It was revealed this week that Scotsman Sean Hogg, found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in a park at the age of 17, has been convicted. Hogg was not sent to prison, but was sentenced to 270 hours (equivalent to seven work weeks) of community service and would only serve three years on the sex offender registry.
The punishment was universally condemned. A prominent Scottish lawyer said that in his entire career he had never seen anyone escape from prison for rape. The charity Rape Crisis Scotland called the sentence “alarmingly lenient”.
Many will agree. This is not only because of the violence in this case, in which Hogg “threatened a girl, grabbed her by the wrists and forced her to have sexual intercourse before raping her”, but because of the broader aspect we know about violent crime. . numbers peak in the late teens and early 20s, especially among men: lenient sentences seem to run counter to societal deterrence goals.
One aspect of the sentencing in this case was a relatively recent change in sentencing rules in Scotland from January 2022, where the Scottish Sentencing Council now requires judges in cases involving suspects under the age of 25 to “take into account the intellectual and emotional maturity of the suspects.” . suspected minor at the time of the crime. This is because “research shows that young people are not fully developed and may not be fully mature.”
The study in question is summarized by a detailed scientific study of psychological development and brain development, commissioned by the Sentencing Council by scientists at the University of Edinburgh. There is nothing inherently wrong with this review: it is a useful overview of years of research on the developing brain in general and adolescence in particular.
But it seems odd to suggest that we need research to tell us that young people are not fully mature. Everyone agrees that young people are less developed than adults, and they know this without reading neuroscience.
It is also interesting how carefully the sentencing committee read the investigation. Although the academic review is 120 pages long, there are several vague references to it in the sentencing rules. See details elsewhere – for example, the Sentencing Commission’s YouTube channel discusses aspects of “emotional maturity” such as self-control and understanding the consequences of one’s actions. It states: “There is evidence that some people do not fully develop these traits until they are about 25 years old.”
Such arguments are not new: for decades, lawyers have used arguments from neuroscience and psychological studies of “brain maturity” to defend younger clients. With all the hard work of the Edinburgh scientists, they could also write a few sentences and how could they end up with a conclusion that everyone has been making for years: the brain does not develop until the mid-twenties. .
There is immediate tension here. The law is forced to draw arbitrary lines: you cannot do this before this particular birthday; that’s when you become responsible. In Scotland, in particular, it is mandatory that you can vote at 16 and register with the police at 17.5.
On the other hand, we learn from science that human development is normally continuous – just as there is no definite biological point at which someone becomes an adult, there is no clear boundary after which he suddenly “realizes the consequences of his actions.” “. – and this applies to any skill or behavior. But even after considering the evidence for the variable nature of developmental change at age 25, the Scottish Sentencing Council has drawn an arbitrary boundary for the application of its specific recommendations.
Even aside from this arbitrariness, there are several serious problems with the application of neurobiological and psychological research in law enforcement. First, this is what the academic review recognizes: individual differences. Although the average young person has a less developed brain than the average adult, there are large differences between adolescents and adults in the level of development they have achieved at any given age. This variation makes it difficult to compare people of the same age and creates overlap between groups: some adults have less developed brains than some younger people, and vice versa. This means that each case must always be evaluated individually.
But if you agree that each case should be judged on its merits, then what’s the point of citing scientific studies that, after all, report average changes in the brain and psychology during adolescence? The courts never deal with the ordinary person – due to the very unusual behavior of the defendants, the courts may actually be dealing with a very atypical person who is initially not well represented by the investigation.
So unless you have specific data from neuroscience or psychology about that person—perhaps they have a severe personality disorder or a brain tumor that changes their behavior—related to belief, research on the average person is not going to be here or there.
The second problem is the blurring of the boundaries between neuroscience and psychology. The quote above about self-control is backed up in a scientific review by references to the development of certain parts of the brain—in this case, the frontal lobes. But areas of the brain don’t have a clear association with behavior: while neuroscientists associate behaviors like self-control (measured in very specific ways that aren’t always directly relevant to everyday life) with the frontal lobe, this is not the case. It does not necessarily follow that self-control behavior, which, like any other behavior, is associated with many different areas and aspects of the brain, develops at the same rate.
In other words, the penal code and much of the public discussion about neuroscience, crime and punishment flippantly uses the measurement of a particular area of the brain as a yardstick for what we really care about: human behavior.
Third, the idea that psychology or neuroscience is important in understanding criminal sentences opens up a very uncomfortable can of worms. If you look at other studies, it becomes clear that the brain size of the average person begins to decrease in their mid-twenties; Many of their intellectual abilities—memory, reasoning, speed—degrade gradually from about the same age, even with the exception of cases of dementia or other pathologies. This can easily apply to those who commit crimes, but we don’t treat people in their 50s or 60s as less offenders than people in their 30s.
This is because, ultimately, we know that science does not dictate how prisoners should be sentenced. This may be one consideration, but there are many more: moral, practical, and ultimately political. When asked about the Hogg case, the Scottish Sentencing Council defended its policy, arguing that it is “based on sound, independently verified data from around the world on the cognitive development of young people”.
It could be. But none of the decisions made about who or how much to convict follow logically from scientific data. If Scotland wants to impose fewer punishments on young people – even for the most heinous crimes – it must stop hiding behind a thin layer of “investigations” and just say it.
Source: I News
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