ABSTRACT
The association between a traumatic brain injury and behavior is well known to psychology and neurology students in the case of Phineas Gage. Criminology is in the midst of a paradigm shift where biosocial factors are increasingly being implicated in the causes and correlates of crime. In short, emerging research indicates that traumatic brain injury is importantly associated with serious delinquency and antisocial behavior, and is predicted by prominent criminological models. Controlling for a neurological medical condition is important given evidence for their potential associations with antisocial behaviour. The current single-item measure of traumatic brain injury lacks important information that would provide greater context to the proximal cause of the injury. As criminologists move toward a deeper understanding of biosocial correlates of crime, these results show that understanding the impact of traumatic brain injury and its association to serious, violent, and chronic offending should receive considerable attention.
