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Lombroso's Legacy: The Miseducation of CriminologistsJohn P. Wright; Kevin M. Beaver; Matt DeLisi; Michael G. Vaughn; Danielle Boisvert; Jamie Vaske

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JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE EDUCATION VOLUME 19 NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER 2008)

ISSN 1051-1253 print/1745-9117 online/08/030325-14© 2008 Academy of Criminal Justice SciencesDOI: 10.1080/10511250802476137

Lombroso’s Legacy: The Miseducation of Criminologists

John P. Wright, Kevin M. Beaver, Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn, Danielle Boisvert and Jamie Vaske

Taylor and Francis LtdRCJE_A_347781.sgm10.1080/10511250802476137Journal of Criminal Justice Education1051-1253 (print)/1745-9117 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis193000000November [email protected]

This study examines the extent to which criminal justice and criminologyPh.D. students are exposed to contemporary biological and genetic findingsassociated with aggression and violence. Drawing on multiple sources of infor-mation, we find little evidence showing that Ph.D. students are exposed toany biological research on crime and offending. We examine the conse-quences for this “trained incompetence” and offer suggestions for remedyingthis deficiency.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of thecontrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that oneperson, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.(John Stuart Mill)

Introduction

Mill was an impassioned advocate of the free and open exchange of ideas. Noopinion, regardless of how inflammatory or insensitive or baseless, according toMill, should be exercised or banished from civil discourse. Mill justified his posi-tion by noting that open discourse benefits democracy because beliefs areconstantly debated and revised when confronted with new evidence. So impor-tant is Mill’s philosophical legacy that it formed the intellectual backbone of themodern United States university system. Similar to Mill’s advocacy of free polit-ical speech as a method to advance democracy and liberty, universities, at leastin theory, advance free speech as a method to find the truth.

Just as Mill observed over a century ago, societies advance through opendialogue, especially when that dialogue is informed by new evidence. Whenempirical evidence collides with and overcomes longstanding institutionalizeddogma, science is advanced. In theory, the friction between empirical evidenceand dogma should force falsified ideas into the criminological garbage heap, or

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326 WRIGHT ET AL.

at minimum, cause some degree of modification to contemporary and widelyaccepted views. Unfortunately, there is often a gulf between theory and practice.

In theory, criminology should have by now discarded certain theories ofcrime. Outside of demonic possession, however, one would be challenged tolocate a social theory of criminal behavior that has been empirically laid to rest.Falsification is a critical goal in any science, yet falsification of sociologicallybased theories of crime has yet to happen. Indeed, just the opposite hasoccurred. New theories and new paradigms, such as postmodernism, peacemak-ing and many feminist perspectives, have made their way into the mainstreamof criminology (Cullen, Wright, & Blevins, 2006). While inventive, their ascen-dancy has arguably given rise to even less emphasis on the scientific method andhas thus placed falsification even further from the aims of the field. As Walshand Ellis (2004, p. 18) note, “Any field generating this much theoretical excessto explain the same phenomenon can reasonably be accused of lacking in scien-tific rigor”.

While criminologists would be hard pressed to locate any social theory ofcrime that has been empirically falsified and thus is no longer presented as ascientifically supported theory, they would not be so pressed to locate an entirebody of knowledge that has been systematically excluded from the discipline.Despite tremendous gains made in the biological and genetic sciences, few, ifany, of these insights have penetrated criminology (for important exceptions,see Moffitt, 1990, 1993, 2005). For example, it is commonplace for criminologytextbooks and criminological theory texts to only include an occasional boxfeature on biological topics relating to crime, or at best, devote a single chapteron biological approaches to crime. Even books that take stock of contemporarycriminology lack any dedicated coverage of the influence of biological variables(Cullen et al., 2006). Yet the impressiveness of the research findings linkingbiological and genetic factors to human violence has led Robinson (2004) to notethat “The biological sciences have made more progress in understanding crimeover the last 10 years than the social sciences have in the last 50”.

