Many people debate whether criminality is a product of nurture or nature, but a new study published in Nature Human Behavior gives support to the latter argument, claiming that brain tests can predict a child's inclination for criminal activity later in life.
Researchers led by neuroscientists at Duke University looked at data from a New Zealand study involving a thousand people in the early '70s until they turned 38 years old. In that study, children as young as three years old completed a series of tests that measured their reflexes, language comprehension, motor skills, and social skills. According to the Duke researchers, the three year old subjects with the lowest 20 percent brain health grew up to commit over 80 percent of crimes as adults.
The researchers emphasize that brain health isn't the only indicator for future criminality, noting that factors such as socio-economic status and child maltreatment can significantly impact adulthood behavior. To account for this, they did not include subjects living below the poverty line in their conclusions.
They also noted that the same 20 percent of subjects demanded the most from the state, accounting for "57% of nights in hospitals, 66% of welfare benefits, and 77% of fatherless child-rearing," Quartz reports. "There aren't so many children in middle class and wealthy homes who have poor brain health, but, where they are, they've also grown up to be very high cost users of public services," says Terrie Moffitt, a professor of psychology and neuroscience from Duke University.
Comment: Proper nutrition (for brain health) and socialization can prevent children from turning to a life of crime as adults. However, some people are just born bad.
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