The Nature and Nurture of Antisocial Outcomes (Criminal Justice: Recent Scholarship)

Beaver introduces the reader to biosocial criminology, including the ways in which genes and the environment combine together to produce different antisocial outcomes. He then proceeds to provide an empirical examination of the genetic underpinnings to criminal behaviors by analyzing data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The results of the analyses provide some evidence indicating that antisocial phenotypes are due to interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Beaver concludes with a call for criminologists and other social scientists to adopt a biosocial perspective to the study of human behavior.