Explaining Common Criminals

Louisiana

Here’s another key excerpt from Adrian Raine’s The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime which explains why New Orleans and Birmingham are so plagued by “senseless violence” and “tragic shootings”:

Note: The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain immediately behind the forehead. In normal people, the prefrontal cortex is lit up by glucose metabolism in red like in the image below, but in common criminals who engage in “senseless violence,” there is much less activity in this region of the brain.

The impulsive common criminal suffers from poor brain functioning in the prefrontal cortex
The impulsive common criminal suffers from poor brain functioning in the prefrontal cortex

Scans of a normal brain, left, beside that of murderer Antonio Bustamante, who was spared the death penalty after a jury was shown these pictures.
Scans of a normal brain, left, beside that of murderer Antonio Bustamante, who was spared the death penalty after a jury was shown these pictures.

1. At an emotional level, reduced prefrontal cortex functioning results in a loss of control over the evolutionary more primitive parts of the brain, such as the limbic system, that generate raw emotions like anger and rage. The more sophisticated prefrontal cortex keeps a lid on these limbic emotions. Take that lid off, and the emotions will boil over.

2. At a behavioral level, we know from research on neurological patients that damage to the prefrontal cortex results in risk taking, irresponsibility, and rule-breaking. It’s not too far to go from these behavioral changes to violent behavior.

3. At a personality level, frontal damage has been shown to result in a whole host of personality changes. These include impulsivity, loss of self-control, and inability to modify and inhibit behavior appropriately. Can you imagine these types of personality traits in violent offenders?

4. At a social level, prefrontal damage results in immaturity, lack of tact, and poor social judgment. From here we can imagine how a lack of social skills can result in socially inappropriate behavior and poorer ability to formulate nonaggressive solutions to fractious social encounters.

5. At a cognitive level, poor frontal functioning results in a loss of intellectual flexibility and poorer problem solving skills. These intellectual impairments can later result in school failure, unemployment, and economic deprivation, all factors that predispose someone to a criminal and violent way of life.

It’s not just one level of analysis but five – five reasons we might expect that poor prefrontal functioning could predispose a person to violent behavior. It’s not surprising, therefore, that poor prefrontal functioning is the best-replicated correlate of antisocial and violent behavior.

Raine goes on to explain that successful serial killers like Randy Kraft and Ted Bundy have excellent brain functioning in the prefrontal cortex. He distinguishes between “proactive aggressives” – cold blooded murderers who combine violence with forethought to advance their ends – and “reactive aggressives” – hot blooded low IQ types who are unable to control their volatile emotions.

In psychopaths, the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain which plays a key role in moral decision making, barely flickers in brain scans. This is why psychopaths are unable to empathize with others and feel guilt or remorse from their actions.

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

35 Comments

  1. Now watch when it turns out that poor prefrontal function can be detected in childhood (perhaps as trivialy as the “marshmallow test”), and the results are wildly disparate by race.

  2. Sounds like just another way to describe the one banana difference.

    Adrian Raine should contact Arturo before he publishes his next book.

    Deo Vindice

  3. This may well turn out to be Pseudo science, but what exactly explains the state of places like Europe and North America and the differences with Africa if it’s not something biological? Ultimately, all the Pseudo scientific fumbling is just an attempt to
    Describe what we can all see in reality.

    Another question is obvious, social interaction is not separate from biology, race is quite observable. Where does the social and the biological Behin and end? Are they really separate phenomenon?

  4. The blacks are all over that threaditt.

    Probing prodding Raine into saying something
    Rayciss.

    So far though he’s talked about how he is not keen on guns and is not keen on racial interpretations. If he’s near Philly the fellow will learn quickly about biology.

  5. “Recent research by one of my graduate students has been trying to explain differences across countries in rates of aggression in children. She finds that she can almost entirely explain away racial differences in aggression by accounting for social risk factors.
    On your second question, income inequality explains a lot of the differences in homicide rates across countries. For example, income inequality is high, as is homicide.
    Can we entirely rule genetics out? In theory, I don’t think we can, but there has been almost no research on this and any research would be highly controversial and may do more harm than good.”

