John Paul Wright School of Criminal Justice University of Cincinnati amp King AbdulAziz University Jeddah Saudi Arabia Johnwrightucedu Let Me First Say THANK YOU Gracias Obrigado ID: 553325
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Slide1
Recognizing the Humanity of Biosocial Criminology
John Paul Wright
School of Criminal Justice
University of Cincinnati
&
King Abdul-Aziz University
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
John.wright@uc.eduSlide2
Let Me First Say “THANK YOU”
Gracias
Obrigado
شكراDankjewelTakMerciתודהمتشکرم
Спасибо
teşekkür
ederim
Grazie
Danke
Ευχαριστώ
Dziękuję
謝謝Slide3
“I seriously have a strange love for biosocial criminology. It describes EVERYTHING. But it’s annoying.”
Anonymous Twitter UserSlide4
Let me repeat that for sake of clarity: the roadblocks to scientific progress are primarily internal to the academy.
By moving forward, I mean building a knowledge base that is sound, reliable, and that serves as the basis for greater theoretical precision and increased accuracy in prediction.
Slide5
Three Points
1: Science is NOT always self-correcting
Forces of history and political ideology conspire
2: Biosocial criminology remains perilously close to extinction“It remains marginalized....mainstream criminologists ignore it...it stimatizes without stigma.......it is Lombrosian biological determinism and social Darwinism redu”
3: A Biosocial approach offers our best hope to building a useful science
Does criminology need biosocial criminology
….or does biosocial criminology need criminology?Slide6
Defining Biosocial Criminology
It is instead a modern effort towards scientific consilience. It is a paradigm of synthesis, one that draws on other “hard” and “soft” sciences
.
Prioritizes understanding the complex interplay between genes, the central nervous system, measurable phenotypes and subjectively important environment sources of variance.By its very nature, the paradigm is inherently dynamic, longitudinal, and
falsifiable. Slide7
Social Science is NOT Self Correcting
“From
Galileo’s reception of
Kepler’s research to Nageli’s reception of Mendel’s, from Daltons rejection of Gay Lussac’s results to Kelvin’s rejection of Maxwell’s, unexpected novelties of fact and theory have characteristically been resisted and have often been rejected by many of the most creative members of the professional scientific community. The historian, at least, scarcely needs Plank to remind him that: “A new scientific truth is not usually presented in a way that convinces its opponents…; rather they gradually die off, and a rising generation is familiarized with the truth from the start.”
Thomas KuhnSlide8
Advocacy v. Objectivity
Objectivity
AdvocacySlide9
Federal Research Spending: NIJ 2010Slide10Slide11Slide12
Historical Justifications are Selective
For progressives, the legitimacy of state control derived from their conception of the state as an entity prior to and greater than the sum of its constituent individuals, a conception that opposed the traditional liberal emphasis on individual freedom and the liberal view that the state’s legitimacy derives solely from the consent of its individual creators. Lester Ward devised the term “
sociocracy
” to describe the “scientific control of the social forces by the collective mind of society” (Fine, 1956, p. 263). Slide13
Other Lessons?
Ideology
“binds and blinds” us, to reference the work of Jonathan
Haidt, and that it can metastasize into a powerful and seductive force, leading even the best and the brightest to “accept science when it suits them,” and to reject it when it doesn’t.Writing in 1965, none other than Sheldon
Glueck
stated that
“The
history of criminology, from the time of the precursors of Lombroso down to modern proponents of favorite unilateral theories, amply proves that there is great risk in taking a premature stand on any single theory or fact as an “explanation” of delinquency
.”Slide14
Predicted in the 1200’s
There are four chief obstacles to grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win clear title of knowledge; namely,
submission
to faulty and unworthy authority; influence of custom; popular prejudice; and
concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by the ostentatious display of our knowledge.Slide15
Point 2: Biosocial Criminology May Go ExtinctSlide16
*1979: NCJRS Biosocial Bibliography
*1981-1989: President Ronald Reagan
*1985: Crime and Human NatureSlide17Slide18Slide19Slide20Slide21Slide22
Political Orientation of ASC Member and Support for TheorySlide23
Political Orientation of ASC Member and Support for TheorySlide24
Biosocial criminology has something to say
about:
in-utero
and prenatal development
neurological
insults from maternal
drug- use
, about environmental exposure to
neurotoxins
(such as
Pb
)
developing
in a stress-filled, abusive,
dehumanizing environment
the
key issues of onset, behavior
stability
, behavioral regulation,
maturation
, and even
desistance
Slide25
Point 3: We Can Build a Useful Science
Dating the Green Cursor
!!Syntax Error!!
Crime is NOT an abstractionPersonal CrisisBuilding a Science of DiscoverySlide26
What You Can Do
Read outside our discipline
Begin to cite external research
See the neurological underpinnings to social concepts, eg., attachments, informal social controls, social bonds, self-controlSeek out collaborative, multidisciplinary relationshipsForget theoretical allegianceBe critical and seek to reject the null hypothesisSlide27
BIOSOCIAL CRIMINOLOGY
UNITAS MULTIPLEXSlide28
CLAUDE BERNARD
When you meet a fact opposed to a prevailing theory, you should adhere to the fact and abandon the theory, even when the latter is supported by great authorities and generally adopted.