Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504220013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Police, prosecutors and corrections officials don't need social scientists to tell them that most criminals score low on intelligence tests. Yet most people who score low are not criminals. Studies that track groups of children into their teens and beyond are pointing to personality traits, combined with low mental ability, that show a correlation with later criminal behavior.
This conflicts with the accepted thinking among criminologists, who largely discount personality and look to social factors, such as poverty and unemployment, as the cause of crime. Psychological studies reported in the April 15 issue of Science News do cite social factors. But they have mostly to do with lack of prenatal and postnatal care.
Impulsivity - the tendency to act without thinking, to want instant gratification, to shift attention quickly and to overreact to minor frustrations - plus poor verbal ability emerge as the culprits in studies led by Terrie E. Moffitt, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She suggests that disturbances of brain function, either in the womb or shortly after birth, may contribute to these problems among the small group of offenders whose aggressiveness started in early childhood and has turned them into hard-core delinquents.
Moffitt's researchers argue that low I.Q. may lead to impulsivity, while other studies suggest that children who are impulsive cannot pay attention and remember information, nor can they reason well enough, to score high on I.Q. tests. Still other research points to damage to the brain's frontal lobes, causing poor decision-making and social skills, which may cause hard-core delinquency no matter what the individual's I.Q.
These studies are hardly the final word on the nature of criminality. But they offer evidence that society could better protect itself by protecting the health of pregnant mothers and newborns.
Don't get us wrong. We're not suggesting that criminals became what they are because they were dropped on their heads when they were kids. Social pathology and the presence of evil are a lot more complicated than that. But there is good evidence for the wisdom of fighting juvenile delinquency - in part - by putting public money into improving prenatal care and infant health.
This not only is cheaper than housing and feeding inmates. It avoids that frightening step between youthful aggression and imprisonment: crime.
by CNB