Vera Tesink

Neurointerventions may be employed in criminal justice as rehabilitative tools that aim to reduce reoffending. Although ethical debates have concentrated largely on the effects of these interventions on autonomy, bodily integrity and mental integrity, much less attention has been paid to their potential impact on personal identity. On a Parfitian view of identity as psychological connectedness, neurointerventions, by modifying offenders’ psychological traits and dispositions, risk weakening offenders’ psychological connections to their earlier selves. By reducing psychological connections—and by acting directly on the very psychological traits and dispositions implicated in past crimes—neurointerventions could significantly diminish culpability that is grounded in those connections. As most penal systems set the scope of justified punishment in proportion to an offender’s culpability, any neurointervention-induced reduction in psychological connectedness may render further punishment unjust insofar as it becomes disproportionate to current culpability. This suggests that post-neurointervention reassessment of sentences may be warranted to keep punishment proportional to current culpability—and thus morally justified.

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity.

The possibility of neurotechnological interference with our brain and mind raises questions about the moral rights that would protect against the (mis)use of these technologies. One such moral right that has received recent attention is the right to mental integrity. Though the metaphysical boundaries of the mind are a matter of live debate, most defences of this moral right seem to assume an internalist (brain-based) view of the mind. In this article, we will examine what an extended account of the mind might imply for the right to mental integrity and the protection it provides against neurotechnologies. We argue that, on an extended account of the mind, the scope of the right to mental integrity would expand significantly, implying that neurotechnologies would no longer pose a uniquely serious threat to the right. In addition, some neurotechnologies may even be protected by the right to mental integrity, as the technologies would become part of the mind. We conclude that adopting an extended account of the mind has significant implications for the right to mental integrity in terms of its protective scope and capacity to protect against neurotechnologies, demonstrating that metaphysical assumptions about the mind play an important role in determining the moral protection provided by the right.