Biosocial Criminology

New Directions in Theory and Research

Anthony Walsh, Kevin M. Beaver, Anthony Walsh, Kevin M. Beaver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781135857790
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Ideal for use, either as a second text in a standard criminology course, or for a discrete course on biosocial perspectives, this book of original chapters breaks new and important ground for ways today's criminologists need to think more broadly about the crime problem.

Part I

An Overview of the Biosocial Approach

The aim of this book is to convince the reader of the desirability of linking criminology with biology. Why should criminologists concern themselves with linking their discipline with one associated with illiberal politics by many social scientists? There are numerous scientific and practical reasons for doing so outlined in this book, but a short answer will suffice for now. Over 10 years ago a review of the behavior genetic literature led the reviewer to state that behavior genetics studies often reach the same conclusions about social problems that “left-leaning sociologists” do (Herbert, 1997: 80). Why then should we burden ourselves with a body of literature telling us the same thing that sociology supposedly does? Herbert provides the short answer again by pointing out that the conclusions arrived at by behavior geneticists were arrived at using “infinitely more sophisticated tools.” These “infinitely more sophisticated tools” (theories, models, methodologies, concepts, instruments) developed by behavior geneticists (as well as by the other disciplines such as neuroscience, molecular genetics, and evolutionary biology represented in this book) can be brought to bear on the concepts and assumptions of traditional criminological theories as quality control devices that will help us to separate the considerable wheat in criminology from the also quite considerable chaff.

Additionally, because biosocial approaches include both biological and environmental risk factors, they are “more likely to refine social policies to better specification of environmental factors than to divert funds from environmental prevention strategies” (Morley & Hall, 2003).

The first part of this book introduces biosocial criminology via brief overviews of the three major approaches to it: genetics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. The first chapter, written by coeditors Anthony Walsh and Kevin Beaver, provides an overall introduction to the field and claims that sociological criminology has gone as far as it can go, and that the only real pathway to progress is the one taken by other sciences. The pathway these other sciences have taken has been to ally themselves with the more fundamental sciences and integrate all the relevant knowledge those sciences had to offer. For instance, most chemists in the 19th century were opposed to the intrusion of the physicists’ atomic theory of matter into their discipline in much the same way that sociological criminologists have opposed the intrusion of biology into criminology. Similarly, a significant number of early and mid-20th century biologists were opposed to the intrusion of molecular chemistry into biology, the phenomena of which one biologist claimed should be explained only by other biological facts (Woodger, 1948). Today, all chemists learn physics and all biologists learn chemistry. Any claim that they need not would be met with incredulity by today’s chemists and biologists. We hope for the day when criminologists will be similarly puzzled with the suggestion that they need not study biology to participate in the criminological enterprise.

In Chapter 2, Anthony Walsh introduces genetics and how it is useful to criminologists. He explains how behavior geneticists are able to tease apart genetic and environmental variance in phenotypic (observable) traits while at the same time emphasizing that genes and the environment always operated in tandem to produce any trait or behavior. His primary concern is to allay the fears of some that to allow that genes can influence behavior is to open the floodgates to determinism and reductionism, as well as concerns about racism, sexism, and classism. He shows that all of these concerns are unfounded. All scientists seeking causes are determinists, but they are not fatalists, as those who charge determinism seem to imply. As for reductionism, seeking to understand a phenomenon at a more fundamental is the way science has typically progressed.

Seeking to understand why some groups commit more (or less) antisocial acts than others, or perhaps the genetics behind occupational success, may be construed by some as engaging in racism, sexism, and classism. There is nothing anyone can do to convince such people that science must take us where it takes us, regardless of its potential to offend some. With padlocks on the scientific mind, we would still think that the sun revolves around the earth and that humans are nearer to angels than to chimpanzees. The bad news that humans were not the center of the universe and were just a few genes away from chimps was deeply offensive to many people, but we are, for the most part, over all that now as we have come to accept reality.

In Chapter 3, Kevin Beaver provides an overview of molecular genetics. This review of molecular genetics is very important because very few criminologists have any real understanding of what genes are and how they operate. Beaver also provides lay explanations of the three ways that genes can cause phenotypic variation (i.e., OGOD [one gene, one disorder], polygenic, and pleiotropy). An understanding of molecular genetics can go a long way in dispelling the fears many criminologists have that to admit genes into the causal picture is to surrender to fatalism. Genes are nothing but snippets of DNA that code for the manufacture of proteins such as hormones and neurotransmitters. These proteins facilitate and modulate our behavior, but they do not “cause” it. Indeed, the more we know about genetics the more we realize how important the environment is.

