Ethical Dilemma of Genetically Defense Issue

The suggestion of individual blame for action is central to our idea of what it is to be a person. Behavioral genetic research may seem to call into question the idea of individual responsibility with probable implications for the criminal fairness scheme. These implications will depend on the understandings of a mixture of agencies and expert groups involved in responding to violent and anti-social behavior, and, the result of negotiations between them over resulting practice. The paper considers two kinds of approaches to the question of responsibility and 'criminal gene's arising from a sociological and philosophical perspective respectively. One is to consider the social context and possible practical implications of research into 'criminal gene's which will later be examined through interviews and discussions with a range of experts including lawyers and social workers. A second and different kind of approach is to ask whether the findings of behavioral genetics ought to have implications for attributions of responsibility. Issues of genetic influence are central to both approaches and therefore, this article would like to postulate that:(1) Criminal behavior, especially chronic criminal behavior, seems to be partly genetically predisposed.
(2) An important task at this point is to attempt to determine the biological factors which predispose people to crime.
(3) We have related some tentative initial steps being taken in the study of the autonomic nervous system as one possible heritable, biological basis for the failure of normal social learning forces in inhibiting criminal behavior. Early in this paper we discussed the tenability of asserting criminal responsibility on individuals whose criminal behavior has a partly genetic etiology. But this special consideration seems to set biological factors apart as being in some unique causal category. In fact, genetic, physiological, and biochemical factors are causal agents in the same sense as family, social class, or neighborhood factors. Of course, criminal behavior (like all other behavior) must be caused; one class of causal variables is the biological category. The legal doctrine of responsibility is not challenged by identifying biological factors as partially determining crime any more than it is by findings of social causation. Only in cases in which abnormal biological factors are exceptionally powerful influences might responsibility be challenged. Such cases will be quite rare.