Criminal behavior hasalways been a focus for psychologists due to the age-old debate between nature and nurture. It is the responsibility of an individual's genetic makeup that makes them a criminal or is it the environment in which they are raised that determines their outcomes? Research has been conducted regarding this debate, which has resulted in a conclusion that both genes and environment do play a role in the criminality of an individual.
That same question was asked back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the role of genetics in crime was widely accepted. Prominent researchers believed that genes were fully responsible for criminal activity and their physiological features could identify criminals. Along with this information and the idea of a eugenics movement during the same time period, it was not surprising to learn that acts of sterilization took place to rid society of "criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists". This period was therefore marked with inhumane treatment and the belief that genes were the sole reason behind criminal behavior. Not long after the practices of controlled breeding, there was evidence to support the idea that the environment also played an important role in crime.
Until recently, these were philosophical debates because genetic research has rarely factored into sentencing decisions - and when it has, it has often been dismissed. That all changed when an Italian court decided to shave one year off a nine year sentence handed to convicted murderer,'Abdelmalek Bayout,'who was found to have a small handful of genes previously linked to violence. The court's decision to reduce Malek's sentence is questionable.
Criminal behavior is highly complex, the result of many genes and many environmental factors. Hundreds or even thousands of genes influence the likelihood that someone will offend and each of these has very small effects. So when a single gene, or only a small number of genes, is examined in isolation, it can only account for a small part of the reason why someone would commit a crime.
With criminal behavior, or virtually any behavior, genes are not fatalistic nor are they deterministic - that simply increase or decrease the odd of someone committing a criminal act. The vast majority of people with Malek's genetic variants never engage in crime, much less kill another human being. Other factors, including environmental ones, play role. With one of the genes identified in the Malek's case, MAOA, previous research has found it only tends to have strong effects on crime and violence in people who were exposed to high levels of stress, abuse and neglect in childhood.
During the past five year, there have been at least 200 cases in the US and 20 in Britain where lawyers have tried to use genes as mitigating factors. And this number is likely to increase rapidly because research-tying genes to criminal behavior is growing at an incredible pace. So, should an individual's genes determine their punishment? At this point, we probably do not know enough about how genes influence criminal behavior to be basing sentencing decisions on whether a defendant possesses a single gene or even a number of different genes. But if genetic research does find its way into legal system on a routine basis, it is imperative that the path from a gene to crime is a long one that involves environmental, biological and genetic factors that are mutually interdependent on each other.
READERS QUESTION : Can crime be blamed on genes or environment?
