Race and crime in the United States

A possible correlative relationship between race and crime, and possible causes for that relationship, has been discussed in criminology and sociology since the late 19th century.

Research that argues from genetic determinism is represented by the works of the Francis Galton, Cesare Lombroso and Samuel George Morton. Some modern research claims that crime is a product of social conditions, citing judicial and institutional racism as the reason for the correlative link between race and crime. Others dispute the 100% social explanation as political correctness.

In the 1990s, genetic determinism made a popular resurgence with works like The Bell Curve by Richard J. Hernstein and Charles Murray, and Race, Evolution, and Behavior by J. Philippe Rushton. Criticisms of genetic determinism can be found in the works of Stephen Jay Gould, Axel Kahn, Jay Joseph, and the American Psychological Association.

History

Cartwright

In 1851, Samuel A. Cartwright, a physician, explained the tendency of slaves to run away (and thus disobey the law) by what he identified as a medical condition which he called "drapetomania." Cartwright also described Dysaethesia Aethiopica, "called by overseers 'rascality'" which "is much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc." According to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less afflicted with this mental disorder, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them." Such claims have been since denounced as forms of scientific racism.

Italian school

Race and crime were studied by criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, who belonged to the Italian school of criminology of the end of the 19th century. Lombroso divided Northern Italians and Southern Italians in two different "races." He argued that "Southern Italians were more crime-prone and lazy because they were unlucky enough to have less "Aryan" blood than their northern countrymen. Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, considered black people to be of an "inferior race" and more prone to crime than others.

Chicago school

The theories were disputed by later works of criminology, in particular by the Chicago school and environmental criminology, which insisted that social, economic and cultural factors explained criminality. "The slim economic opportunities and turbulent living conditions of young disadvantaged and black men may lead them to crime. In addition, elevated rates of offending in poor and minority neighborhoods compound the stigma of social marginality and provoke the scrutiny of criminal justice authorities."

Recent literature

Recent works of sociobiology have stimulated renewed interest about the relationship between ethnicity and criminality. Some have attempted to find genetic roots of violence, reviving the old debate of "nature versus nurture".

Along with the attempt to justify the notion of "race" by genetics, this has been criticized by a variety of scholars, including clinical psychologist Jay Joseph in The Gene Illusion (2002) or the geneticist Axel Kahn's Un gène ne commande jamais un destin humain.

See also

• William Bennett
• Marvin D. Free Jr.
• Genetics and violence
• Immigrant criminality
• Steven Levitt
• Loïc Wacquant
• Race and intelligence
• Racial profiling
• Sex and crime