biological determinism and free will

A whole lot of energy goes into proving or refuting the  biological basis of undesirable behavior.  In large part, these are political arguments.   If it is my genes/my brain/my disease that 'made me' use drugs/kill my neighbor/be homosexual, then I should not be held accountable.  I am sick, not bad.  Not so says one of my favorite social theorists, Nikolas Rose.   In great article in the History of Human Sciences (Vol. 13:1), called Screen & intervene: governing risky behavior, Rose  notes how resoundingly biological dermininism has failed in the US courts.  He goes on to say:

"Indeed, the trend of contemporary legal thought, especially in the USA, is to operate on the premise of the inescapability of moral responsibility and culpability. On this basis, no appeal to biology, biography or society should be allowed to weaken moral responsibility for the act, let alone to diminish the requirement that the offender be liable to control and/or punishment. In this context, the argument from biology is likely to have its most significant impact, not in diminishing the emphasis on free will necessary to a finding of guilt, but in the determination of the sentence. This is unlikely to be in the direction of mitigation. For if antisocial conduct is indelibly inscribed in the body of the offender, reform appears more difficult, and mitigation of punishment inappropriate. More likely are arguments for the long-term pacification of the biologically irredeemable individual in the name of public protection."

Yikes...  So much for the argument that medicalization beats criminalization.  If our medical arguments can be used to create 'biologically irredeemable' individuals (see the post on chronic, relapsing conditions below), we may be doing more harm than good.  Rose goes on to point out the ways in which new neuroscientific technologies are being used to identify people "at risk" or predisposed to criminal behavior.  Soon, you may not even have to commit a crime to become suspect.