Criminality: Are People Born Criminals?



Criminal

There is the assumption that some people are born criminals just like the way some people are believed to be born geniuses. No matter what you do they will grow up to lead a life of crime. It follows from this that if they are born with criminal behaviour, criminals will lack control of their behaviour. In other words, criminal behaviour will be determined by genes rather than by external factors such as lack of opportunities and poverty.

Researchers have attempted to investigate this assumption that some people are born with criminal intents. Their studies have focused largely on genetic studies involving identical twins. The rationale for using identical twin studies in genetic research is that identical twins tend to develop from one egg and share the same genetic make-up. It follows from this that if a particular behaviour is found to be more common in identical twins than in non-identical twins or siblings, the only possible explanation for this behaviour will be genetic make-up. Consequently, researchers who have studied criminality on this assumption have found a similarity between identical twins and criminality. That is, the researchers have found that if one identical twin is a criminal, the other identical twin is also likely to be a criminal.

This assertion that there is a relationship between criminality and genetic factors is questionable. It is questionable because it did not address the role played by socialisation in criminality. Identical twins, for example, tend to be treated similarly in terms of what they eat and what they are allowed to do. It is inevitable that this treatment can shape the way in which the twins behave later on in life including engaging in criminalities.

Instead of accepting the view that some people are born criminals, it is better to accept that criminals are made by society. This point can be illustrated using the definition of crime. Although there are different definitions of it, we will look only at the definition of crime from the legal perspective. According to the legal view of crime, a crime is any act that is prohibited by the law and incurs criminal sanction or punishment for its violation. In other words, any act that is not prohibited by the law is not a crime.

This raises the question about what makes some acts to be criminal but not others. The answer is that there is nothing inherent (concrete) in an act that makes it criminal. Instead, it is what the dominant group in society considers to be deviance or out of norm that is criminalised. Unfortunately, most of the times, the acts that dominant groups in society tend to consider abnormal and criminalise are those activities engaged by the minorities or less dominant groups in society.

Consider homosexual act for example. For many centuries homosexuality was considered evil and criminalised in the west, and gays and lesbians were persecuted for the act. The reason for this criminalisation is that the dominant group in the west did not accept the behaviour as normal. Now this group has accepted homosexuality as a norm and the act has been legalised. The west is also encouraging other non-western nations such as Uganda which is hostile to homosexual practice through its anti-gay laws to accept homosexuality as a norm. It should be noted that nothing has changed in relation to homosexual practice that makes it acceptable now but unacceptable before. The only thing that has changed is the dominant group view about the practice.

In fact, accepting the view that people are born criminals will be tantamount to saying that every gay or lesbian in the west prior to decriminalisation of homosexuality was sick. As you and I are fully aware, there is nothing wrong with homosexuals. They are normal individuals like you and I. It was society that attempted to paint them evil and prosecute them for normal behaviour. I hope you too can identify other acts which were criminalised before but decriminalised now. If people were labelled as born-criminals for committing the acts then, what will you say now that the criminalised acts have been decriminalised?