Genetics and Crime
I was surprised to hear someone say, “ Crime, it seems, is a family business for the Murray family. The father, the son, the daughter- everybody in
criminal activities.”- The much-mentioned 1993 study that described an X-linked mutation associated with mild retardation and aggressive, sometimes criminal,
behavior in one large Dutch family. I always thought that unemployment; poverty, use of drugs, and many other such factors contribute to the likelihood of causing
violence and crime. Are genetic factors more likely to make one person perform crime?
Dr Sullivan who is the president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta tried to address violence and crime as a public health issue. Sullivan’s research was directed towards the biological aspect of the problem such as race, gender, brain chemistry and genetic makeup. He found some links between
aggressive behavior and disturbances in the level of a chemical called serotonin, which is directly related to certain genes. Another study in 1993 also found a link between genes and violence. The X
chromosome mutation, which was discovered in the Dutch family, was found to be associated with mild retardation and aggressive sometimes-violent criminal behavior. The mutation caused complete deficiency of enzyme monoamine oxidase, which metabolizes the neurotransmitter serotonin. According to David Goldman, a geneticist at the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, “ men who possess this abnormal gene may typically engage in impulsive aggression, but the time, place, type and seriousness of their crimes have been diverse and unpredictable.”
Adraim Raine of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles showed CAT scans comparing brain activity in 42 murderers with that of an equal number of normal controls. He found that the murderers tended to have less prefrontal activity. It was consistent with Raine’s hypothesis that a damaged prefrontal cortex can lead to impulsive aggressive behavior. However, Raine cautioned strongly against regarding such scan as diagnostic because murderers, like rest of us are a heterogeneous group of people. In short applying this kind of research in crime control often raises ethical and political issues. Scientists have many facts about the relation of DNA to crime. Studies revealed that more than 80% arrested for any crime, and more than 90% arrested for violent crime, possess an extra Y chromosome. Y chromosome is a male specific chromosome and in normal conditions it is present as a single copy. Sometimes this chromosome is more than one in number. Scientists have observed that in such conditions, a person develops violent and criminal tendencies. McCarthy reviewed several studies of the role of
testosterone in aggressive behavior among experimental animals. She pointed out a direct relationship between testosterone
levels and aggression. Testosterone regulates gene expression by acting on many different sites in a cell's DNA. That turns on the gene products, and it is these gene products that then alter the behavior. When two male experimental animals with similar genes and similar testosterone levels fight, the winner's testosterone rises and the loser's falls, resulting in different levels of gene expression. The fight also
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