    I’d like to know roughly where he decided to his children to school and roughly where he chose to buy a house. It’s a shame that the questioner he is responding to did follow up yet. Income and risk factors are also the product of a biologically defective unit?

    • If there was nothing much to worry about, James Watson would still be at Cold Springs Harbor, Richwine would still be at the Heritage Foundation, Derbyshire would still be at National Review, and Scientific American wouldn’t be endorsing book burning and indefinite detention of “racists.”

  6. What correlation between the normal brain and white test subjects exist? What statistical abnormalities in the brains of blacks overlap with elevated rates of criminality?

    Could a sly test group be assembled?

    • It should be simple enough to compile a representative sample of blacks and Whites and use MRI scans to see if there are any observable racial differences in the prefrontal cortex … but, as Raine admits at Reddit, that line of research is too hot and professionally dangerous.

  7. One simple sentence will destroy this nonsense; The Blank Slate Theory is a fraud. But its moral implications are so large that most people (save me) cannot bring themselves to say it.

    Once the BST is destroyed and hence the modern left either rebrands or implodes then research and real science may then proceed.

  8. The SciAm guy now claims his Gitmo comments were made in jest.

    Of course, so is many a truth uttered.

  9. Ideology for human nature, mainly a jew lead enterprise these days. Though they did not start it by any means, blame the revolutionary buttwipes in France and the WASP supremacists of New England for creating the perfecting humans via wordism scams.

    But good news folks wordism works till one day it does not work.

  10. I guess that if it did show such a difference you’d have to mask the study under a more
    Benign study. It would have to just sorta be the snake that would have bit you. can anyone think of a test protocol?

  11. You could have a math exam with one group listening to Mozart and one to Jazz. Mix up the blacks and whites in both groups.

    The control group could be a mix and have no music played.

    Collect racial data on the sly.

  12. John – I refused to subject myself to “Bodjango Nigra off Da Chain”.

    What did “Calvin Canie” say?

  13. Blacks are subservient cause they are dimpled in the skull.

    Phrenology!

    However these brain scans are pretty likely to be damning evidence.

  14. Much sooner than that, J Spruce — Nigger males manifest sexual agression around age 7, and are then behaviorally capable of homocide. Nigger females can give birth as young as age 10, and are as violent as their male counterparts.

  15. Check out the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) regarding the “controversy” about “minority” scores.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory

    “There is near agreement that the notion of more psychopathology in racial ethnic minority groups is simplistic and untenable.”

    “In general, studies of such divergent populations as prison inmates, medical patients, psychiatric patients, and high school and college students have found that blacks usually score higher than whites on the L, F, Sc, and Ma scales.”

    L: Lying.

    F: Infrequency. Assesses “faking being bad in first half of test.” What this means is someone trying to deceive.

    Sc: Schizophrenia.

    Ma: Hypomania. Measures level of excitability.

  16. I can’t think of anything more harmful to negroes than treating them as something they are not. This is common sense. It gives people an inferiority complex or a victim complex if you expect more from people than they are capable of giving.

    Obviously the communist thoughtpolice of the Cathedral feel harming negroes is a small price to pay for the immense damage to whites, white culture and Western Civilization that has resulted from forced acceptance of that idea.

  17. “I guess that if it did show such a difference you’d have to mask the study under a more Benign study. It would have to just sorta be the snake that would have bit you. can anyone think of a test protocol?”

    There’ll be white sub-groups with higher rates of all these violence related traits than other white sub-groups imo based on how recently civilized they were. The point ought to be provable that way. Alternatively compare White – preferably the most recently civilized – with Chinese or South Asian sub-groups who have been civilized the longest as the White people will come out more violent in that comparison. Prove the point that way first then go from there.

  18. “igger males manifest sexual agression around age 7, and are then behaviorally capable of homocide”

    By junior high, most folks home school their kids.

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