ABSTRACT
The sociological view of crime is that criminals are made, not born. Poverty, lack of education, broken families, and unemployment are some of the major factors blamed. Social and demographic factors do affect the expression of crime, but the potential appears rooted in evolution. Crime is a human behavior aimed at acquisition of resources, extension of kin or group influence, protection from exploitation, or revenge for wrongdoing. The incidence of crime is affected by the environment, just as any other complex survival response. Criminality tends to run in families, independent of general environmental effects, showing that genes do sometimes bias individuals toward criminal acts. Gene variations among individuals act to change the frequency of criminality by acting through complex neural and physiological processes. Murder and abuse of sexual partners and children have recently been interpreted in evolutionary terms. Worldwide, males are more likely to murder females than the reverse.
