Humanizing Prison through Social Neuroscience

Abstract

This chapter uses knowledge from social neuroscience to propose a drastic rethinking of the prison system. It aims to utilize this neuroscientific perspective to illustrate why common features of the prison system (i.e. punitiveness, social exclusion, isolation and poor environments) may be extremely damaging for the brain and behavior and can consequently pose a serious risk to an individual’s progress toward positive change and reintegration into the community as a socially functional individual.Based on a review of this body of neuroscientific studies, the chapter offers several suggestions for embracing this body of knowledge to reform the prison model at both practical and theoretical levels. Notably, it argues for transforming the ethos of prisons to embrace the values of belongingness, dialogue, cooperation, and accountability as well as for re-designing the physical layout of correctional facilities to make these settings as dignified and home-like as possible. It then illustrates the potential of this body of social neuroscience to challenge the constitutionality of solitary confinement and, as a consequence, to support its abolition or at least a radical reform of its regimes. Finally, it emphasizes the compatibility of the demonstrated insights from social neuroscience with the tenets of social rehabilitation. Hence, the chapter argues for the pursuit of social rehabilitation as the most rational and effective goal of the prison system and, ultimately, of criminal justice. The chapter concludes with several remarks about the critical but indirect contribution of social neuroscience to making the criminal justice system more humane.