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The Impact of Behavioral Sciences on Criminal Law$
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Nita A. Farahany

Print publication date: 2009

Print ISBN-13: 9780195340525

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2009

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340525.001.0001

Genetic Predictions of Future Dangerousness: Is there a Blueprint for Violence?

Chapter:
(p. 389 ) 12 Genetic Predictions of Future Dangerousness: Is there a Blueprint for Violence?
Source:
The Impact of Behavioral Sciences on Criminal Law
Author(s):

Erica Beecher-Monas

Edgar Garcia-Rill

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340525.003.0012

This chapter begins with a discussion and critique of the courts' use of future dangerousness predictions in sentencing and postsentence commitment proceedings for capital murderers and sex offenders and in community notification requirements for sex offenders. It then addresses the growth of knowledge about the biology of violence and sexual violence and questions whether such information could be incorporated into actuarial instruments that might more reliably form the basis for sentencing and postsentencing determinations. It examines the problems of predicting violence based on genetic information. The chapter concludes that the courts' insistence on future dangerousness predictions is ill conceived for both legal and scientific reasons.

Keywords:   behavioral genetics, behavioral predictions, sexual violence, criminal behavior, sentencing

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