Jan 29, 2024, Biosocial Crim CV.pptx

Biosocial Crim Jan 29, 2024 1 Objectives:  Empirical Case: Chris Benoit  What is Biosocial Criminology? Nature vs Nurture  Biological approaches to crime causation Gender and Sex Hormones Brain function  Policy Implications Why is this subfield controversial? 2 Video: Chris Benoit 3 Chris B...

Biosocial Crim Jan 29, 2024 1 Objectives:  Empirical Case: Chris Benoit  What is Biosocial Criminology? Nature vs Nurture  Biological approaches to crime causation Gender and Sex Hormones Brain function  Policy Implications Why is this subfield controversial? 2 Video: Chris Benoit 3 Chris Benoit: On June 5, 2007, Benoit strangled his wife, Nancy, and then suffocated his seven-year-old son, Daniel. Next Benoit placed a cable around his neck and hanged himself. 4 Questions: What are the factors that led to this tragic crime? 5 What are the factors that led to this tragic crime? Environmental/Social:  Wrestling culture:  What type of ‘man/masculinity’ does wrestling culture demand?  Relationships: 6 What are the factors that led to this tragic crime? Biological and Physiological  Biology & Physiology: Nature and Nurture 7 Nature and Nurture: Nature and Nurture. Q: Where do you stand on the Nature vs Nurture debate?  Only way to resolve this debate is to examine a human outside of ‘society’  Is this possible? Example: “Wild Child” Victor of Aveyron: France late 18th Cent. 8 Wild Child  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yddJBd6D2lo 9 “Wild Child”  Victor of Aveyron, a French feral boy who lived in the woods of the Aveyron region in the late 1790s and was allegedly raised by wolves.  Consider: did the ‘wild child’ totally lack socialization altogether, or did he get socialized differently? 10 Chris Benoit: Gender: a) Sociological Perspective b) Biological Perspective  How can we bring both together w/Benoit? Hormones: Brain Function: 11 Gender-Sex Relation: Sex/gender has emerged as perhaps the single most consistent predictor of crime One of the most studied correlates to crime Remains one of the least understood 12 Gender-Sex Relation: Sociological Perspective  Judith Butler: Gender Trouble  Sex is a biological characteristic whereas gender is considered a social construct.  Cultural assumptions link certain behaviours with masculinity and others with femininity, but there is nothing necessary about these Gender performance – Butler: dress 13 Gender-Sex Relation: Biological Perspective  The underlying mechanisms that account for the association b/n gender and crime are debated Lower female offending rates are largely due to biological and genetic factors like brain & hormone function Male-female differences in types of behaviors are evident during the very first few weeks of life. 14 15 Benoit Video 2: Steroid use?  Video  What stood out for you?  What would a biosocial criminologist say about the relationship between biology and the environment? 16 17 Brain: Prefrontal Cortex 18 Brain: Prefrontal Cortex, Debates Brain imaging studies gained popularity in late 90s 19 Video 3: CTE and Benoit Q: Taking everything from the lecture so far, what would a biosocial criminologist say are the factors that led to Benoit’s crime? What are some possible policy solutions from a biosocial perspective? 20 Current issues: Canada, Anti-Native Racism, Genocide, and Sterilization  Video  “The very idea that science is a way toward the truth is itself a product of a society that idealizes science….we do need to keep in mind that a naïve positivist faith in value-free science bolstered the Nazis’ exterminationist policies.”  Remember: Nazi eugenics was modeled on the genocide of Indigenous people in the US and Canada 21