Enlight 21

Brain On Trail Essay

Author: Leo Lin | Category: Reflections | Date: 08-17-2020

Eagleman and his college proposed a new strategy for rehabilitating criminals. It involves looking at a picture, such as drugs or cigarettes and repeatedly suppressing your craving rate. Over time, you will no longer feel the need to crave a cigar. However, there are some pros and cons to this strategy.

A pro to this strategy is that it works with the frontal lobes, an area in the brain where decision making happens. In many criminal cases, people only think about the short term effect, not the long term effect. For example, if Bob, a random person, sees this expensive purse that can sell for a lot of money, Bob will be tempted to steal it. However, Bob does not consider the long term effect, like if he fails to successfully steal the purse, Bob might face a fine of 100$ and 3 weeks in jail. With this method, it may stop people from committing crimes and start thinking about the consequences of their actions. And overtime, that person will no longer feel the need to steal or do drugs and will be a law-abiding citizen. This method also does not use any drugs or surgeries and it works on strengthening a mechanism that the brain already has.

However, there are some cons to this strategy because the people will need a strong dedication to complete Eagleman’s strategy. It is possible that as soon as the treatment is over, the person might go back to their bad habits, making the treatment useless. This treatment seems to only work for people that are very very motivated to suppress their desires and go back to society. But, this method does not work for people who are affected by certain brain conditions as that condition will mix up. It seems that this method will only work on people who have committed smaller crimes and that do not serve long sentences. There are also a lot of factors that can weigh in someone’s decision making like their financial situation, work, family, etc, that may push these people to break the law.

Overall, I feel like this method can work, but only under certain conditions. The idea of repeatedly trying to lower one’s carving will improve self control and may reduce the likelihood someone will commit the crime. However, it is very easy to forget this habit and return back to a life of crime. The person taking this might think that this will not work as it is just repeatedly trying to lower the craving bar and exercising the frontal lobes. In order to achieve this, I believe that the person taking this method must be very determined to not go back to jail as the method requires attention and focus to lower the desire. But with the right attitude, a criminal might be able to go back to society after undertaking this treatment.