H567/03 Section B Option 2 - Physiological and other explanations of crime
Why do some people offend while others in similar circumstances do not? An explanation should identify a process connecting a risk factor to behaviour. Crime is a legal category, whereas aggression is a behaviour: aggression can be lawful, and fraud need not involve aggression. Evidence about one cannot automatically explain the other.
Brain systems and behavioural control
A physiological explanation concerns bodily processes. The prefrontal cortex contributes to planning, evaluating consequences and regulating responses. Reduced effectiveness of this control may make it harder to stop an impulsive aggressive response to provocation. This is a proposed pathway to some offending, rather than a brain region containing a decision to commit crime.
The amygdala contributes to processing emotionally significant information, including threat; the hippocampus contributes to memory; the corpus callosum connects the hemispheres. A difficulty in a network involving emotion, learning and control could make social information harder to interpret or behaviour harder to regulate. It is too simple to equate all aggression with an overactive amygdala: activity depends on the task, region, hemisphere and connections.
Raine's brain-imaging research, developed next, compares selected homicide defendants with controls. Such a difference can support a biological association. A scan taken after an offence does not show that the difference preceded or caused it. Brain functioning may itself reflect injury, learning, substance exposure or other environmental experiences.
Arousal and biological vulnerability
Another physiological account concerns autonomic arousal. Low arousal may encourage stimulation seeking: risky acts can supply excitement that ordinary activity does not. Alternatively, weak fear responses may make the unpleasant consequences of punishment less effective in learning to avoid an act. These are different mechanisms and should be explained separately.
Genetic influences could contribute to temperament or physiological responses, but an inherited vulnerability is not an inherited offence. Relatives also share environments; even a genetic contribution would leave learning and opportunity relevant. Physiological does not mean unchangeable: nutrition, injury prevention and supportive experience can affect bodily development.
In an illustrative case, a young person seeks increasingly risky excitement but does not steal when a valued coach is present. An arousal account might explain attraction to risk; social rewards and supervision help explain why the behaviour changes across situations. The example supplies an explanation to consider, not a diagnosis or evidence of the person's genes.
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