Biosocial Criminology Biosocial: \"...Of, Pertaining

Biosocial Criminology

Biosocial: "...of, pertaining to, or entailing the interaction or combination of social and biological factors..." http://www.factmonster.com (Ask Jeeves).

The article in Human Nature Review by Dr. Anthony Walsh (a critique of the book, Companions in Crime: A Biosocial Perspective, written by Mark Warr) is an in-depth, insightful look at the social influence of peers on crime and delinquency. The reviewer, Walsh, while praising Warr's work as "the most comprehensive and sophisticated sociological treatment of peer influence on antisocial behavior today," adds: "My argument with him is about what he has not written, and about what he could have written in his effort to understand antisocial conduct among adolescents."

And Walsh should know a little bit about biosocial behavior; he is a Professor of Criminal Justice, with the Department of Criminal Justice Administration at Boise State University, and has written over 81 articles and 13 books on the topic, the most recent being his 2001 offering, Biosocial Criminology: Introduction and Integration.

As for the primary thesis of Mark Warr's book: "association with delinquent peers causes delinquency"; in other words, "birds of a feather flock together," and the "principle proximate cause of most criminal conduct" is "peer influence." Walsh has a problem with the simplicity of Warr's argument; "Warr spends much time telling us why adolescent peer pressure is so powerful, but never attempts to explain why the pressure is so often in antisocial directions," Walsh continues.

Meantime, Walsh writes that there are at least two distinct kinds of juvenile delinquents, who follow "two distinct developmental pathways." There are "life-course persistent" delinquents (LCP), and there are "adolescent-limited delinquents" (AL). The LCP offenders, Walsh explains, are the ones who start getting into trouble "before puberty and continue well into adulthood." They are believed to possess "heritable neuropsychological and temperamental impairments" (such as lower IQ than normal, "hyperactivity, negative emotionality"), that place them on a path of "negative interactions" with others they come into contact with. Those negative interactions with people result in "hardening antisocial attitudes and behaviors." And moreover, their impairments are often exacerbated by "ineffectual parenting."

As for the AL offenders, they have none of the inherent impairments that the LCP offenders do; in fact, they are "basically pro-social," Walsh explains, but they are "temporarily derailed by the biological and social upheavals of adolescence." Then what happens as the AL boy moves along through school, is that he sees the behavior of LCP boys brings them "status, girls, clothes, cars," and they are drawn to that behavior in hope of tapping into some of those seemingly positive and "mature" things. Later in adolescence, Walsh asserts, the AL offenders are able to "revert to their pro-social" behaviors.

And so, Walsh concludes his book by saying the problem with Warr's book is more what Warr doesn't say, than what he does. Warr, for example, only spends three pages on the issue of gender's relationship to delinquency, though Warr does admit that males commit far more crimes than females, particularly serious and violent crimes. "This ubiquity should have alerted Warr that biology must be intimately involved with the differential propensity of males and females to commit crimes, but again it did not."