Reply to Md. officials urge review of youth crime laws as 12-year-old's serial break-ins continue

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]
Anonymous wrote:

Poverty and neglect have these kids so full of trauma and rage that they don't even fear death. We desperately need to build more RTCs to help them before it's too late.

Criminal behavior is not mostly attributable to neglect and poverty. It has a very strong genetic component (around 50% genetic). The vast majority of environmental interventions do not work at all or they do not work very well. Unfortunately, the most effective environmental intervention that protects law-abiding members of the general public is putting people who commit crimes in jail (even if they are minors). Right now it is car theft, but there is a an incredibly high probability a very antisocial preteen (with a criminal history) will progress to more serious violent crimes unless they are incarnated to protect the general public. Decades of research with twins and adoption studies show that genetic propensity for criminal behavior is by far the largest explanatory factor. From the research paper "Adoptive parent criminality was not found to be associated with a statistically significant increase in the son's criminality, but the effect of biological parent criminality was." The adopted boys whose biological fathers were in the top 1% of criminal behavior (3 or more criminal convictions) accounted for 30% of all criminal convictions among males in the adoptive study cohort. Having a highly criminal biological father increased their risk of criminal behavior by 30x. https://gwern.net/doc/crime/1984-mednick.pdf Unfortunately[/quote]\

Another explanation for this is the prevalence of fetal alcohol exposure in the criminal population.  That's not technically genetics, in that the cycle can be broken, but it is a reality that a substantial portion of the foster care system as well as the incarcerated population was prenatally exposed, and their parents likely were as well---leading to multi-generational poor choices.  The impacts of fetal alcohol exposure include a lack of impulse control, an inability to appreciate cause and effect and often aggressive and anti-social tendencies if early interventions are not in place.  The biggest impact is that of dysmaturity---i.e., the young person is developmentally much younger than their chronological age. Those kids have difficulty in school and are likely to have checked out on education by middle school.  Dysmaturity also means that an FASD 16 yo has the body and physical urges of an adolescent but the maturity of a 9 yo.   So it is no surprise when that adolescent has a child (who is likely prenatally exposed as well) and is unable to parent that child effectively.  There is way too much emphasis on "trauma" being a cause of anti-social behavior and not nearly enough about the actual brain damage that may exist from prenatal exposures.  [/quote]

A higher frequency of FASD among low-income mothers does not come close to explaining most of this 30X increase in the risk of criminal behavior. Genetics is a substantial portion of this 30x risk and is a much larger contributing factor than environment. If environmental factors are very important for criminal tendencies there would be a strong correlation between adoptive children and the their adoptive parents. The data does not support this because there is almost no correlation between the criminal behavior of adoptive parents and their adopted children. However, the adopted children do display a strong correlation with the criminal behavior of their biological parents. Polygenic risk scores also predict characteristics (much more accurately than random chance) between siblings who have shared environments. Yes, environmental factors matter, but interventions are largely ineffective. Genes account for 50% of criminal behavioral tendencies and everything else combined in the environment accounts for the other 50%. Prenatal factors, parenting, air pollution, lead pipes, schooling, head trauma, random development factors and everything else account for the other half. Environmental to reduce criminal do not work well or at all in most circumstances. Genes are more important because they are a continual weight on the scale that impacts the probability of someone committing a crime or participating in risky behavior at every decision point. [/quote]

What are you bringing this up?  We aren’t going to institute eugenics.  Should a judge consider a parent’s criminal history when sentencing a defendant? No. So what is your point?  [/quote]

I can think of reasons to bring this up. It illustrates the problem may in some respects intractable. And while unpopular to mention and not susceptible to government control, it should not be off limits to discuss sexual responsibility. [/quote]

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