Punishment, Freedom, and the Culture of Control: The Case of Brain Imaging and the Law

Abstract

The centrality of freedom as a philosophical construct is often neglected in contemporary academic circles and popular media outlets when it comes to discussions of crime, criminals, and the criminal law. This is surprising, especially since freedom—its absence or its presence—is an important ethical dimension underpinning all transgressive acts, including delinquency and crime. More specifically, the notion of freedom problematizes wayward conduct because transgression can (and does) emerge from freedom's limits rather than its excesses. What this suggests, then, is that criminality is not necessarily an artifact of one's autonomy gone awry or of making “bad” choices; rather, criminality may be a moment of self-discovery, transformation, and transcendence in which a “critical freedom” is borne. This is a period marked by living life on the edge; of contesting thresholds and boundaries in which “a plethora of original ideas, thoughts, inventions, new forms of resistance, and so forth” emerge.