Crime And Intelligence: The Link Between Crime, And Crime

One topic that is related to the issue of psychological disorder and crime is that of intelligence (IQ). Several notable research findings include: 



• Travis Hirschi and Michael Hindelang’s (1977) research linking IQ and crime, suggested that criminals and noncriminal exhibit significant differences in IQ, even after controlling for socio-economic status and race. 
• J.Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein’s (1998) book Crime and Human Nature suggested that there is an indirect link between IQ and crime: low intelligence contributes to poor performance in school which increases the likelihood of criminal involvement. 
• Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s (1996) book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life argued that intelligence is linked to a variety of factors, including crime. Individuals with a low IQ are more likely to commit crimes, more likely to be caught, and more likely to receive a sentence of incarceration. Herrnstein and Murray feel that intelligence is inherited, and therefore the link between intelligence and crime cannot be affected by

Sounds like a very easy and simple solution, however there is a caveat, this requires more money. In the article Making Rehabilitation Work the author tells us “Most efforts at reducing crime have therefore been directed towards incarceration, relying on its deterrent and incapacitate effects. The number of Americans in local jail or state or federal prison grew from just over 500,000 in 1980 to slightly under 2,000,000 in 2001. As a result, The Economist was able to sum up the general situation in the USA in 2002 as follows: “Rehabilitation has become something of a dirty word in American debates about crime. ... To begin with, some rehabilitation projects – particularly drug treatment – seem to work (Murray, n.d., p.6).