Why criminals are less intelligent than non-criminals

Satoshi Kanazawa's explanation:
Men with lower intelligence are less likely truly to comprehend evolutionarily novel entities. Some of these evolutionarily novel entities are alternative means to resource acquisition and accumulation they could pursue instead of evolutionarily familiar means which are now classified as criminal in civilized societies. Other evolutionarily novel entities they are less likely truly to comprehend are means that law enforcement agencies employ to detect and capture criminals. The Hypothesis therefore offers one possible explanation for the negative association between intelligence and criminality.
I've argued before that black-white differences in criminality are driven primarily by differences in intelligence -- not testosterone. I've also previously observed that black-white multiples for brawling and raping are low compared to those for crimes like car theft, drug dealing, and mugging, consistent the idea that a lack of intelligence leading to ill-considered efforts at resource acquisition rather than greater innate aggressiveness underlies the difference.
At the same time, the Hypothesis also offers a novel hypothesis with regard to intelligence and criminality. As I mention above, while formal third-party enforcement of norms is evolutionarily novel, second-party enforcement and informal third-party enforcement are evolutionarily familiar. Thus the Hypothesis would predict that the difference in intelligence between criminals and noncriminals will disappear in situations where formal third-party enforcement of norms is weak or absent, and criminal behavior is controlled largely via second-party enforcement, such as situations of prolonged anarchy and statelessness, in fact, any situation that resembles the ancestral environment. Paradoxically, the Hypothesis would predict that less intelligent men will commit fewer crimes if the police disappeared, although more intelligent men may commit more crimes then.
Murders and rapes of whites by blacks in America took off during the 20th century (relative to the reverse). Kanazawa's hypothesis suggests the evaporation of the threat of extrajudicial punishment and increased state protections for blacks may be responsible for this state of affairs. Update: From Crime and Human Nature:
it is possible that differences in sanctions have had an impact on the extent to which members of different races are inclined to handle aggression by resort to assaults and homicide. Suppose that over the generations, law enforcement officials ignored or treated leniently the most common forms of serious black crime (dangerous or fatal assaults on blacks by blacks), reserving the full force of their sanctions for the much rarer cases of assaults by blacks on whites. In 1937 John Dollard wrote of the harmful effects of the double standard of justice then evident in a small southern town and which probably persisted for many decades throughout the South and in some parts of the North: "Negro crime" was less serious than "white crime," a view sometimes defended on grounds of a high-minded indulgence of "Negro ways." As Dollard wrote:
The formal machinery of the law takes care of the Negroes' grievances much less adequately than that of the whites, and to a much higher degree the Negro is compelled to make and enforce his own law with other Negroes. . . . The result is that the individual Negro is, to a considerable degree, outside the protection of the white law, and must shift for himself. This leads to the frontier psychology. . . . [This] condoning of Negro violence . . . may be indulgent in the case of any given Negro, but its effect on the Negro group as a whole is dangerous and destructive.
[pp. 475-476]
According to the thinking of 1930s sociologist Dollard, shifting the burden of law enforcement among blacks more to the state should have lowered their crime rates. Instead, in keeping with Kanazawa's prediction:
the homicide fatality rate among black males nearly doubled between the early 1960s and 1973, increasing from 34.3 to 65.8 per 100,000; the change among whites was much smaller. [. . .] Roger Lane estimates that in Philadelphia the black homicide rate was about three times greater than that of whites during the nineteenth century but had become about twelve times larger by the middle of the twentieth century and nearly twenty times larger by the 1970s. [p. 472]

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

“I've argued before that black-white differences in criminality are driven primarily by differences in intelligence -- not testosterone.”

There’s a lot more to it than IQ. Richard Lynn writes that:

“Nevertheless, as Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein showed in their book The Bell Curve, low IQ cannot entirely explain a black crime rate that is six-and-a-half times the white rate. When blacks and whites are matched for IQ, blacks still commit crimes at two-and-a-half times the white rate. This shows that blacks must have some other characteristic, besides low intelligence, that explains their high levels of criminality.”

And then there’s also this.

Anonymous said...

n/a, are you a 4channer? You seem to talk like one.

n/a said...

No.

TGGP said...

I'm reading Herrnstein & Wilson's "Crime and Human Nature" now, which discusses a number of factors in addition to IQ that result in criminal behavior. Some of it is contradicted by Judith Harris' work. Do you have an opinion on C&HN?

Incredulous said...

Kanazawa's hypothesis suggests the evaporation of the threat of extrajudicial punishment and increased state protections for blacks may be responsible for this state of affairs.

"May be ?!?" *mouth agape*

n/a said...

TGGP,

Their general model seemed entirely reasonable and their review of the literature seemed pretty comprehensive, but I don't remember how they ended up weighting various factors. I'm flipping through Crime and Human Nature right now to refresh my memory, and they don't seem to come down too hard in any particular direction (I did just come across some information I'll add to this post). In what ways does it disagree with JRH's work?

TGGP said...

I haven't finished it, but it seems they wanted to be so general that they avoided coming down and assigning definitive weights.

Wilson & Herrnstein say that the family has a significant effect, but peers do not. Harris has the opposite view.

TGGP said...

In chapter 16 they say there is substantial evidence for the effects of being first-born (aside from merely size of family). That's one of Harris' biggest targets.

Anonymous said...

I found it ironic how in Crime and Human Nature, they mention the ultra-low incarceration rate of the chinese in the US prior to the 60's immigration act, yet the IQ's of east asians was actually below that of whites in the US. 2 points lower, but should have led them to having more people in prison than just 5.

Their verbal IQ's were considerably lower too, and they try to implicate those strongly in crime.

Nevermind how hispanics have a crime rate less than half of blacks yet IQ's only modestly higher.

Anonymous said...

Also, Robert Gordon's figures are total bullshit in face of how modern neuroscience has uncovered many biochemicals and brain structures that affect criminality that work independently of brain structures that affect IQ.

Even H&M couldn't replicate his absurdly high figures.

Anonymous said...

"I've also previously observed that black-white multiples for brawling and raping are low compared to those for crimes like car theft, drug dealing, and mugging, consistent the idea that a lack of intelligence leading to ill-considered efforts at resource acquisition rather than greater innate aggressiveness underlies the difference."

What do you mean by this?

n/a said...

"What do you mean by this?"

For example, blacks are imprisoned for rape at around 3 times the white level, but are imprisoned for robbery at 15 the white rate and for drug offenses at 12 times the white rate.

"Even H&M couldn't replicate his absurdly high figures."

They found the black-white difference in the measure of criminality available to them "was reduced by almost three-quarters when IQ was taken into account".

Other factors no doubt contribute, but the intelligence gap explains most of the difference. The factors that explain asian-white and hispanic-white differences in crime are not necessarily identical to those that explain black-white differences. E.g., whites and blacks have similar body size, while Hispanics and Asians are smaller on average.