Robinson’s assessment may be dismissed as mere hyperbole, but in the ageof genomic science dismissal may come with a high price. If Robinson is correct,or even slightly correct, then the question that immediately emerges is why hascriminology not been part of the broader mainstream movement to link biologi-cal and social influences into a coherent understanding of the development ofcriminal behavior? In other words, why has criminology chosen disciplinaryisolation instead of consilience— the unity of knowledge from diverse fields(Wilson, 1998)?

This paper takes on a unique approach to address this question. We empiri-cally examine the degree to which biology has or has not penetrated criminol-ogy. Unlike other studies, however, we look not at textbooks but at the facultyof Ph.D.-granting criminology programs, the training of Ph.D. criminologystudents, the dissertations produced by Ph.D. criminology students and facultyresearch into the biology-crime link. We present our findings and then go on topoint out the multiple problems associated with the current state of the field,


LOMBROSO’S LEGACY 327

including how Ph.D. students are trained and how knowledge is produced. Wefinish the paper with suggestions to reorient the training of Ph.D. students.

The Miseducation of Criminologists

The forces that have led to the exclusion of biology from criminology are variedand have been covered in detail elsewhere (van den Berghe, 1990; Walsh &Ellis, 2004). While not exhaustive, we list three general reasons: first, manycriminologists hold liberal or radical views on crime causation, which are ideo-logically opposed to individualist explanations of crime in general, and tobiological theories specifically. For instance, Walsh and Ellis’s (2004) analysis ofsurvey data from (n = 147) members of the American Society of Criminologyfound that the self-reported political ideology of the professor predicted herbelief in and support of specific criminological theories. According to Walsh andEllis’s findings, self-identified liberal faculty were significantly more likely tobelieve that a lack of opportunities, an unfair economic system and bias in thecriminal justice system were important causes of criminal behavior. Liberalswere also more likely to believe that exposure to media violence has a strongerinfluence on wayward behavior than does low IQ, genetic factors, hormonalvariables or evolutionary processes.

Liberals were not alone in assigning a limited influence to biological factorson crime, as the few (n = 10) self-reported conservatives in Walsh and Ellis’sstudy also ranked these variables as having less influence than a lack of supervi-sion, poor discipline practices and an unstable family life. Walsh and Ellisconcluded by noting that “any field in which a person’s sociopolitical ideologypredicts, albeit imperfectly, which theory he or she considers most viable interms of empirical support can reasonably be accused of lacking in objectivity”(Walsh & Ellis, 2004, p. 19).

Second, the history of biological theorizing is a dark one, particularly with itslinks to eugenics and fascism (see Gibson & Rafter, 2006). This dark historycontinues to be a source of revulsion, which can serve as justification for crimi-nologists ostracizing biological theory (Rose & Rose, 2000; Wright & Miller,1998). To this day, introductory criminology textbooks link biological theorizingwith the repulsive practices that accompanied Hitler and Mussolini, as if thesetheories caused the events surrounding the Second World War. As Pinker (2002)notes, however, rarely have theories espoused by sociologists been held to sucha standard, even though sociological theories formed the ideological core ofMao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Amin, who, incidentally, were collectively responsiblefor the destruction of over 50 million people.

Finally, at some point in the history of criminology, scholars began to differ-entiate theories based on whether or not they were “dangerous” (Spallone,1998). Dangerous ideas were those that placed priority on individual differencesassociated with criminal offending, that allegedly supported state efforts tosuppress the rights of individuals or that singled out some groups as more, or


328 WRIGHT ET AL.

less, criminally involved than others. The idea that any linkage of biologicalfunctioning to criminal behavior is dangerous also remains a substantial part ofthe public debate about crime. For example, Balaban and Lewontin (2007), fromGene Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to limiting research into thebiology of behavior, instructs agencies concerned with social justice to “combatthe already well-entrenched idea in a variety of academic, public policy andmedia circles that molecular behavioral genetics will inevitably reveal newinformation about the control of human behavior that will of necessity changethe way societies deal with crime” (Center for Responsible Genetics, 2007,p. 6). Understanding individual and group differences is at the heart of biologi-cal theorizing, so it remains an easy extension to label anything biological asalso tantamount to “dangerous”. Over time, biology unfortunately has become acodeword for racism and sexism and the quintessential example of how not toconceptualize, measure or study crime.

