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Definition
Biocriminology, also known as biosocial criminology, is the study of how genes, hormones, and other factors that affect and lead to criminal behavior. This emerged from eugenics and social Darwinism.

Background
Biocriminology was found by the Cesare Lombroso, "father of criminology." Lombroso’s proposal that people can be born as criminals, which later influences further biological approaches, was influenced by multiple factors such as psychiatry, racism, and social Darwinism. He was using methods like combining "phrenology and physiognomy, two types of pseudoscience that purported to explain a person’s personality and behavior based on his skull and facial features," that were used by white men before him to further advance racial theories. Lombroso decided to use the racial sterotypes and racial science in determining criminal characteristics and possible body features of a criminal such as “oblique eyelids, a Mongolian characteristic” and “the projection of the lower face and jaws (prognathism) found in negroes”.

Lombroso’s Criminal Man was published shortly after the publishing of Descent of Man by Darwin (1871). Lombroso was influenced by social Darwinist in term of heredity, Lombroso. He "was worried criminal bodies would infiltrate and infect the social body, which manifests in panictalk concerning heredity and criminals as pathogens. A fervent nationalist, Lombroso was worried about political agitators, especially anarchists (whom he referred to as ‘mattoids’) and ‘Southerners’. Lombroso, the appraiser of craniums, was influenced by and attempted to address social and political turmoil related to Italian state formation (see d’Agostino, 2002),” . This shows that Lombroso’s proposal in determining who was assumed borned with criminal characteristics was influenced by social Darwinism. In addition, he took racial science and applied it into determining which group of people were likely to become or assumed to be born as criminals.

Lobroso's approach was modified over the years due to know technologies and legal systems. Over time, especially when the Civil War ended, scientists had to change their methods in determining the psychological factors in biocriminology due to the law and justice for all people.

Psychological Factors
There are multiple factors biocriminologists consider that led and impact criminal behaviors. One factor would be the psychological effects on people who have mental illnesses and disorders.

Mental illnesses result from abnormal neurological roots caused by genetic defects from birth, environmental influences, physical injury, and social influences. The abnormal flow of the neurological system affects the emotions inside those with mental illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s, which makes people act and behave aggressively, and prone to more use of violence. People with Alzheimer’s have influences in “cognition (memory and intelligence), affective states (moods and emotions) and has social consequences (aging parents no longer able to take care of themselves now in the hands of their younger off-spring or being placed in nursing homes),” which leads to a more nuanced view of psychological causes. Such frustration can build up from not being able to remember names, social pressure, and demands from people that they can’t do. As the frustration builds up, it becomes harder to resist and different types of violence can result. However, most people with Alzheimer’s do not produce criminal behavior, even when frustration results. Biosociologists and biocriminologists researched and stated that certain interactions with these emotions do not mean that this person will have criminal behavior.

Assumptions can’t be made on this factor alone. If these mental illnesses make it more likely for a person to feel frustration and if it’s harder to control our behavior, there’s a connection that holds between the cause (biological process) and effect (feeling of frustration). Thus, biocriminologists observe multiple biological factors and not narrow them down to one.

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