Challenging the prescientific frameworks of criminal justice: neurobiology and criminolytic interventions in the legalome era

Contemporary systems of criminal justice are rooted in prescientific folk psychology assumptions related to moral fiber, free will, agency, and near-universal levels of willpower. For instance, people often believe that morally “defective” people make voluntary choices, failing to utilize their own self-control capacities. Given the wide acceptance of such beliefs, they are considered “normative” within law, serving to underpin retributive punishment. However, rapid advances in biological sciences—aided by multi-omics technologies—have illuminated the ways in which brain architecture and current metabolic conditions can constrain agency and shape here-and-now decision-making. Here in this perspective article, we examine how these advances are placing the prescientific foundations of criminal justice systems under duress. Older single-gene and single neuroimage attempts at explaining criminal behavior are giving way to the legalome era. This describes a more holistic epoch in which the simultaneous integration of mass biological data (e.g., polygenetic, metabolic, microbiome, metabolomic, lipidomic, and other omics-derived information) can provide explanatory power to criminal behavior and vulnerability, and guide personalized approaches to prevention and treatment. Advances in behavioral epigenetics are revealing how genetic predispositions interact with the exposome to shape human behavior through dynamic, potentially modifiable mechanisms. Moreover, evidence suggests that the human microbiome acts as a dynamic interface between environment and brain, influencing behavior in ways that are relevant to vulnerability, impulse control, and decision-making. Promising criminolytic interventions range from nutritional and pharmaceutical approaches to cognitive-behavioral therapy and contemplative practices. The integration of biological evidence and science education, along with ethically guided neurointerventions, will be critical to more humane systems of judgement.