dysfunctional amygdala and or other limbic regions which in turn cause the individual to be unable to empathize emotionally with their victims. This is why some psychopaths can act so cold and emotionless when committing their devious acts. Raine makes this fact even more convincing by using example of psychopaths like Jane Toppan who committed her acts of murder for personal delight.Raine also mentions how physical abnormalities in the brain are also responsible for violent offenders. By providing images of brains, he points out how physical abnormalities can cause people to have higher chances of developing psychopathic tendencies. One such abnormality is cavum septum pelluciden (CPS), a condition in which the limbic structures do not develop normally. This abnormality is seen to be more prevalent in people with criminal records. Another example he uses to further illustrate this point is the good old Phineas Gage incident. He explains that when the rod pierced the man’s head, it caused him to become impulsive, violent and much different than what he used to be. As if this wasn’t enough, Raine then proceeds to give even more examples of violent individuals who have had some sort of physical abnormality through an accident or since child birth.His third topic moves away from the brain for a bit and instead targets some abnormalities found in the automatic nervous system. Here he shows how something as simple as a low heart rate can be an indicator of antisocial behavior. Those with low resting heart rates are thought to be more fearless and do not receive the same amount of arousal than those with more normal heart rates. This causes these individuals to be more prone to committing antisocial acts because not only are they not afraid of the consequences but they also want the same level of stimulation that we get from watching TV or listening to music. Unfortunately they do not receive the same arousal from these mundane acts as we do so they turn to more stimulating albeit questionable acts.After moving through the biological perspective, Raine begins to talk about the environmental factors (combined with biological ones) that play a role in violent offenders. Things such as birth complications and disruption of the developing brain are a few of the things he mentions that can cause individuals to be violent after birth. Another environmental factor he mentions that can have an effect is your diet. Based on a study that was done, Raine shows that those with malnutrition tend to be more aggressive and hyperactive. Another more interesting fact is that fish is a component that helps reduce aggressiveness due to the omega 3 oil that they contain. He does try to make it known however, that both environmental and biological factors are intertwined and work together.The final topic that Raine mentions in the book is probably the most though-provoking one. In this section he makes you brings together all the information that was presented and then proposes a solution to crime. The idea that is proposed is a program set in the near future called LOMBROSO. This program would require males ages 18 and over to have their brains scanned. Those who are seen to have high chances of becoming offenders are sent to a ‘home away from home’ to go through programs to lower these chances. However he then asks if the way this would work is ethical. He delves deeper into this question by providing examples that question your moral core.The most enjoyable part of the book for me was the idea that Raine proposes at the end. The idea of forcing people to follow through programs based on their chances of becoming offenders seems too much. It seems more like the program splits humanity into categories. Those who pass the program are clean and those who don’t are weeds. This is seen more prevalent since those ‘weeds’ would live separately from society until they are in an way ‘cured’. This part of the book really got me thinking about just how far should we go in order to better society and humanity.If you are interested in a book about neuro-criminology or simply something that will get your grey matter excited then I highly recommend you getting this book. Raine does a very good job convincing you that violence has biological and sociological roots by providing numerous studies and examples. In fact the only small negative aspect of the book is that at times the information that has been presented is too much! However the writing style of Adrian Raine keeps you reading until the very end.After finishing the book I would give it a solid 5 out of 5 stars. This book really sparked my interest in neuro-criminology and the many different routes neuroscience has to offer. My attention never faded because the evidence provided was very convincing and at times quite mind blowing. All in all this book was a very enjoyable read.