• Question: Do you believe criminals are born with the innate need to be a criminal or is it mainly their upbringing and other factors?

    Asked by anon-179136 to Maria, John on 18 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: John Atkinson

      John Atkinson answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Claire gave a brilliant answer on this before but in summary, I don’t think anyone is born innately criminal. It is a combination of genetic and environmental factors that can influence whether someone ends up in trouble. I have worked with a lot of people where you can see the varying levels of this influence, e.g. someone who is adopted into a lovely family but their genetic temperament comes through and still influences them to get into difficulty in life. In contrast, you can get someone who has all sorts of trouble in their upbringing etc but they are resilient enough to do well in life for some reason of which part is genetic.

    • Photo: Maria Montefinese

      Maria Montefinese answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Hi Panama! 🙂 Thank you for your question! I’m an expert about that. But I think that they are many factors to make a person a criminal. Rather, I think that social factors could have more influence about that. For example, many criminals could have relationship problems with their family members when they were child. So, I don’t think that to become a criminal could be explained as an innate factor.
      All the best,
      Maria

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