Of course, the belief that some ideas are “dangerous” has been aroundlonger than has criminology. The same argument was used by Bishop SamuelWilberforce in his attacks on Darwin’s new theory of evolution. Wilberforce, apowerful clergyman, argued that the universe did not evolve, that it was notself-sustaining and that human beings were created by an all-knowing God thatalso created all other life-forms. Wilberforce and other powerful theologians ofthe time considered Darwin’s ideas dangerous not because they threatened indi-vidual rights, but because they threatened the power of the English Church anddeeply held beliefs about the nature of God. Indeed, Wilberforce’s wife wasquoted (van den Berghe, 1990, p. 178) as saying that “they know that sociobiol-ogy is wrong, but should it be correct, then they hope that it will not becomegenerally known”.

The extent to which doctoral students in criminology are exposed to thebiological basis of criminal behavior remains unknown. It is here, at the level oftransmission of knowledge from professor to student, that we examine thedegree to which doctoral students in criminology and criminal justice areexposed to biological theories, to biological knowledge and to biological meth-ods. We chose to examine Ph.D. programs and their students because this iswhere the creation and transmission of disciplinary knowledge occurs, wheretheoretical preferences are institutionalized, and where the informal workingknowledge of the field is inculcated. The training of Ph.D. students also involvesexposure to research in criminology and to the “messages” that certain researchefforts are politically acceptable while others are not. In short, we test to see ifWilberforce has prevailed over Darwin, at least within criminology.

Methods

We obtained faculty and curricular information from the 35 Ph.D. programs incriminology and criminal justice. These programs were identified through theAssociation of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice (ADPCCJ).



Two programs were excluded from consideration due to their highly eclecticnature. These programs were generally law and society programs. Collectively,the programs that account for the majority of training of faculty in the UnitedStates dedicated to the study of crime and criminal justice were subject toanalysis (see Appendix for a list of programs).

To examine the extent to which criminology faculty in Ph.D. granting institu-tions are trained in, familiar with or teach biological and genetic theory, weexamined the number of faculty in each program with an expressed interest inbiology. While most studies emphasize the conservative estimates garnered fromtheir methods, we emphasize the broad, liberal, working definition of “interestin biology”. In general, any indicator of biological interest was counted, such asbehavioral genetics, molecular genetics, hormones, neurotransmitters, sexdifferences in crime, neuropsychological or neurological deficits. Our estimatesreflect an inclusive, rather than highly refined, categorization of faculty andtheir interests that very broadly spans the biological sciences.

We examined faculty information garnered from published faculty state-ments, statements of research interests, and any training in the biologicalsciences. When available, we also examined faculty vitae. We also identifiedand counted the number of criminological theory courses offered in eachprogram. Again, theory was defined broadly to mean courses on crime causa-tion, such as courses on neighborhoods and crime, structural theories of crimeand individual theories of crime. We then counted the number of criminologycourses that mention biological theories in their course descriptions withoutregard to the nature, depth or tone of coverage.

Faculty research interests and the courses they offer are reasonable indica-tors of the penetration of biological theorizing in the field. However, since weare examining Ph.D. programs, we took the extra step of analyzing dissertationabstracts for all dissertations published in these programs. We used thekeywords “genetic”, “biology”, and other closely related terms to search theabstract databases. Dissertations, perhaps, represent the confluence of facultyinterests and the training of Ph.D. students.

