While obsession over the (supposed) correlations between intelligence, brain size, IQ scores, and "race" has been a hot topic for centuries, White Nationalists talk about the supposed correlation between "race" and crime as if it is a recent intellectual breakthrough. Whereas the HBD obsession with outdated ethnographical works is laughable, the intellectual dishonesty and crudeness with which they discuss crime would leave every 19th and 20th century anthropologist rolling in their graves.
Criminology* (also called criminal anthropology) is the study of criminal traits, and it is actually among the oldest sub-fields of physical anthropology! This article will give a brief overview of the history of criminology in the 1800s and early 1900s, to demonstrate just how crude and absurd present-day White Nationalist propaganda about crime stats appears in comparison.
* (Criminology is related to, but distinct from, forensic science, which is the application of scientific techniques to aid in the investigation of crimes.)
Among the earliest criminologists were police-officer-turned-anthropometrist Alphonse Bertillon and eugenicist Francis Galton. Bertillon encouraged police to take standardized and detailed descriptions of criminals, including their height, weight, hair color, and eye color. He is also responsible for the widespread adoption of mug shots, which display an individual's face in frontal and profile view. Before this, descriptions of suspects tended to be subjective, failed to be consistent across districts, and photos were not always available.
Throughout the mid-1800s, many anthropologists took interest in studying fingerprints and noted their usefulness for identifying individuals (due to the fact that it is exceedingly rare for two people to have identical fingerprints). However, fingerprints' use in forensics did not become widespread until decades later, when Francis Galton produced a rigorous analysis of the different types of fingerprints and police officer Juan Vucetich integrated fingerprint identification into Bertillon's system. By the dawn of the 20th century, all of these familiar methods were standard practice by police forces worldwide.
This, in part, led Galton to wonder if there were any physical features which could be correlated to criminal behavior and, more strongly, if a "criminal type" could be identified. By overlaying photos of multiple individuals, Galton created composite portraits. He made face composites to search for "types" in a variety of different areas, including different occupations, diseases, families, as well as criminals.
While Galton's work did not yield much in the way of practical results, his composite "types" were attempts to discover aesthetic archetypes, much in the same way physiognomists had done in previous centuries. In the present day, anthropologists have recently regained interest in facial composites to continue to search for correlations between various traits and aesthetic perceptions.
Galton was not alone; Jewish physician Cesare Lombroso was among the strongest proponents of the idea that criminality was an inherited trait and, therefore, a "born criminal type" could be identified.
At the same time, many anthropologists, sociologists, and statisticians remained skeptical that studying physical features would yield any benefits in understanding or fighting crime. Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, broke with his mentor and instead placed emphasis on the social and economic aspects which contributed to crime. Demonstrating the greater practicality of his research compared to that of Lombroso, he helped shape the legal codes of Argentina and Italy. (Can you imagine how absurd it would be if social policies dedicated to stopping crime revolved around scrutinizing everyone who had one of Lombroso's characteristics, instead of alleviating poverty, improving education, etc.? Yet some people think "racial profiling" is a good idea...) Many decades earlier in the first part of the 19th century, Adolphe Quetelet was among the first to scientifically document a correlation between crime and non-anatomical features.
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In the early 1900s, Lombroso's ideas found renewed popularity in the United States. By this time, many anthropologists had devised rigorous racial typologies, and criminologists studied--you guessed it--the correlation between "race" and crime. There was one major difference: their "races" were infinitely less crude than the "races" the contemporary HBD movement studies.
"The Irish-American criminals also contrast markedly with their civilian check sample. They are five years younger than the civilians, have smaller chest diameters, shorter upper faces, noses and ears. As in the case of the British, the Irish criminals exceed the civilians of the same antecedents in head height, forehead breadth, nose breadth and jaw breadth. Consequently, they also differ from the civilians in the indices derived from this last named group of breadth measurements. The criminals have higher length-height and breadth-height indices of the head, noses broader relative to their height, and foreheads broader relative to face and head breadth. The upper facial proportions of the criminals are shorter and broader. The criminal ears also relatively shorter and broader." -Earnest Hooton
Why do "race realists" ignore these differences? Hooton was a professor at Harvard and one of, if not the singlemost, pre-eminent physical anthropologists of his day. Are "race realists" who ignore his work part of a conspiracy to deny "reality" and "science" (which is what they accuse non-HBD supporters of)?
This research sounds more authoritative than some random blogger who decided to crunch crude crime stats which only list an individual's "race," but no other physical, psychological, or socio-economic description. (Remember that Hooton and every other pre-1950s physical anthropologist believed the "white" population alone contained several "races": see images above!) If we wouldn't take Hooton's claims on "race and crime" seriously, why should we take HBD claims on "race and crime" seriously?
"Again, since different types of criminal acts are obviously the results of diverse motives and widely different psychological states, it is clear that any physical or mental differentiation of the criminal should manifest itself amongst criminals classified according to their types of offense, as well as between criminals as a group and non-criminals." -Earnest Hooton
Instead of thinking to compare the features of criminals and non-criminals within an ethnic group and between them (as Hooton advocates) to study crime, racists merely use "crime rates" as an excuse to negatively stereotype entire ethnic groups. Is that an intellectually honest way of conducting "science"? Seems more like ideologically-driven pseudo-science to me...
While it is unnecessary for us to agree with the conclusions of Hooton and other early criminologists as a whole or in part, anti-racists and leftists would greatly benefit from realizing that the so-called "scientific racists" from a century ago had a much more nuanced and intellectually honest way of examining human traits than the modern HBD movement--especially when it comes to crime.
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Many of the physical characteristics once thought to be correlated with criminal behavior are no longer considered to be so today, and it is widely accepted that social factors have a much stronger role in causing crime than biological traits. This being said, certain biological traits have indeed been found to correlate with crime (such as: somatotype, sex, wideness of face, etc). What conclusions should we draw from this?
Should we "sexually profile" and place a greater amount of scrutiny on all men, due to the high proportion of criminals among them? Should we negatively stereotype all people with wide faces in our neighborhood as potential criminals and avoid walking on the same side of the street as a mesomorph out of fear of being attacked? Of course not, that would be absurd. In the same way, negatively stereotyping people of certain ethnic backgrounds, skin colors, or religions, even if there really is an empirical correlation between these categories and some 'undesirable' trait, is morally unjustifiable. Individuals commit crimes, not sexes, somatotypes or races.
If you are able to see the absurdity in negatively stereotyping all men (which is what some rabid "feminists" advocate, because as a group men do in fact commit more crimes than any single ethnic group!), then you should be able to see why stereotyping people based on their skin color or ethnic background is dishonorable. If supporters of the HBD movement merely cared about finding a correlation between crime and biological traits, they wouldn't have tunnel vision for ethnic groups while ignoring other traits which have a stronger correlation with crime. All they really care about is finding justification for their racist beliefs.
For centuries, anthropologists have produced copious amounts of work on the alleged physical and psychological traits of criminals. Many "race realists" claim to care about the work of anthropometrists and typologists which are ignored by PC egalitarians, but if they genuinely did, they wouldn't choose to ignore the entire field of criminology. 21st century racist propaganda about crime stats is laughably crude even by 19th century standards. And this isn't even touching the fact that criminology has remained an active field of study which is even offered as its own degree program by many universities today--a fact which White Supremacists seem unaware of.
