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"The ambition to explain and predict criminal behavior scientifically has defined the field of criminology and inspired a vast number of studies in psychology, sociology, and economics. [...]
The recent pursuit of this ambition by human geneticists has inspired particularly strong hopes and fears. The success of genetics in understanding human disease suggests that it could be a powerful tool in the scientific investigation of human behavior, including criminal behavior. At the same time, the checkered history of human genetics suggests that it can easily be abused, misrepresented, or misunderstood, regardless of the validity of the studies or the motivation of the researchers.
At present, a variety of research programs investigates genetic influences on human behaviors, dispositions, and mental traits. Heritability studies seek to tease out genetic from environmental effects on human behavioral differences, largely by examining twins and adoptees ; molecular researchers look for markers, and ultimately genes, associated with crime and violence ; neurobiologists explore causal pathways by which genetic variations may affect aggressive and impulsive behavior [..] Although specific research programs differ greatly in aim and method, they share the assumption that it makes scientific sense to look for genetic contributions to important mental and behavioral differences among people. [...]
After a period of understandable quiescence following World War II, human genetic research on mental and behavioral traits has made a dramatic comeback. Researchers attribute this comeback in large part to the advent of sophisticated techniques for isolating and manipulating genetic material and statistically assessing patterns of inheritance. These techniques, they believe, will eventually make it possible to identify the specific genes and causal mechanisms that underlie the heritability of many psychological traits and behavioral dispositions, including some of those associated with criminal behavior. Although no genetic variations have yet been identified that can explain any significant proportion of criminal behavior, researchers see ongoing studies of the genetics of psychiatric and behavioral disorders as encouraging preliminaries." (pp.1-2)
"Critics contend that the comeback of genetic research on human behavior is largely due to the public's obsession with, and credulity toward, genetic explanations, and to a blanket repudiation of the optimistic environmentalist policies that enjoyed a brief ascendancy in the postwar years. They argue that the search for genetic factors involves the "medicalization" of social behavior and thus diverts attention and resources from the social and economic conditions largely responsible for crime." (p.2)
"Before summarizing the methods that behavioral geneticists employ, it is important to specify what it is that they investigate. Although the obvious answer is "behavior," we must distinguish the study of behavior from the study of behavioral differences. The latter is the primary focus of behavioral genetics. Unfortunately, this distinction and its significance have not been generally appreciated by nonscientists.
Conceptually, the contrast is clear enough ; it is as clear as the difference between asking "Why is this person behaving criminally ?" and "Why is this person behaving more criminally than this other person ?" Presumably a complete answer to the first type of question can lead to answers to the second type ; but the converse is not necessarily true: factors that account for behavioral differences may play a minor role in accounting for the behavior itself. By way of analogy, think of two people, one six feet tall and the other six feet, one inch tall. The factors that explain the one inch difference may play hardly any role in explaining the six feet in stature that each has attained. For this reason, it would be a mistake to take the answer to one question as the answer to the other. Behavioral geneticists may hope that an explanation of differences will provide, or at least lead to, an explanation of the behaviors they study. But they cannot assume this connection at the outset, and there may be reasons to suspect that behavioral commonalities and differences have distinct sources." (pp.5-6)
-David Wasserman & Robert Wachbroit, "Introduction: Methods, Meanings, and Morals", chapter 1 in David Wasserman & Robert Wachbroit (eds.), Genetics and Criminal Behavior, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 335 pages, pp.1-