To summarize, by examining faculty backgrounds, statements of research andtheoretical interests, as well as the number of courses offered that cover biolog-ical theories or are dedicated to biological perspectives, we believe we canoffer at least a tentative empirical statement on the nature and extent ofbiological coverage in Ph.D. granting institutions. To expand our analysis,however, we also examined four of the top journals in criminology (Criminology,Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency and Journal ofQuantitative Criminology) and counted the number of articles published ongenetics, biology, biological theories or hypotheses drawn from biological theo-ries. Again, we took a broad, inclusive approach. If an article made mention ofbiology or genetics, it was counted. Articles critical of biological sciences werecounted as well. These journals were selected based on prior research that hasshown that they rank highly in prestige, professional reputation, faculty rankingand journal impact scores (see Cohn, Farrington, & Wright, 1998).


330 WRIGHT ET AL.

Results

We identified a total of 605 faculty from 33 Ph.D. programs in criminal justiceand criminology. Of this total, 12 faculty members had any training or expressedinterest, broadly defined, in the biology-crime link. That is less than 2% of allgraduate faculty members responsible for the training of Ph.D. criminologystudents in the United States.

The dearth of faculty training and curiosity in biological sciences and influ-ences and the subsequent lack of training of Ph.D. students is highlighted by ouranalysis of published dissertations. Only two dissertations have been publishedin the last 10 years that examine biological hypotheses or that examine biologi-cal theories. These studies, however, were supervised by the same Ph.D. advi-sor in a single school (the first author). If these studies were excluded, to limitany bias, not a single study on the biology–crime link has been published indissertation form in the last 20 years from a Ph.D. granting criminology andcriminal justice program in the United States.

The analysis of criminology and criminal justice journals revealed a similardegree of exclusion. We examined all articles published in four of the top crimi-nology journals: Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,Criminology and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. Accordingly, eventhough highly inclusive criteria were utilized, it is clear that research into thebiological correlates of criminal and antisocial behavior is either not beingconducted by criminologists or is being published in journals outside of the fieldof criminology. Justice Quarterly has never published biological research whileJQC has published only one biological article. Similarly, JRCD has not publisheda biological paper in over 10 years, but did publish five prior to 1998, andCriminology, has published 12 papers broadly related to the biology and crimenexus. Out of a total of 319 published research articles, the 12 biologically relatedrepresent less than 4% of all papers published in Criminology since 1996.

Discussion

Implications for Criminal Justice Education

Criminology and criminal justice Ph.D. students appear to receive virtually notraining in biological or genetic sciences and are rarely exposed to basic biologi-cal concepts. Only a handful of scholars at Ph.D. granting criminology programsexpress an interest in or have received training in biology. This may explainpartly why so few dedicated biology–crime courses are offered and why virtuallyno dissertations on the topic have been completed. This may also be part of thereason why so little biological work penetrates top criminology journals. Moreimportantly, this may explain, in part, why criminology programs remain stead-fastly attached to “social” explanations of criminal behavior and systematicallyeschew biological theorizing. The overarching point is that criminology Ph.D.



students are neither trained in nor exposed to contemporary biologically basedresearch. They are thus woefully unprepared to join other sciences in under-standing the linkages between biological and social influences, and, of greaterconsequence, are likely to be uninformed about the biology–crime nexus.

For all intents and purposes, biological research and training have beeneffectively excised from graduate student education, despite a wealth ofevidence showing that biological factors are robustly related to the develop-ment of offending (Plomin, DeFries, Craig, & McGuffin, 2003; Raine, 1993;Rowe, 2002; Walsh, 2002; Walsh & Beaver, 2008; Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985).Meta-analyses, for example, have found that criminality is 50–60% heritable(Rhee and Waldman, 2002), while other studies find that brain-based differ-ences between males and females are connected to male pathological behavior(Brizendine, 2006); that drug and alcohol addiction is strongly genetically influ-enced (Volkow and Lee, 2005); that low resting heart rate is a ubiquitouspredictor of criminal behavior (Ortiz and Raine, 2004); and that most socialinfluences are modified by an individual’s genotype (Kim-Cohen et al., 2006)

The consequences associated with biological exclusion are likely to be farreaching but clearly influence the Ph.D. student, the discipline of criminologyand broader society. We portray the structure of these inter-related conse-quences in Figure 1. While we examine these affected parties as categoricallyunique, they are in reality overlapping. The level and quality of training ofPh.D. students influences the discipline of criminology, which in turn can influ-ence society’s broader understanding of crime.

