This being the idea that you can correlate criminal behaviour with various physical traits. I had always thought this was a quack science. But now I see there’s a new study purporting to show that pedophilia is correlated with various physical traits. The thinking being that some factors which act on prenatal physical development also act on prenatal neurological development.
On looking around, I see there’s more on the subject, e.g. a study showing that people can recognize criminals from non-criminals from pictures. (Oddly, women appear to have a blind spot for rapists.)
I don’t know to what extent the specific markers now thought to be possibly correlate to criminal tendencies align with the old-time theories. But I do remember that attached earlobes was one of the old ones and it’s mentioned in the new pedophile study. (The Wiki link does not mention that one. But OTOH it does mention “tattoos” which doesn’t seem to make any sense at all, so I’m not sure how reliable it is altogether.)
The debate is whether it’s fully “interesting” or only “somewhat interesting”.
I don’t know if there’s a debate. I assumed that since this was newish info that contradicted a lot of older scientific thought (e.g. I believe Gardner cited this as an example of quack science in his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science) that there would be some opposing views and debunkers. But perhaps not and it will have to be moved.
I would put in the category of mildly interesting, and probably the conclusion most people would reach from first principles if they sat down to think about it.
If you’re a materialist (as many of us are), then you think that all behavior has physical correlates. And it shouldn’t be too surprising that it would have external physical correlates. If your body produces more testosterone, you might be more likely to commit certain crimes, and also have a receding hairline. If you have poor stress mitigation mechanisms because of how your body manages cortisol and serotonin levels (or whatever, I’m just sort of making this up), this might show in both how your body ages and your likelihood of drug addiction. All of that seems totally plausible to me, and I’d be more surprised to learn it was false than that it was true.
Even putting aside the materialist thesis, we should expect that living different lifestyles makes you look different (stress levels, hairstyle, adiposity, grooming, etc. etc.), and also have correlates to crimes.
I have no idea what the Debate is supposed to be but an interesting result ( Criminality and the 2D:4D ratio: testing the prenatal androgen hypothesis - PubMed) in this area is that criminality has a correlation with finger length ratios. People who have index fingers that are as long or longer than their middle fingers are more prone to criminality.
I think it’s also important to keep in mind that we know that behavior and experience shape gene expression, and that we are learning that these epigenetic changes in gene expression can be inherited(!). So the discovery that there are phenotypic correlates to crime doesn’t actually tell us much about age-old debates over what causes crime in society.
I didn’t read the actual study, but the description at the link for the second study about recognizing criminals by appearance seems pretty shoddy unless it’s just a bad summary of it. Looking at pictures and guessing if someone has a criminal record could easily just be showing common biases based on appearance. If there are common biases based on appearance, police would be more likely to target the same people that the study group thought were criminals based on appearance.
We all know there are biases in the system of policing and prosecution, even if we can’t agree on what all these biases are exactly. It seems the study could merely indicate that random people are biased based on appearance in a similar way to police, resulting in the study participants being able to pick out those most likely to be arrested and successfully prosecuted. That means they can pick out convicted criminals, but that’s not the same thing as being able to predict who is a criminal regardless of getting caught and convicted. There is a big difference.
I looked at the pics and one thing I noticed is some guys have a slight smile, and some a somewhat aggressive stare. They did not make sure they all had neutral expressions.
I think the debate can be largely summed up as “pre-crime”. If you have physical features that are statistically correlated with criminality, then surely you wouldn’t mind agreeing to some extra surveillance or limitations on your liberty “for your own protection” and the protection of innocent victims, right? Probation Officer Paul can get you set up with the program - make sure you let him know whenever you travel outside this 50-mile circle so we can compare your itinerary with your criminality risk factors to determine whether you are likely to victimize anyone on your trip. Thanks!