If criminologists come to realize that genes are turned on and off in response to environmental events, then surely they will be less reluctant to utilize genetic information in their studies. It is becoming increasingly easy to do so with the advent of technology that allows us to go directly to the DNA. If we as criminologists don’t get our fingers into this particular pie we will forfeit the study of criminal behavior to the hungrier practitioners of other sciences, who have been breathing down our necks for a long time now.

Chapter 4, by John Wright and his colleagues, introduces readers to the amazing world of the brain. They first provide the needed introduction to major brain areas and their function and to the brain imaging technologies such as PET, MRI, and fMRI allowing for in vivo assessment of brain structure and function. These imaging techniques have resulted in an explosion of new information on the brain over the past three decades. The brain is where genetic dispositions and environmental experiences are integrated, and thus the basics of neuroscience must become part of every criminologist’s repertoire. Although we are a long way from fully understanding the brain, we cannot ignore what is known that is relevant to criminology. Robinson (2004: 72) goes as far as to say that any theory of behavior “is logically incomplete if it does not discuss the role of the brain.”

The insights criminologists can derive from the neurosciences will not only buttress our traditional theories, but may also strengthen our claims for preventive environmental intervention. The primary message in neuroscience is that a cause can be “biological” without being “genetic” because the brain may be compromised by a variety of environmental insults. Abuse and neglect during the early years of life has particularly deleterious effects on the brain, which will impact much of the behavior of the developing organism. Neuroscience, along with genetics, is able to give us a more precise understanding of why socioeconomic status has the influence on behavior that it does, and that is far more useful than appealing to the “ghosts in the machine,” as Wright and colleagues put it.

Likewise, low self-control theory has had a major impact in criminology without the discipline having any kind of firm hand on the origins of self-control. For most criminologists, self-control (and any other trait) is the result of differential socialization. However, Wright, et al. make it abundantly clear that the scientific data clearly and consistently indicate that self-control is housed in the frontal and prefrontal cortex, that it is strongly influenced by genetic factors expressed in the brain, and that it involves a complex, dynamic balancing of limbic and cortical functioning. Genetics and neuroscience can thus provide criminology with a solid foundation for, and a more sophisticated understanding of, many of its central concepts.

In Chapter 5, Satoshi Kanazawa takes us through what evolutionary psychology has to offer criminology. Whereas genetics and neuroscience explain proximate “how” causal mechanisms (e.g., “Testosterone energizes male competition for mating opportunities and is aided by amygdala functioning that is less responsive to fear cues than it is in females”), evolutionary psychology asks ultimate-level “why” mechanisms (e.g., “Why do males have so much more testosterone than females, and why is the male amygdala less responsive to fear?”). In other words, it seeks to understand the adaptive function of a mechanism in terms of its survival and reproductive value. Evolutionary approaches are fundamentally environmental in that they describe how environments, through natural selection, have shaped the behavior of organisms as they adapt to their environments, and how environmental inputs are needed for the emergence of behavior.

Kanazawa examines crime from an evolutionary standpoint. Note that his discussion of status and intelligence can inform traditional criminological theories for which those concepts are central. Kanazawa is basically asking why the actions we currently define as criminal are part of the human behavioral repertoire; what evolutionarily relevant purpose did (and still do) they serve? He is not saying that natural selection preserved genetic material dedicated to carjacking, robbing banks, jimmying locks, or manipulating the stock market. Rather, the traits underlying these actions were selected to assist a male to gain more copulation opportunities than the next male. The sum of these traits leads their possessors to greater mating success. This is called mating effort (the proportion of total reproductive effort allotted to acquiring sexual partners), which is the opposite to parenting effort (the proportion of total reproductive effort invested in rearing offspring).

David Rowe (2002: 62–63) provides a thumbnail sketch of the traits useful in supporting extreme mating effort to the detriment of parenting effort:

A strong sexual drive and attraction to novelty of new sexual partners is clearly one component of mating effort. An ability to appear charming and superficially interested in women while courting them would be useful. The emotional attachment, however, must be an insincere one, to prevent emotional bonding to a girlfriend or spouse. The cad may be aggressive, to coerce sex from partly willing partners and to deter rival men. He feels little remorse about lying or cheating. Impulsivity could be advantageous in a cad because mating decisions must be made quickly and without prolonged deliberation; the unconscious aim is many partners, not a high-quality partner.

