On April 2, 2025, the free, virtual Nova Campfire, “Beyond Blame and Retribution: Rethinking Justice through Science and Social Evolution” examined ways to rethink outdated paradigms and reshape structures and systems to align with contemporary science—ensuring justice, fairness, and human flourishing.
Nowhere is this more urgent than in the criminal justice system, where pre-scientific worldviews rooted in blame, punishment, and outdated concepts of free will and will power fail to consider social and biological determinants. Despite profound advances in neuroscience, trauma research, behavioral genetics, and the developmental origins of health and disease, legal systems continue to operate on outdated assumptions—much like those that once blamed obesity on a lack of willpower.
This transdisciplinary event explored how to integrate modern scientific understanding into legal frameworks and reimagine carceral systems. By shifting from punitive models to evidence-based approaches informed by the latest scientific insights into social determinants, brain science, and biological systems that affect behavior, including connections between the microbiome and mental health, we can create a more just and compassionate society. Justice must evolve alongside science to ensure systems truly serve humanity’s collective well-being and flourishing.
Watch the full event recording or scroll down for individual presentations.
Nova Fellow Alan C. Logan, Scholar Susan Prescott, and Campfire panelists explore themes further in an article in Challenges: The Land That Time Forgot? Planetary Health and the Criminal Justice System.
Program and Panelists
There will be a brief introduction from Susan Prescott, director of the Nova Network, and Brian Berman, president and founder of the Nova Institute for Health, after a general welcome and “mindful moment” from Rick Scott. Panelists will each be invited to speak for around 5-7 minutes, weaving their narrative threads to provide the fabric for discussion that all attendees can then contribute to.
Welcome
Professor Brian Berman, MD, is the president and founder of the Nova Institute for Health and professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he was director of the Center for Integrative Medicine. He is one of the most highly funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers in the field of integrative and complementary medicine. A pioneer in the field and founder of the first U.S. academic medical center-based program for integrative medicine in 1991, he received two Bravewell Collaborative awards in leadership and service. He continues to conduct NIH-funded research at University of Maryland and promote a broad vision of health through leadership at Nova Institute for Health.
Rethinking the Justice System through Science and Social Evolution
Susan Prescott is director of the Nova Network. She is a professor of planetary health at University of Western Australia, editor-in-chief of Challenges, and a Scholar at the Nova Institute for Health in Baltimore. She is a pediatrician, immunologist, artist, and award-winning author, internationally recognized for cutting-edge research into early environmental determinants of health and disease. Her global work promotes awareness of the interconnections between personal and planetary health in ways that inspire creative, integrated, and wise approaches, grounded in reciprocity, for social and ecological justice and flourishing futures.
A Copernican Revolution for Justice: Bringing Science to the Courts
John Callender, MD, FRCPysch, has been a consultant psychiatrist and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Aberdeen since 1986. His principal philosophical interest is in the philosophy and ethics of mental health. He has published papers on mental disorder and criminal justice in Neuroethics and the William and Mary Law Review. His major contribution has been the book, Free Will and Responsibility: A Guide for Practitioners, published by Oxford University Press. He is past chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Philosophy Special Interest Group.
From Marginalization to Integration: The Role of Multi-Omics in Justice and Public Health
Fiona Hagenbeek is a postdoctoral researcher in Group Ripatti at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki. Her current research focuses on the gene-environment interplay between socioeconomic indicators and common diseases and disorders. Fiona completed her PhD and her first postdoctoral work at the Department of Biological Psychology and the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. As part of the EU-funded ACTION project, she contributed to developing protocols for collecting urine and buccal cell samples in children to explore (multi-)omics associations with aggression.
Escaping Old Paradigms: The Impact of Science Education on Sentencing and Perceptions of Free Will
Colleen M. Berryessa is an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice. Her research, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, explores how psychological processes, perceptions, and social contexts influence the criminal justice system, particularly in courts, sentencing, and punishment. She focuses on three key areas: the impact of psychological and social phenomena on public perceptions and support for sentencing practices and policies; how these factors shape decision making during sentencing; and how they influence motivations for and effects of expanded forms of punitiveness beyond formal punishment stages. Dr. Berryessa holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Harvard University, where she also served as a CIRGE research fellow at Stanford University.
Protecting Society Without Undue Punishment: Rethinking Justice through the Public Health Quarantine Model
Gregg D. Caruso is a professor of ethics and director of the Patrick J. Waide Center for Applied Ethics at Fairfield University, an honorary professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, and codirector of the Justice Without Retribution Network at the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses on free will, moral responsibility, criminal punishment, business ethics, philosophy of law, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, neurolaw, and applied issues in moral, legal, and political philosophy. His books include Neurolaw (2024); Moral Responsibility Reconsidered (with Derk Pereboom, 2022); Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (2021), and more.
Neurolaw and Contemplative Worldviews: Bridging Consciousness, Neurobiology, and the Metaphysical Dimensions of Law and Justice
Pragya Mishra is assistant professor in law at the University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India. She holds a PhD in neurolaw from the National Law University, Delhi, where her research focused on the intersection of neuroscience, critical criminal law, and jurisprudential metaphysics. Her doctoral work examined Vipassana meditation as a rehabilitative sentencing strategy — a form of mindfulness meditation that induces neuroplasticity — demonstrating how such approaches can transform offender rehabilitation through both psychological and neurological renewal. She has published extensively on complex issues such as criminal responsibility, neurobiology of behaviour, and the metaphysics of responsibility and rehabilitative sentencing and champions a holistic approach to justice that considers both the mind and heart. Her recent book, Neurolaw and Criminal Jurisprudence in India (Routledge), underscores her contributions to reimagining criminal justice in light of modern neuroscientific insights.
Read the Nova Interview with Fellow Alan C. Logan and Dr. Mishra.