Researchers & Students

Science ofCriminology

Society and Policy

Flo

w o

f Kno

wle

dge

Figure 1. Illustration of the costs of criminological miseducation.


332 WRIGHT ET AL.

Figure 1. Illustration of the costs of criminological miseducation.With almost no training available in criminology programs, students with anintellectual interest in biological theory will be forced into another discipline(e.g. psychology) or must be self-taught. This is a tall order for all but the verybest student. Even so, if faced with an interested student, most criminologyfaculty members have little expertise or interest in the biology–crime relation-ship so they are limited in what training they can provide. We suspect that moststudents will pursue secondary interests.

Students actively trying to understand the development of criminal behaviorwill probably find their efforts circumscribed by the disciplinary boundaries thatconstrain contemporary criminology. Most criminology courses are arrangedaround the teaching of criminological theories and the ways that correlates ofcrime conform to these theories. Most criminology courses are not organizedaround the teaching of empirical facts about criminal conduct without regard tothe academic discipline that produced them. For instance, although the life-course is one of the dominant areas of study in criminology, it is rare that adoctoral student is exposed to research from pediatrics or even developmentalpsychology.

Almost all of the theories Ph.D. students are exposed to are not informed bybasic biology. Take, for example, one of the strongest and most consistentpredictors of criminal behavior—that is, being male. Theories that touch onmale/female differences are most often couched in terms of “masculinities”, or“patriarchy”, even though there is an abundance of evidence that males andfemales diverge in their development around the eighth week of gestation(Brizendine, 2006). They diverge once more at the onset of puberty (Blakemore& Choudhury, 2006; Craig, Harper, & Loat, 2004). Even so, contemporary crimi-nology has little to say about one of its core correlates, and what it does have tosay often simply cannot be true (Daly & Wilson, 1997; Walsh & Ellis, 2004).Future criminologists, unfortunately, will know more about “masculinities” and“patriarchy” than they will about testosterone and estrogen.

Implications for Criminology

As for criminology, the consequences of biological exclusion are just as serious.Assuming individuals do pursue biologically informed research, they will proba-bly find it very difficult to get their studies published and into the broaderdomain of student education. There are institutionalized reasons for this. Only ahandful of qualified scholars are available to read and to meaningfully critiquebiological research into criminal behavior. Unlike studies on mainstream crimi-nological topics and theories, such as Hirschi’s social bond theory, there exists adearth of individuals capable of evaluating complex biologically based research.The vast majority of reviewers are biologically illiterate or worse, ideologicallyopposed to biological studies. The current authors offer the following anecdotalcomments from reviewers of our papers as evidence: “Nothing can be biologi-cal, since you cannot control what happens in the womb”, “I’m convinced that



cigarette smoking is a proxy measure of social class”, in a critique of a papershowing the deleterious effects of maternal smoking on offspring misbehavior,and from an editor, “There is no a priori reason to expect that genes and envi-ronment will interact”. Since journal editors are usually selected from the avail-able pool of criminologists, they generally suffer from the same lack of trainingas other criminologists. They are thus not equipped to evaluate the merits ofbiological studies. Finally, given the lack of qualified reviewers, the ideologicalbias against biology and the biological ignorance of many journal editors, itshould come as little surprise that important studies into the biology–crime rela-tionship get published elsewhere.

