The question of why people commit crime has been asked for centuries. Many people have tried throughout various points in time to come up with an answer but we will never be absolutely certain. One prospective theory that has caused a lot of controversy since its debut is inherited criminality. Inherited criminality consists of the idea that you are either born a criminal or not. If you are going to commit a crime at any point in your life, it will be because there is a part of you that has always been criminal. Richard Dugdale was a sociologist who joined the biocriminality movement with his study of the Jukes family. I will be taking a look at his paper, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, and Heredity, which looks at a family with a large history of criminal behavior. To provide an alternative outlook, I will point out environmental factors about the Jukes family that may have led to their criminal behavior. I will also be addressing the problems with his study as well as what we can do to help keep criminal behavior at bay. …show more content…
This allows for both genetics and environmental factors to coexist into one big explanation for criminal behavior. It explains how they each have a huge impact on criminality and operate hand-in-hand. While Dugdale does present the idea of environmental interactions, he clearly does not wish to place much blame on these factors. There are a handful of concepts that my attention that I feel Dugdale did not give much thought towards. A few that I will focus on are isolation, abuse, and