SOC222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Juvenile Delinquency, Cesare Lombroso, Somatotype And Constitutional Psychology
24 Dec 2015
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Youths have abnormal physical traits that contribute to their mental deviancy. Somatotypes: analysing a person"s body type to predict behaviour and to make associations to personality traits. Subjective assessment of photographs (like sheldon) from boston delinquents. Body traits are not a definitive predictor for juvenile delinquency. Diet, exercise, environment and plastic surgery can drastically affect body types. Bias and stereotype affect the perceptions of this link. Present at birth and develop in the womb. Argument is that the more mpa"s a person has, the more they are likely to violently offend (violent offenses only) Improvement of nutrition has made the age of puberties onset lower in the last 100 years. Related to social factors and opportunity to offend. Compating concordance rates: degree of similarity between monozygotic twins separated at birth. Identical twins share more similar patterns than fraternal twins, even when separated at birth. Criminal genes may lend a genetic predisposition to crime given a criminogenic environment.
