Neurointerventions for Criminal Offenders: Psychological Connectedness, Culpability and Justified Punishment

Neurointerventions may be employed in criminal justice as rehabilitative tools that aim to reduce reoffending. Although ethical debates have concentrated largely on the effects of these interventions on autonomy, bodily integrity and mental integrity, much less attention has been paid to their potential impact on personal identity. On a Parfitian view of identity as psychological connectedness, neurointerventions, by modifying offenders' psychological traits and dispositions, risk weakening offenders' psychological connections to their earlier selves. By reducing psychological connections-and by acting directly on the very psychological traits and dispositions implicated in past crimes-neurointerventions could significantly diminish culpability that is grounded in those connections. As most penal systems set the scope of justified punishment in proportion to an offender's culpability, any neurointervention-induced reduction in psychological connectedness may render further punishment unjust insofar as it becomes disproportionate to current culpability. This suggests that post-neurointervention reassessment of sentences may be warranted to keep punishment proportional to current culpability-and thus morally justified.