The Breaking Point: Understanding Your Potential for Violence

Sarah Robertson is the trade, scholarly, and reference editor of the
Canadian Book Review Annual.

The central premise of this wide-ranging study is that all of us, under
certain circumstances, are capable of committing acts of extreme
violence. The author, a former investigative journalist with the
Montreal Gazette and currently a producer with “ABC News,” espouses
a neuroscientific explanation of human psychology that correlates brain
injuries and threatening environments with violent behavior. According
to this approach, the concepts of the autonomous mind, free will, and
personal responsibility are not supported by scientific evidence and
therefore have no place in the legal system. In lieu of the get-tough
approaches currently in vogue, Regush calls for reform of the conditions
that give rise to violence—conditions inherent in a “societal
structure that accepts racism, homelessness, widespread destitution and
lack of opportunities for minority-group advancement.”

Covering far more ground than its title would suggest, the book surveys
biomedical approaches to violence and includes individual chapters on
everyday violence, sexual aggression, serial killing and mass murder,
violence on television, the gun-control debate, trends in the
criminal-justice system, and even humankind’s prospects for global
survival. The author’s thesis tends to get lost in this thicket of
violence-related issues. Unfortunately, the issue of premeditation is
ignored altogether, despite its obvious relevance to Regush’s views on
free will and self-control: both may be absent in the case of the
instigator of a crime of passion, but what about the methodical
organized-crime member who commits violent acts in pursuit of financial
gain?

Drawbacks aside, The Breaking Point raises intriguing questions about
the nature of consciousness; offers interesting comparisons of Canadian
and U.S. approaches to violence; and through its social-policy
recommendations, provides a rare and welcome antidote to a
criminal-justice system driven by the politics of vengeance. A
bibliography is the only documentation included in this decidedly
popular treatment.