Nature Vs Nurture Criminology

Murder, robbery, prostitution, rape; what exactly makes people partake in these crimes? The debate of Nature vs Nurture has never failed to raise questions about people’s personalities and actions. Whether a person commits a crime because of their innate character vs the way they were raised is something that people have been trying to understand for years. Due to this fact, the biosocial perspective of criminology does the best job at explaining criminal behavior because it combines the aspects of nature vs. nurture through various types of family, twin, and adoption studies and studies of the brain. In the beginning there was a man named Cesare Lombroso. Lombroso’s manuscript The Criminal Man is seen as the earliest and most famous piece

Although Lombroso’s theory was disproven, Edward O. Wilson wrote a book called Sociobiology. “Wilson (1975) argued that people are biosocial organisms whose behaviors are influenced by both their physical characteristics and the environmental conditions they are faced with.” (Review of the Roots of Youth Violence). This is in turn brought about the biosocial perspective of criminality. Instead of viewing criminals as people governed by their biological instincts to be innate criminals, biosocial theorists believe that physical, environmental, and social conditions interact in many different and complex ways to produce human behaviors. This then began the Nature vs Nurture debate. Subsequently, since discovering that both biological and sociological aspects both play a part in human behavior, studies began to formulate to see whether nature or nurture held a stronger influence. Two of the main studies done were the family and twin studies. Family studies are defined as “studies that examine the clustering of criminality in a given family” (Schram, P. J., & Tibbetts, S. G.). One of the families that was studied was the Kallikak family by H. H. Goddard. Through this study they found criminality is more common in some

Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain and body that help transmit electric signals from one neuron to other neurons in the body. These neurotransmitters are responsible for the activation of behavioral patterns and tendencies in specific areas of the brain. When a neuron releases the neurotransmitter chemicals, healthy synapse are needed to pass the electric message across the gaps correctly. All of this is important in an individual’s criminal behavior because the transportation of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotine control a person’s emotions and therefore their behavior. “Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that is associated with pleasure and is also one of the neurotransmitters that is chiefly associated with aggression.” (Jones, C. M.). An individual usually experiences high levels of dopamine before and after an altercation and it can cause an individual not to recognize the lasting angry expression they have on their face. Also, “Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is key in information processing and most consistently linked to criminal behavior in its deficiency; low levels are linked to depression and other mental illnesses” (Schram, P. J., & Tibbetts). People with low levels of serotonin have trouble communicating in everyday life and this has a strong connection with criminality because people that