Hi José! Yours is a tricky question......the answer will depend upon different national criminal procedures. In Argentina I'm pretty sure it wouldn't help a lot, as for us, criminal responsibility lies on the understanding of the nature of criminal offence, an understanding of the ilegallity of the criminal offence, whether you are able to tell your conduct is something bad or good. What's more, a depravity scale could be understood as a violation of the legal principle, the need to have the criminal offence perfectly defined in the criminal code before the offender violates the norm, ergo, it'll be a violation of a consntitutional guarantee.

Cheers. Susie.

Hola Susie,

In some states with capital punishment in the U.S., they can require judgements to determine eligibility for the death penalty by identifying whether the offense was heinous or depraved.  As you point out, this would not be an issue in all legal context that do not use morally imbued language in assessments of aggravated cases of murder.  It is not relevant in states in the U.S. that have eliminated the use of this kind of moral assessment.    Nonetheless, Dr. Welner has developed a scale to measure depravity.  Current  states where it is part of the legal codes to consider depravity as an aggravating factor are based on evidence presented in court that the offense was either  cruel, heinous or depraved by the prosecution.  The results from such a scale would be one form of evidence used in these contexts to assess whether the offender met the code's depravity requirement.  It is interesting to know that it would be a constitutional violation in Argentina.   Do you think social science is at a point that it can present evidence of degrees of depravity that would be reliable or valid for consideration by jurors in determining eligibility for the death penalty.

Hi Jose: in Argentine's Criminal Code, one of the circumstances that can aggravate homicide is cruelty, in the form of  "rage" (great bodily harm, understood as making the victim to suffer unnecesarily) and of  "malice or treachery" (taking advantage of the victim's defencelessness). But there´s no scale, it's just a matter of objective circumstances that surround the crime. 

We don't have capital punishment, although every now and then "public opinion" ask for it when faced with heinous crimes, like rape or particular homicides. I think that  a scale of that sort, based ONLY on social science analysis could be a constitutional challenge, as it's mainly subjective and would be determined once crime has be committed. Argentine criminal system -in words, but not so in facts- tries to guarantee to have as little as it's possible in subjective interpretation of criminal behaviour, when trying to analyze a particular criminal case. How can you measure evil? We certainly agree that torture is a heinous crime, but in Argentine legislation is not the same to slap on the face of someone, to spit on someone, to burn with cigarrettes, or to pass electric current through someone's body, or waterboarding. How many shots should the offender use if we want to talk about evil? How many times should the offender stab the victim to talk about malice or cruelty?. All number is arbitrary and fanciful. Extreme cases can be easy to deal with, in this topic. But the blurred zones are the ones that worries me. To bury someone alive after  you stabbed or shot him, ....is cruel? And then there's another problem: if you try to find some kind of "objetcive measure" of evil, for example magnetic resonance or a tomography......wouldn't we be close to determinism (I mean, like a slippery slope)? Neuroscience is working a lot on this nowadays.....but it's kind of a little bit creepy.......reminds me a lot of Lombroso....

I rather prefer to work in order to understand criminal mind and social and cultural determinants for criminal conduct  than to focus on classifying criminal behaviour.

Susie.

First, to measure a scale that is directly tied to legislation is usually a poor strategy. Either the law and/or its interpretation changes over time. Also, if its suggestive of the final deciding criteria, the triers of fact will want to exercise their decisional prerogative, dismissing the tests potential importance.

It is necessary and good to psychometrically measure forensic-related issues. But not evil. The term is too teleological (Aristotelian final cause) to give it scientific meaning. This is not to say that the term of evil or what it represents does not exist. It is real and can be given definitional qualities that have explanatory meaning. Psychometric science has a role in assessing areas that will give greater prediction and explanation. The assessment of evil will not provide this.

Thanks Daryl for your thoughtful response.  The developments in the psychology of morality and sociology are triggering these kinds of questions.  Welner's depravity scale is developed for use by forensic psychiatrists and  might  be applied in state's where judgments of depravity are proffered in determining the presence of aggravating factors in penalty trials in capital cases.   Some other scholars are measuring moral virtues and issues of moral character such as Peterson and Seligman.  And other researchers have started measuring issues of moral culpability in examining and predicting sentencing decisions.   They are trying to identify relevant dimensions for determining many of these teleological oriented constructs.  For instance, does assessed degrees of moral culpability or depravity predict juror decisions or responses?   Your view is well represented in the literature about these morally imbued constructs.   However, this is why I was asking this question, because there appears to be a turn in some facets of the research community about the development of a science of  morality and this is why I was trying to get a sense of how others felt about developments in criminal practice  like the depravity scale.  Forensic psychiatrists have weighed in on this debate  about  Welner's depravity scale, but I was curious whether social scientists might adhere to different views given some of the recent developments in the study of issues like virtues, happiness, and so forth.