The institutional exclusion of biologically based research handicaps criminol-ogy in other ways. Similar to other “hard” sciences, biology operates within aset of somewhat flexible rules. These rules, often flowing from evolutionarytheory and Mendelian genetics, provide a basis by which to evaluate the proper-ties of individuals and social organizations—that is, they provide the broadparameters by which an explanation for a pattern can be explained. Similar tothe way gravity, relativity and Newtonian physics establish benchmarks andoperating principles from which science is grounded, an understanding of biol-ogy lays a similar intellectual foundation that allows for the construction ofknowledge over time. Purely environmental explanations of observed relation-ships, such as postmodernist, critical and feminist perspectives, offer no suchbenefit (Williams, 1999).

Because of the absence of biology from the vernacular of criminology, manyof our theories remain misspecified, and worse yet, most Ph.D. students do notknow why. We offer two examples: first, Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990)general theory of low self-control has earned a wide array of empirical confir-mation (Cauffman, Steinberg, & Piquero, 2005; DeLisi, 2005; Pratt & Cullen,2000). Clearly, individuals who are low in self-control are significantly morelikely to commit crime and to engage in a range of analogous, risky behaviors.Even so, the origins of self-control remain shrouded, but only to criminologists.Because Gottfredson and Hirschi unequivocally denounced the influence of biol-ogy in their original theoretical statement, they were left to point to othersources. True to sociological form, they pointed to parenting practices. Withoutgoing into the methodological limitations of between-family studies, it is not atall clear that parental management techniques cause or modify offspring self-control (Beaver & Wright, 2005; Wright & Beaver, 2005). Nonetheless, a widerange of biological evidence points to self-control as part of a broader constella-tion of executive functions housed in the frontal cortex of the brain (Barkley,1997; Beaver, Wright, & DeLisi, 2007; Congdon & Canli, 2005; Meyer-Lindenberget al., 2006; Pfefferbaum, Sullivan, Swan, & Carmelli, 2000; Price, Simonoff,Waldman, Asherson, & Plomin, 2001). In other words, one of the preeminenttheories in criminology clearly implicates neural involvement, which itself issignificantly heritable.

Second, social learning theory has also garnered a wide range of empiricalsupport (Akers, 1998). Even so, contemporary manifestations of “social” learning


334 WRIGHT ET AL.

theory remain remarkably void of any mention that learning is and always hasbeen a neurological process with considerable individual variation (Frank et al.,2007; Rutter, 2007). In other words, to understand how individuals learn—that is,obtain, filter, store, and retrieve information—requires an understanding ofbiological processes at the level of the gene and the neuron. Any other “level ofunderstanding” strains credulity.

Conclusion

Our results join a disparate body of research that continues to reveal that socio-logical criminology remains resistant to the incorporation of biology under itstheoretical umbrella (Massey, 2002; Wright & Miller, 1998). Doctoral students incriminology are not exposed to the studies linking biology to social behavior, norare they are exposed to biological methods and statistics. If they are exposed tobiological theorizing, it probably comes from taking classes in other fields, or ittakes the form that continues to reify sociological principles. This is nothing shortof trained incompetence noted by van den Berghe in his critique of sociology (thesame applies to criminology). According to van den Berghe (1990, p. 177):

Sociological resistance to biological thinking is in large part trained incompe-tence, not simply garden-variety anthropocentrism. Many sociologists are notmerely oblivious about biology; they are militantly and proudly ignorant. Theyknow biology to be irrelevant to their interests, so they are determined not tomake the effort to learn about it. Blessed be the biologically ignorant for theyshall see the Kingdom of Sociology.

All, however, is not lost. Faculty with “greater exposure to biosocial disci-plines (biology and psychology)”, note Walsh and Ellis (2004, p. 18), show anincreased “acceptance of individual level causal factors … especially amongliberals”. However, they also found that, when criminologists were trained onlyin sociology or anthropology, that ideology had more of an impact on predictingwhich theories they supported that did mere exposure. Conservative and liberalsociologically trained criminologists both rejected individual-level factors aspossible causes, but liberals did so “much more forcefully”.

