NCJ Number
197698
Date Published
2002
Length
174 pages
Annotation
This book attempts to chart the general landscape of biology and crime by profiling biological approaches to understanding why some people are criminals and others not, offering modern knowledge on the relationship between biology and crime for both instructors and students.
Abstract
This book presents a biological and evolutionary view of crime for both instructors and students. It revisits the biological basis of criminality from the perspective of the modern sciences: behavioral and molecular genetics, neural imaging, evolutionary theory, and other new approaches. The basic thesis of the author is that crime, like all behavior has a biological basis. After an introduction to the relationship between biology and crime, the second chapter explains the concepts of heritability and phenotypes versus genotypes, reviewing twin, adoption, and sibling studies. The book proceeds in the next chapter with an examination of the evolutionary perspective focusing on sexual competition for mates and sex differences in offending. Chapter four reviews topics such as testosterone, serotonin, heart rate, skin conductance, and a discussion on results of modern brain-imaging techniques. Chapter five describes molecular genetics as a progressive field. Environmental influences and genotype x environment interactions are reviewed in Chapter six. The final chapter concludes by describing some ethical and legal issues arising from biological research on crime. The book claims that more can be learned by looking at biological and environmental influences together. This means more needs to be learned about the biological bases of behavior. The book is recommended for those interested in learning about modern knowledge on biology and crime. Figures, tables, references and subject and author indices