biological explanations EVALUATION Flashcards
1
Q
biologically determinist
A
- The notion of a ‘criminal gene’ is a dilemma - the legal system is based on the premise that criminals have personal and moral responsibility for crimes
- Only in extreme cases, such as mental illness, can someone claim that they were not acting on free will
- This raises ethical issues
2
Q
biologically reductionist
A
- criminality is too complex to reduce to a genetic or neural level
- lots of things seem to run in families e.g. poverty, emotional stability, social deprivation
- difficult to account for all the possible influences
- concordance rates in twin studies are never 100% = environmental factors may be responsible for criminal behaviour
- diathesis model could be used to explain criminal behaviour where concordance rates for MZ twins are not 100%
3
Q
twin studies lack validity
A
- Most twins are reared in the same environment so concordance rates may be due to shared learning experiences rather than genetics
- Also, Lange’s research was poorly controlled
- judgements of whether twin pairs were MZ or DZ was based on appearance and not genetic testing
4
Q
issue with adoption studies
A
- Many children experience late adoption, so these children spent time with their biological parents before adoption
- Lots of adoptees maintain contact with their biological parents
- makes it difficult to assess just environmental factors
- This makes it difficult to assess the impact the biological parents might have had
5
Q
support for the diathesis stress model
A
- Mednick et al (1984) studied 13,000 Danish adoptees and criminality
- When their biological parents had no convictions, the percentage of adoptees that had a conviction was 13.5%
- This rose to 20% when either the biological parents did
- 25% both parents
- This suggests that both genetic inheritance and environment influence criminality
6
Q
brain evidence - neural explanations
A
- Support for the link between crime and the frontal lobe
- Kandel and freed 1989 reviewed evidence of frontal lobe and antisocial behaviour
- Impulsive behaviour, emotional stability, inability to learn from mistakes
- Supports the idea that brain damage may be a casual factor in offending behaviour
