AAU                   Thoughts on criminality                    Updated on 6 September 2008

I have thought a lot about this subject and have come to the conclusion that most criminal behaviour is a throwback to an earlier history of the human race.  During our development in the jungle, people we now call criminals were those individuals who were fittest to survive.  But times have changed and we now need to act in a way that society can prosper, rather than the individual.  So what do we do?

My first wife Jeanne (long rest her soul) worked in a children's nursery in Mill Hill in the late 1940s.  Jeanne told me that it was a general conclusion of her colleagues in that nursery, that it was possible to identify a future criminal at the age of three.  Most of these were boys, of course.

From that conclusion, and my own experience of life, there seems to be little doubt that criminality is genetically determined.  The Victorians had the same belief but they didn't know the chemistry that caused a son to be like his father.  We do now have a fairly good idea as to how genetic traits are handed down the generations.  The old science of phrenology has been discounted as far too crude in the extreme.  But it will be many many years before we know enough to change criminal behaviour by pure medical means.

So do we just grin and bear it and let large numbers of non-criminals suffer the behaviour of that minority that wreak havoc in our society?  I suggest we do not.  So what do we do?

We could go back a couple of hundred years and execute all felons. Or as they did, execute those felons that they could catch.  It's a bit severe, and I don't think it will catch on.  There is an alternative, and this could have a number of advantageous effects.  If every criminal act above a certain threshold were to be punished by sterilisation on top of incarceration, that would ensure that the criminal gene was not passed on to the next generation.  It would also reduce the ever-increasing pressure on the country of overpopulation and shortage of prison places.

In the case of the male, it would be a further punishment in that it would be similar to the Islamic punishment of amputating a hand to identify a thief to the whole of society.  The falsetto voice that accompanies castration would be a very great deterrent to the would-be criminal.

It is my belief that in the limit we are all simple slaves to the environment and that free-will is a myth.  However, the pressures that make us behave in a particular way are so horrendously complex that the only practical way forward is the perpetuate the myth of free-will.  I saw an article in New Scientist recently that posed just that view.

We are now being told that they have to let out some criminals because the jails are full. There is an obvious reason for that, the jails are no longer a deterrent. In fact it has seriously crossed my mind that when I get too old to look after myself, I should find a suitable crime that would put me inside for a number of years, and let the state look after me.  The Council would do just that, but they will take away my savings, even down to the house I now live in.  I would like to pass my left-over money to my daughters, I brought them into the world and owe them something for my carnal sins.

To substantiate my complaint about convicts getting treated too lightly, I can record being told be an ex-screw from Lincoln jail that his complaint was that "the cons get more entertainment that I get during my week at Butlins".  He left the prison service in disgust.  He also complained that the only discipline in the nick was what was imposed on the screws themselves.

As regards the Muslim extremists, and most of the terrorists are Muslim; I think the statement voiced recently that we are in it for the long haul, is correct.  It has also been declared recently that mankind is genetically programmed to believe in the supernatural.  Religion has many good aspects, but it also has many bad ones too.  The ethic, as passed down to us about the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, seem to truly be the most benign of the religious teachings: "Love thine Enemy".  In many cases enmity is caused by drawing a false conclusion from what one sees as another's intention, or by the different perspectives of the two parties.  The current spat between Russia and Britain is almost certainly the result of looking at the same evidence in two different ways.  If the Russian Constitution forbids them from extraditing one of their citizens, who in their right mind would expect Russia to change their Constitution just to appease Britain.  I don't know the details of the case, but if we heard all of the Russian argument, we might well agree with them and let sleeping dogs lie.  Regretfully, we have to accept what our government tells us.  But even the BBC has been shown to massage the truth for public presentational purposes.  Maybe in fifty years the truth will out, but I doubt I'll be around to see it.

But getting back to the Muslim terrorist threat, I think that the authorities have struck just about the right level of response.  I doubt that the Muslim nutters in clink get a very nice reception from the other cons.  It seems that most criminals are very patriotic.  The old adage that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" is about right.  He uses this aspect of his character to try and placate his accusers, as he knows that it is the one thing he has in common with most law-abiding citizen.

6 September

I have emailed a letter to the Telegraph this evening.  The topic fits this essay

Sir,

The 19th century study of cranium shape to determined criminality, is an obsolete theory.  However, a number of obsolete theories are being revived today in a somewhat different form.  Long ago, the life of the parent was thought to affect the body of the child, and then that theory was discarded as over-simplistic, and DNA and genes replaced that theory.  Now researchers are discovering that there was some truth in that discarded theory.

A gene has been found to explain why some couples remain together whereas the lack of that gene indicates unfaithfulness.  If a gene can affect mental processes like that, why not a gene for criminality?  The concept of "like father, like son" has been known for centuries.  Could a criminal father sire a criminal son?  This was probably one of the reasons why all felons were hanged, at one time.  We should certainly consider sterilisation for for the violent criminal.