Rewiring Our Morality

by Daniel Reisel

What goes on in the mind of a murderer? Neuroscientist Daniel Reisel set out to find the answer, venturing behind the heavy metal doors of London’s most notorious prison and into the microscopic world revealed by an MRI machine. In this compassionate and insightful book, Reisel describes how empathy evolves in every child’s brain, and how early traumatic experiences can distort its development. During his journey, Reisel unveils a powerful discovery: Even hardened criminals can change, right down to their neurons. Understanding this, Reisel argues that we must shift to a restorative form of justice — one that allows both victim and perpetrator a chance to heal, instead of the current punitive system that only perpetuates a cycle of crime. Our safety — and our humanity — depend on it.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

59 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 4, 2014

Reviews

[Larry Bassett]

About restorative justice where the perpetrator meets the victim in an effort to redirect the perp onto a different path. Very short.

[Jacqueline]

A good place to start introducing "restorative justice" would be in our schools, then maybe our jails wouldn't be so full

[Bill Pritchard]

In a recent study, 63% of American convicts were re-arrested within three years of their release. Our country has less than 5% of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. That is 6x the world's average. It also costs about $33,000 annually. It costs nearly four times as much to keep an inmate in jail for a year as it costs to send a child to school for the same amount of time. In this TED book , author Daniel Reisel talks about his work that suggests that the psychopaths. His work found that the malevolent tendency found within these people was not a mere voluntary whim; it was actually written into their brains - an incredible lack of empathy. So his work has evolved to answer this basic question - Is this writing written in stone or can it be altered?

Fascinating in the areas it explores, if there is truth in any of what he says, it could be part of the transformation of our criminal justice system that takes up such an incredible amount of our resources. Highly suggested.