There are at least two implications we can take from these findings. First, itmay be time to cut the intellectual chord with sociology and to recognize thatcriminology and criminal justice are highly multidisciplinary. The study of crimeshould no longer be restricted to sociology, especially if sociological trainingcontinues to elevate ideology over science. By this we mean that sociology shouldbe viewed as only one in a list of fields that contribute to the study of criminalconduct. Other fields, such as psychology and psychiatry, have much to contrib-ute to our understanding of the development of serious antisocial behavior.

In practical terms this probably means that Ph.D. criminology programs willseek to hire individuals from other disciplines, individuals who have the trainingand the knowledge to contribute to the education of Ph.D. students. Many



programs already hire experts in statistics or research methods so the model isalready in place. Short of this, Ph.D. criminology programs should work toestablish collaborative cross-department relationships with other disciplines.Cross-fertilization has been the hallmark of the hard sciences, where chemistrystudents are required to take physics, mathematics and other related courses.Ph.D. programs should make every effort to educate their students about thefull range of factors associated with human (mis)behavior instead of acting asguardians watching over the discipline.

Second, it is well past time for criminology programs to begin to inculcatePh.D. students with an appreciation for science and the scientific methodinstead of producing individuals with an allegiance to specific theories andpoints of view. The practice of science involves far more than an understandingof theory, methods and statistics. It involves an appreciation for knowledge, acuriosity for the unknown, and a willingness to be wrong. Far too frequentlyPh.D. students are “socialized” into ways of thinking that exclude these impor-tant precepts. No longer should Ph.D. programs produce “strain theorists” or“social control theorists” or “radicals”. These self identities frequently stand inthe way of the process of science and flood the field with ideologues. Instead,criminology programs should seek to produce scientists who study crime andcriminal behavior. If this means we produce fewer junior scholars to fill theranks, then so be it. Education is a far better goal and result than is miseduca-tion and indoctrination.

Obviously, the current data do not shine a positive light on the field. Ascience cannot be a science if it eschews facts to enforce disciplinary bound-aries. To be fair, change may be afoot, albeit not in the study of criminal behav-ior directly. The history of rehabilitation shares some similarities with thehistory of biological theorizing. Both have been rejected by criminology forreasons not grounded in science. From the 1960s onward, most criminologistsassociated rehabilitation with repressive state practices and thus argued for itsexclusion from the criminal justice system. Advocates of rehabilitation programswere dismissed and scoffed at, or worse yet, were accused of siding with theforces of discrimination (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982). However, the intellectualpursuit of truth has reinvigorated the science of offender rehabilitation. Today,criminologists add to both public safety and the quality of offenders’ lives byconducting research into what works in rehabilitation, what does not work inrehabilitation and how best effective programs can be implemented. Rehabilita-tion has arisen because scientists continued their work and did not succumb tothe working ideology of the discipline (see Cullen, 2005). We hope that the sameholds true for biology and its proper role in understanding human conduct.

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Beaver, K.M., Wright, J.P., & DeLisi, M. (2007). Self-control as an executive function:Reformulating Gottfredson and Hirschi’s parental socialization thesis. CriminalJustice and Behavior, 34, 1345–1361.

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338 WRIGHT ET AL.

Appendix: Ph.D Granting Universities Examined

The University of Southern MississippiThe University of Texas—DallasUniversity at Albany, SUNYUniversity of Arkansas, Little RockUniversity of California, IrvineUniversity of Central FloridaUniversity of CincinnatiUniversity of DelawareUniversity of FloridaUniversity of Illinois at ChicagoUniversity of MarylandUniversity of Missouri, St. LouisUniversity of MontrealUniversity of Nebraska, OmahaUniversity of South CarolinaUniversity of South FloridaWashington State UniversityArizona State UniversityFlorida State UniversityGeorge Mason UniversityIndiana UniversityIndiana University PennsylvaniaJohn Jay College of Criminal JusticeMichigan State UniversityNorth Dakota State UniversityNortheastern UniversityOld DominionPenn State UniversityPrairie View A&M UniversityRutgersSam Houston State UniversitySimon Fraser UniversityTemple UniversityAmerican UniversityPennsylvania State University


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