Note that these are the same traits that prove useful in pursuing criminal activities. The most useful traits underlying parenting effort, by the same token, are the prosocial traits of empathy, altruism, nurturance, and intelligence. Thus, the main point of the evolutionary psychology approach to crime is that although the traits mentioned by Rowe were designed by natural selection to facilitate mating effort, they are also useful in gaining non-sexual resources by illegitimate means once they are in place.

References

Herbert, W. (1997). The politics of biology. U.S. News & World Report, 21 April, 72–80.

Morley, K. & W. Hall (2003). Is there a genetic susceptibility to engage in criminal acts? Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice. Australian Institute of Criminology, October: 1–10.

Robinson, M. (2004). Why crime? An integrated systems theory of antisocial behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Rowe, D. (2002). Biology and crime. Los Angeles: Roxbury.

Woodger, J. (1948). Biological principles. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

1 Introduction to Biosocial Criminology

Anthony Walsh and Kevin M. Beaver

Introduction

Trying to get to the core (if indeed there is a core) of the crime problem is an extraordinarily difficult, complex, but exciting enterprise. Many criminologists have taken their spades to it, but they have barely cracked the mantle, never mind approached the core. Thomas Bernard (2002) has made the point that decades of criminological research has not yielded the accumulation of “taken for granted” knowledge that is the hallmark of any discipline claiming to be a science. The problem has been not with the tenacity with which they have dug, but with the instruments that they have used and with their stubborn refusal to accept any help proffered by the more fundamental sciences.

The Biosocial Approach is Integrative

The biosocial approach to criminology, by way of contrast, gratefully accepts this help, and integrates relevant data, concepts, and methods from the biological sciences into traditional criminological approaches. As little as 25 years ago any positive mention of biology in a criminologist’s work was an invitation to hostile derision. This situation existed because most criminologists were (and are) sociologically trained (Walsh & Ellis, 2004), and sociology possesses “a conceptual scheme that explicitly den[ies] the claims of other disciplines potentially interested in crime” (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990: 70). Most criminologists are also poorly trained in biology and few have the interest or inclination to rectify the situation and thus cling to the biology-free theories that were in vogue when they were graduate students. This is a pity, for as sociologist Matthew Robinson (2004: ix–x) has pointed out: “[T]he biological sciences have made more progress in advancing our understanding about behavior in the last 10 years than sociology has made in the past 50 years.” In response to the explosive advances in biological knowledge, however, a growing number of criminologists have come to realize that if they are to capture the dynamic nature of criminal behavior they must span multiple levels of analysis and thus multiple disciplines.

Society may “prepare the stage for crime,” as sociologically oriented criminologists like to point out, but the crime is committed by flesh and blood human beings with brains, genes, hormones, and an evolutionary history. We therefore have to get beyond trying to understand the behavior of these human beings as if they were disembodied spirits blown hither and thither by environmental winds. Biosocial criminology recognizes the tremendous role the environment plays in all aspects of human life, but it also recognizes that environments act on diverse human materials. There is a pithy old adage that points out: “The heat that melts the butter hardens the egg.” In a nutshell, that is what biosocial criminology is all about: how similar environments have different effects on different people, and vice versa.

The Biosocial Approach is Developmental

Biosocial criminology is also developmental. Whereas many criminological theories are static in that they imply that criminal behavior is self-perpetuating and continuous once initiated, biosocial theories are dynamic. They emphasize that individuals develop along different pathways, and as they develop factors that were previously meaningful to them (e.g., acceptance by antisocial peers) no longer are, and factors that previously meant little to them (e.g., marriage and a career) suddenly become meaningful. But biosocial theories go beyond merely noting social turning points over the life-course: they attempt to explain why they are turning points, why they are meaningful at certain life junctures and not at others, and why individuals are differentially affected by them.

By developmental we do not mean the kind of preformationism that Sampson and Laub (2005) accuse developmental theories of adhering to. Preformationism implies a latent predetermined form waiting only for a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Series Foreword
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part I An Overview of the Biosocial Approach
• Part II Major Correlates of Crime
• Part III Serious Violent Criminals and Biosocial Approaches to Crime Prevention