If it's all due to "poverty", how come most poor people are not criminals?
Why do some people from deprived or abusive backgrounds become violent criminals, while others, whose upbringing appears to have been equally disadvantageous, go on to lead productive, law-abiding lives? Might there be ways to spot high-risk individuals before they commit serious offences, perhaps even in childhood? ...
Even those most wedded to a sociological model of offending accept that a relatively small proportion of those convicted of criminal offences account for a very large proportion of total crime. David Farrington's study of every male born in Britain in 1956 found that as many as one third had been convicted of at least one non-traffic offence by the age of 30. But he and his colleagues also discovered that as few as 5 per cent were responsible for at least half of all known crime committed by the 1956 cohort. Other research suggests a group this small commits more than 70 per cent of all recorded offences, and more than 70 per cent of violent ones...
Moffitt cited several studies to propose that there is "a very small group of males who display high rates of antisocial behaviour across time." The same 5 per cent of boys first appear on the criminological radar screen in early childhood-being prone to aggression and violence, disobedience, recklessness, lying and theft. Even at primary school, they are likely to face exclusion and other sanctions. In adolescence, they are the youths who commit the more serious and violent crimes, and in adulthood they do not, like most of their peers, cease such behaviour.... The causes of "life-course persistent antisocial behaviour" are, wrote Moffitt, likely to lie "early in life, in factors that are present before or soon after birth." ...
In childhood, between the ages of three and 13, the Dunedin boys with the worst conduct problems at home and school also displayed "neurological abnormalities, low intellectual ability, reading difficulties, hyperactivity, poor scores on neuropsychological tests, and slow heart rate." ... In Dunedin, the 10 per cent of boys whose antisocial behaviour had started before adolescence were about three times as likely as the "adolescence- limited" group to be convicted of crimes after the age of 26, and they "tended to specialise in serious offences." ... Not only were they committing much more crime, their lives were in much worse shape in other ways. At 26, they were much more likely than the "adolescence-limited" group to be abusing alcohol, and to have suffered symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and depression. They were more likely to have abused their partners, and while they had fathered more children, they were less likely to be helping to rear their offspring. More than half had no high-school qualifications, and only one of them had attended college....
Studies of twins and adopted children had already established that antisocial behaviour is likely to be partly inherited. Identical twin pairs, who share the same genes, have been shown to be more likely to share antisocial traits than fraternal, non-identical ones. The children of criminals, even when adopted at an early age by non-abusive and non-criminal families, are more likely than average to become offenders themselves....
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Hypocrisy in Connecticut: Senator Joe Lieberman, Senate Candidate Ned Lamont, and Gubernatorial Candidate John DeStefano are mouthing off at Wal-Mart. Paid Critics notes that all three have in the past either benefited from or endorsed Wal-Mart! Lamont even is/was a shareholder in Wal-Mart! Leftists really hate low prices for the average man. Only the rich Leftist elite should be allowed to have all the good stuff!
Cheaper cars coming: "General Motors Corp. said last year that the company plans to purchase $1 billion in Indian-made parts by 2008, according to a Wall Street Journal article."
The "power crisis" is a fake: "Hot weather like this current heat wave, increases demand dramatically for ice cream and ice cubes, so the sellers crank up their production. Voila! No shortages. Electricity, on the other hand, is a government protected MONOPOLY for a handful of politically-connected companies who have EXCLUSIVE TERRITORIES that shut out competitors. We consumers have NO CHOICE but to buy electricity from the government-protected monopoly, and pay the government-approved PRICE, which guarantees a MINIMUM PROFIT to the power company. Thus, the power companies have NO INCENTIVE to build more generating plants or even modernize their existing plants because they are guaranteed a minimum profit margin and suffer no threat of losing business. Electricity is produced, distributed and sold in America exactly the same way as it is done in Communist Cuba, North Korea, China, or Socialist Russia."
Journalist protects Leftist thugs: "A freelance video journalist was jailed Tuesday for refusing to give a grand jury his unsold footage from a 2005 protest in which anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a police car. Joshua Wolf, 24, could remain behind bars until next summer, when the grand jury investigating the incident is due to expire. Wolf had sold footage of the protest to San Francisco television stations and posted it on his Web site. Investigators are seeking portions of his videotape that haven't been broadcast."
The Episcopal Church's female "bishop" sure knows how to preach the Gospel: "In a homily right after her election at the general convention, Jefferts Schori casually referred to "our mother Jesus." Telling a national magazine that there could be ways to heaven other than Jesus is, of course, contrary to what Jesus himself said on the matter: "I am the way, and the truth, and the light. There is no way to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). [Jesus was female??? The Episcopal Church sure has hit the "self-destruct" button]
Nutty Presbyterians: "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, according to a book to be released later this month by Westminster John Knox Press-a division of the denominational publisher for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action is the third book on the subject by David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of theology at Claremont School of Theology who is also a well-published and prominent process theologian".
For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).
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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
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