Race & Crime: A Biosocial Analysis

This book examines the incendiary issue of racial variation in crime rates in the United States and in many other countries using a variety of data sources. It examines the latest genetic data asserting the reality of the concept of race, and various lines of evidence from population genetics, evolutionary biology, and anthropology pertinent to the evolution of racial differences in behaviour. Because males of African descent commit a disproportionate number of crimes in all countries where crime rates are classified by racial categories are available, the emphasis is on explaining black crime relative to white and Asian crime. In addition to run-of-the-mill street crimes, racial differences in crimes such as mass, spree, and serial killing, hate crime, white-collar crime, and organised crime are examined. The horrendous experience of slavery and Jim Crow laws that blacks have had to uniquely endure in this country is the starting point for explaining African American crime in the United States. Such experiences bred a violent subculture in the African American community that is opposed to much of what mainstream America values. Although the behaviours and attitudes evident in inner city culture were functional responses to the conditions forced upon blacks by whites in former times, they are now dysfunctional and destructive. The role of poverty, the sex ratio, out-of-wedlock births, the devaluation of education, the ecology of the inner city, and child abuse and neglect are examined in detail from a biosocial perspective. A biosocial perspective is one that fully acknowledges and explores how intrinsic features of individuals interact with environmental conditions to produce behaviour.