Book Review: The "Why's" of Crime and Criminality

Both Matthew Robinson's Why Crime? and Robert Agnew's Why do Criminals Offend? begin by asking the same question and both attempt to answer it by offering us a new theory. These books are the latest additions to a growing number of monographs published in the last decade taking an integrative biosocial view of criminology (see, for instance, Fishbein, 2001; Rowe, 2002;Walsh, 2002; Walsh & Ellis, 2003). What is heartening to those of us who have taken this position for most of our careers is that Robinson's previous book, Justice Blind (2002), marks him as a bona fide liberal, and Agnew's sociopolitical ideology appears to be left of center also. It is heartening because many social scientists hold the belief that anything but strict environmental interpretations of criminal behavior are racist, sexist, classist, or at least illiberal. If those holding such views would remove their blinders and take the time to learn something about behavior genetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, as Robinson and Agnew clearly have (Robinson more so than Agnew), they may be surprised how far to the left they can be dragged by biosocial perspectives.

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