Description
Book SynopsisA lively, up-to-date overview of the newest research in biosocial criminology What is the relationship between criminality and biology? Nineteenth-century phrenologists insisted that criminality was innate, inherent in the offender's brain matter. While they were eventually repudiated as pseudo-scientists, today the pendulum has swung back. Both criminologists and biologists have begun to speak of a tantalizing but disturbing possibility: that criminality may be inherited as a set of genetic deficits that place one at risk to commit theft, violence, or acts of sexual deviance. But what do these new theories really assert? Are they as dangerous as their forerunners, which the Nazis and other eugenicists used to sterilize, incarcerate, and even execute thousands of supposed born criminals? How can we prepare for a future in which leaders may propose crime-control programs based on biology? In this second edition of The Criminal Brain, Nicole Rafter, Chad Posick, and Michael Rocque descri
Trade ReviewNicole Rafter, Chad Posick, and Michael Rocque impressively document the genealogy of biological ideas in criminology. They show that criminology must take new biological ideas seriously and contextualize sociologically both the ideas and the phenomena in which biologists engage. Publication of this second expanded edition indicates that The Criminal Brain is receiving the attention it deserves. -- Joachim J. Savelsberg,author, Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur
Rafter, Posick, and Rocque painstakingly document the flaws of early attempts to theorize crime from a biological perspective. By putting a nail in the coffin of the Lombrosoian legacy, they show the humanistic value and promise of the contemporary biosocial criminology paradigm. The Criminal Brain, Second Edition is required reading for all criminologists, biosocial or otherwise. -- Matt DeLisi,co-editor, The Routledge International Handbook of Biosocial Criminology
