adrian_raine

I found that really tough. Terry Gross is one heck of a good interviewer. She makes you feel very comfortable, relaxed and at ease and yet, she can really put you on the spot- in a nice sort of way. At one point, she told me I was contradicting myself, and she was quite right. Sometimes I'm never really sure of what I really believe, even after 35 years of research in this field.

Hi there! Yes I do think it's useful to address biological differences between men and women in order to better understand the causes of crime. Low heart rate and high testosterone are two candidates.

Regarding Moffitt's theory- yes we have found neuropsychological differences between these two groups which support her claim. If this can be substantiated further, there are potential implications for treatment. Possibly, for example, using omega-3.

The weirdest thing I've seen at ASC is having a symposium with amazing speakers (not me) and with only 6 people in the audience.

Very good question- and a difficult one to answer easily. We could decide to not do anything until the child creates serious harm to others. But then aren't we acting too late? Your point goes to the issue of labeling. If they are labeled as bad to begin with, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. On balance, I do think we should act earlier to help those children in most need. But, we have to be very careful about how we present the intervention/prevention program to minimize stigmatization. Put it this way- as a parent I would want to know if my kids have a significant chance of becoming violent criminal offenders and I would want to do something about it.

This can be looked at in two ways. In criminology, strain theory argues that the stressors associated with low income will motivate people to crime. But at the same time stress can negatively impact the brain and predispose to violence. I suspect both perspectives have merit.

The international society for research on aggression jointly agrees that violence in the media does play some role in increasing the propensity for aggressive behavior. So yes it does play a role but like many causal factors it only by itself accounts for a small proportion of the variance in violence.