h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

post 139 - sorry, we were at cross purposes then. There was certainly a possibility in the study that adoptive parents would treat children differently if they knew the biological parents were criminals. That's what I thought you were alluding to.

To expand a bit on what Ed said earlier.

Think about what you mean by 'criminal genes' A suite of genetic factors that produce a brain structure that produces a personality that thinks 'I deserve to have what I want and even if it hurts others, so what, I'm going to have it anyway,'

Put those genes in someone born to nothing in LIverpool and he's likely to get a gun and get what he wants.

The same genes in an upper middle class lad gets a good education, a posh accent and ends up in the financial district. How is one a criminal and the other not?

I think I alluded to that earlier in that different social classes commit different types of "crimes". Notwithstanding that, how is a bunch of Eton rugby players trashing a club different from a bunch of Weegies trashing Manchester?

So I agree with the earlier post about some crimes being subjective and relevant to time & place. Laws tend to be passed by those of a certain, ah, social position.

<>

A thought occurs. Let's accept that there *may* be a gene that governs, ooh, acquisition. Applied to a financial banking context, that would be a very good gene to have. But in the context of someone trapped in a sink estate, the drive to acquire can only really find release through criminality.

That's just an off the cuff thought and quite probably piffle

I mean, what's the essential difference between Alan Sugar and a drugs baron? Both employ the same business techniques. One gets a Knighthood, the other gets jail.

Does anyone remember the film Dark City?

Every night the aliens or whatever would render everyone unconscious and then physically change their circumstances along with their memories of their pasts. A couple in a slum tenement would have their flat expanded to a mansion, their clothes changed and their memories rewritten to conform to the new 'reality'.

It was some kind of experiment to find what the essence of a human was.

>>Anyway - the basic idea is that people are classed as criminals according to what society defines as criminal

The cleverer member of my household tells me that it's 'Construct Theory'.


Now...can we think of any area of criminal activity which didn't feature amongst crime figures* in the 1920s but which now accounts for a sizeable chunk of the prison population?

I can.




* I'm fairly sure - but I'll have to check - that it only became criminalised around or after that period.

SWL:

>>Stigmatise the whole field and accuse anyone looking into it of having an axe to grind.

Sorry - I didn't mean to touch a nerve with a particular interest of yours. But my intention wasn't to stigmatise the whole concept. Rather, I was pointing out that the genetic effect is so difficult to separate that any sensible academic will be naturally cautious. Yet this has not discouraged the less sensible.

Another thing to consider:

Criminal behaviour is a complex thing. There may well be (in fact, certainly are) genes for simple behaviours - things like flinching in response to pain. But even the most stupid, boneheaded, low-level criminal activity involves a *range* of behaviours. It becomes somewhat improbable that the genes for all the behaviours will be reliably passed on down the line as an intact cluster.

People who understand genetics understand this (eg, I've heard Prof Steve Jones make precisely this point). This is why I feel fairly comfortable of a priori scepticism about those who don't.

Incidentally...this is a fascinating thread drift into criminality, and I'm glad we're having it.

*However*...I hope nobody's taking from this any suggestion that criminal behaviour of the is a significant cause of their poverty. It's worth bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of the poor are *not* criminals.

>>That's just an off the cuff thought and quite probably piffle

Actually...maybe not so much piffle. eg someone who can run away fast is more likely to become a successful criminal...or an Olympic athlete.

Those in jail, of course, are the less successful criminals.

>> criminal behaviour of the is a significant cause of their poverty<<

But is poverty a significant cause of criminal activity? That's a different question from "are the poor more likely to be criminals?".

Well, yes. Obviously.

I wonder if poverty's genetic?

Excellent post 114 Dogster. And from everyone else.

Without quoting huge tracts of it, it seems that evidence for a purely genetic link is rather lacking, although for reasons mentioned it's easy to see why.

<<>>

Is there a correlation between the length of time spent with the natural (criminal) parents and the offending rate? IE, could it be time spent in that environment in the most formative years which is the cause of criminality rather than genetic causes? It also seems weird that there's no correlation for violent crimes. If anything would strike me as being heritable it would be a propensity to violence, through things like hormone levels and stress responses etc. That makes me wary of the whole thing.

