Are Criminals Made or Born? -
Everyday when we turn on the television set to watch the latest news, we are always startled with
the same news. "Teenagers turns on their classmates in bitter school shot-out." or "Desperate
men rob local convenience store, store clerk shot." Crime surrounds us daily, in every shape or
form, for a dirty blood-bath to stealing candy. Every time a particular vicious or heinous crime
occurs that shocks the general population, everyone asks the same questions, "Where were the
parents?", "What could make a person do something so horrible?" or "Why did they do that?"
and "What caused such a vicious outburst."
These questions are what motivated the core of this essay. Are criminals made or born? Was is
nature or nurture that caused such a bloody outburst? Was is something that criminals were
raised and taught to do, or was it genetically pre-determined outlined in their genetic blueprint?
What motivated such crazy psychotic killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy or Andrew
Kehoe? Was it how and in what conditions they were brought up in? Or was it pre-determined in
A popular case that support the theory that criminals are made and not born is the Cesane
Lombraso, through his experiments. Cesane Lombraso performed hundreds or postmortem
examinations on various criminals he found many similarities between criminals so he
concluded that criminals share the same physical characteristics. Physical characteristics such as
a receding hairline, forehead wrinkles, bumpy face, broad noses, fleshy lips, drooping shoulders,
long arms and pointy fingers. Lombraso later concluded that these criminal characteristics are
associated with primitive men, to be called Atavisim and a "born criminal", a person who is
headed towards for criminal behavior because of his physical features. Also Lombraso
...