The Punisher's Brain

An unexpected combination of criminal justice and neuroscience, The Punisher’s Brain explores how humans have been hard-wired to penalize wrongdoers and how our modern institutions of punishment are rooted in our own social evolution.

As a social species, we have evolved to cooperate—albeit grudgingly—with each other. We do not steal the property or damage the well-being of others, and we keep our promises—or face the consequences. The institution of punishment made stealing and breaching sufficiently expensive to permit enough cooperation for our society to survive and flourish. But the high cost of punishment—with its threat of violent retaliation and tendency to upset the established social order—gives us a deep reticence toward punishment, and an urge to forgive when the wrongdoer caused minimal harm or gave reliable signals he or she could be trusted to return to the fold.

Morris B. Hoffman, a sitting judge for the Second Judicial District of Colorado, examines the evolutionary story of our modern conceptions of punishment and suggests ways we can improve the criminal justice system.

Publisher's Note: This is not the finished version. Please check with the publisher or refer to the finished book whenever you are excerpting or quoting in a review.