The Bell Tolls for Folk Psychology: Are Societies Ready for a Public Health Quarantine Model of Criminal Justice?

Alan C. Logan (), Gregg D. Caruso and Susan L. Prescott
Additional contact information
Alan C. Logan: Nova Institute for Health, Baltimore, MD 21231, USA
Gregg D. Caruso: School of Business, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT 06824, USA
Susan L. Prescott: School of Medicine, University of Western Australia, Perth 6009, Australia

Societies, 2025, vol. 15, issue 11, 1-21

Abstract: Criminal laws and their deserts-based punishments, particularly in Anglo-American systems, remain grounded in folk psychology assumptions about free will, willpower, and agency. Yet advances in neuropsychiatry, neuromicrobiology, behavioral genetics, multi-omics, and exposome sciences, are revealing how here-and-now decisions are profoundly shaped by antecedent factors. This transdisciplinary evidence increasingly undermines the folk psychology model: some argue it leaves “not a single crack of daylight to shoehorn in free will”, while others suggest the evidence at least reveals far greater constraints on agency than currently acknowledged. Historically, courts and corrections have marginalized brain and behavior sciences, often invoking prescientific notions of monsters and wickedness to explain harmful behavior—encouraging anti-science sentiment and protecting normative assumptions. Earlier disciplinary silos, such as isolated neuroscience or single-gene claims, did little to challenge the system. But today’s integrated sciences—from microbiology and toxicology to nutrition and traumatology, powered by omics and machine learning—pose a threat to the folk psychology fulcrum. Resistance to change is well known in criminal justice, but the accelerating pace of biopsychosocial science makes it unlikely that traditional assumptions will endure. In response to modern science, emergent concepts of reform have been presented. Here, we review the public health quarantine model, an emergent concept that aligns criminal justice with public health principles. The model recognizes human behavior as emergent from complex biological, social, and environmental determinants. It turns away from retribution, while seeking accountability in a way that supports healing and prevention.

Keywords: public health quarantine; social exposome; neuromicrobiology; prevention science; criminology; retribution; obesity; folk beliefs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/11/305/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/11/305/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:15:y:2025:i:11:p:305-:d:1788215

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().