Forensic Psychology For Dummies (17 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
Physical stature
One bizarre suggestion is that the cause of crime is in the water! Apparently, some indicators suggest that increased levels of the chemical silicon fluoride in drinking water are related to higher rates of violent crime.
The problem with accepting any of these reasons as a primary cause of criminality is that plenty of other people sharing the same aspects never commit crimes. So although physiological characteristics may sometimes contribute indirectly, they’re unlikely to be the direct cause of crime.
Blaming Darwin
A curious idea that’s sometimes aired is that an evolutionary advantage exists to many forms of crime, especially crimes against the person: violent humans are more likely to survive and pass on their genes.
The claim is that if men in prehistory raped then that behaviour increased the likelihood of offspring being conceived and born and thus increasing the genetic availability of whatever genes made rape more likely in the first case. Some criminologists even claim that murder is part of the human evolutionary make-up, because when limited food is around for hunter-gatherers or fertile women are scarce, killing off competitive males increases the chances of survival.
Fascinating though these evolutionary theories may be, they still don’t explain away the most prevalent types of crime, burglary and other forms of theft. I believe the evolutionary arguments to be amoral: pseudoscience dressed up in Darwinian clothes. Although evolution may have some general validity in terms of the prevalence of violence throughout human history, the theories never tell you why one brother can be a murderer and another an upright citizen.
Investigating the case of the extra chromosome
Other biological influences that are argued to be the cause of criminality are the basic components of inheritance: chromosomes.
As you probably know, women have two X chromosomes (they’re called that because they’re X-shaped when viewed under a microscope) but men are different (glad you noticed); they’re missing one of the X chromosomes and have a Y chromosome instead. Therefore, what makes men by nature aggressive is often assumed to be down to the Y chromosome.
It wasn’t the syndrome that did it
Some men have an added X chromosome; being XXY, which is called the Klinefelter’s syndrome. Although some males with this syndrome may appear slightly more effeminate and sadly may suffer from illnesses rare in men, no evidence exists that a person with Klinefelter’s syndrome is more docile or less criminal than other men. Indeed, in one tragic case a man with Klinefelter’s killed two children. The children had been teasing him mercilessly because of his appearance, and he hit out at them more violently than intended with disastrous consequences.
This idea of the Y chromosome causing aggressive behaviour seems over-simplistic, but this didn’t stop some experts of a biological turn of mind getting very excited when they discovered that some offenders were endowed with an additional Y chromosome, being XYY. ‘Aha!’ they shouted ‘That explains why they’re criminal . . . they’re wearing unusual genes.’ When the excitement died down and serious research was carried out, researchers found that plenty of violent criminals had perfectly normal chromosomes and that most people with the XYY anomaly never hurt a fly.
Thinking about crime
Psychologists are fond of the term
cognition,
which refers to a person’s thought processes and includes how he or she thinks about themselves, others and the world around them. The particular way a person or group thinks is sometimes called a
cognitive style,
and some experts say what gives rise to becoming a criminal is a person’s cognitive style. Talking about the criminal mind as if it’s an especially effective organ is misleading. The fictional James Bond villain who’s brilliantly masterminding the destruction of the world, having an evil desire for power, is the stuff of the blockbuster crime novel and movie and in no way the sort of criminal you find discussing his attitude to violence in a prison group programme.
Studies of persistent criminals show that they often have a particular way of thinking about themselves and their crimes:
This is the direct statement that it didn’t happen or not as the victim claimed. ‘She wanted sex. It was consensual’ would be one example of this. Or in many cases simply ‘it was not me who killed her’.
‘It was them or me.’ This thinking is that the criminal owes it to his associates to show who’s in charge. Or even the view that he’s entitled to take what he believes society owes him. An example is the excessive insurance claim such as in: ‘The insurance companies are all rogues and I’ve been paying my premiums for years without making any claims, so I have a right to get some money back from them.’
hostile attribution bias
is useful here as in: ‘Who are you looking at!’ Many criminals seem highly sensitive to ambiguous comments or gestures that assume they’re aggressive, when no accusation of aggression is intended.
‘I didn’t really hurt her.’ This thinking is seeking to minimise the impact or severity of the crime.