There was a study quoted in the Guardian last year which said that poorer children were spoken to less than richer ones, something like 1,000 words were addressed to them as opposed to 2,000 in the first six months or a year. It's easy to imagine a) how this would have a huge effect on a young mind, and b) how this difference would be maintained throughout childhood. Don't have any links or anything though..

Also, does it mention the 'base rate' of crime. Were all those orphans actually better behaved than the Etonians of their day?

Orphans = adoptees.

>>Were all those orphans actually better behaved than the Etonians of their day?winkeye

There's another area of Criminology - I' shall have to check the name of the theory with the expert - which suggests that different groups are treated differently. This is especially relevant for woman offenders, who will be harshly punished for relatively trivial crimes for which men are let off more lightly. Society will not tolerate Bad Women. A more egregious example is that a man can get away with being so pissed that he cannot look after his family, whereas a woman who does the same is A Bad Mother and punished accordingly.

Significantly, women in HMP Cornton Vale are taught domestic skills such as ironing and cooking, while male prisoners are (theoretically) taught skills that will get them jobs.

Writers on the topic:

The leading academic is Pat Carlen.

Some of the same ground is covered in the excellent 'Eve Was Framed' by Helena Kennedy. (who was played by Emma Thompson in the movie).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eve-Was-Framed-British-Justice/dp/0099224410

And aside from the interesting issue of what causes criminal behaviour (and I'd still stake what I have on overbearing societal influences) there's also the issue of what to do. I think Otto's pretty much hit the nail on the head with..

<<>>

What's forgotten here is the trickle-up socionomics that rich people have a better life if poor people do.

Fb: "Indeed, though I was thinking more interms of the posts about absolute crime rates between 1930 and 1996! Put bluntly there would have proportionately been less young men around."

Good idea and probably accounts for some of it, but not entirely. Here is the table they give in that PDF I linked to earlier, the right hand column is the number of homicides per million population:

1900 9.6
1910 8.1
1920 8.3
1930 7.5
1940 ..
1950 7.9
1955 6.3
1960 6.2
1965 6.8
1970 8.1
1975 10.3
1980 12.5
1985 12.5
1990 13.1
1995 14.5
1997 14.1

SWL: "I saw a prog fairly recently where they claimed to have identified a gene that governs risk-taking behaviour."

That's quite plausible (much more plausible than that there is a criminality gene). So let's suppose that propensity towards risk taking is correlated with criminality. What would we do about that? Free off-piste skiing holidays for troubled youths?

Ed: "Criminal behaviour is a complex thing. There may well be (in fact, certainly are) genes for simple behaviours - things like flinching in response to pain. But even the most stupid, boneheaded, low-level criminal activity involves a *range* of behaviours."

Yes, and this brings us on to another important point. Suppose we were 100% sure that 'criminality' was heritable to some extent. It's not clear that there's anything one could reasonably do with that knowledge without understanding what are the simple behaviours that lead to the complex 'criminality' behaviour. We're so far from being able to even begin to address such questions that speculating about the heritability of criminality seems somewhat... academic.

pedro: "Excellent post 114 Dogster."

Thanks! It started off at about 1am with the expectation that it would be finished by 1.15am or so, but ended up taking me well into the wee hours!

"Is there a correlation between the length of time spent with the natural (criminal) parents and the offending rate?"

That's also what I wondered. The things I looked at didn't mention that (I couldn't get the paper itself because the only copy was in a journal my university doesn't subscribe to).

Still on genetics...it's worthwhile pointing out interest in this area started with Galton's C19th work on 'Criminal Typography'. Nothing came of it, so academics can perhaps be forgiven for abandoning it as an area of research that was likely to bear frut in much the same way as their physicist friends lost interest in aether.

<>

The obvious candidate is substance abuse. It used to be quite the thing for the well-to-do to indulge in a little opium.

Of course.

Now, obviously a lot of drug-related crime would still be crime even if it weren't associated with drug use (burglary; pimping) - although there are many people inside purely for dealing, importation, etc. But in many, many cases, the disadvantaged are drawn into the drug trade, and subsequently drug useand related crime, simply because it appears to be a feasible economic option.

(It isn't, of course. The one good chapter of the execrable 'Freakonomics' is the one about how little most people involved in the drug trade make, and how difficult the working conditions are).