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I hope this isn't too shallow for a top-level comment, but I wanted to share a personal observation about shifts in political views. Specifically, in the last couple of years, I've become a LOT more authoritarian on crime. Part of this is probably me getting older (damn kids, stop cycling on the sidewalk!), but I'd single out two main factors.
(1) A big part of it has been related to noticing shifting views on the issue among city-dwelling liberals (that's my in-group, whether I like it or not). I regularly visit a bunch of US cities for work, and I subscribe to their relevant subreddits, and there's been an incredible shift from "defund-the-police is a solid principle albeit the details need to be worked out" to "lock up the bums now". And similarly, several real life liberal friends who were traditionally pretty anti-police have become much more authoritarian of late, complaining about how e.g. the NYC subway used to be incredibly safe but has now become a creepy unpleasant space to inhabit, and something needs to be done.
(2) I've also had a lot more professional dealings with academic criminologists lately, and damn, it's been a wake-up call. It seems to be one of the most activist domains of academia I've ever encountered (and I deal with sociologists and social psychologists on a regular basis!). Over a few different conferences and dinners, I've chatted with criminologists who were pretty explicit about how they saw their role, namely speaking up for oppressed criminals; empirics or the rights of the wider populace barely came into the conversation. On top of this, there have been some spectacular scandals in academic criminology that have helped confirm my impression of the field. Suddenly, all those papers I happily cited about how prison doesn't work etc. seemed incredibly fragile.
I'm going to add two quick personal longstanding reasons why I'm inclined to be quite authoritarian on crime -
(i) Despite my fallouts with The Left, I'm still broadly a social democrat; I think that an effective state is one that provides good free services to all its citizens, including things like high quality education, healthcare, and public transit. But in order to be democratically sustainable, this requires a certain amount of imposed authority: if public schools become known as a magnet for drugs and gang violence, then middle-class parents will pull their kids out and send them to private schools, and won't give their votes or (more importantly) their organising energy to maintaining school quality. If subways become excessively creepy and weird and violent, the middle classes will get Ubers, and vote for candidates who defund public transit. In short, if the middle classes (who have options) decide not to make use of public options, then public options will die their democratic death. Speaking as someone who likes public options, I think it's essential that fairly strong state authority is exerted in public utilities to ensure that they are seen as viable by the middle class.
(ii) I have a weird sympathy towards Retributivism as a theory of justice and crime. More specifically, I have a lot of negative animus towards what I see as excessively utilitarian approaches to criminal justice, that regard criminals as just another type of citizen to be managed. As soon as we stop regarding criminals as people, but just factors of (dis)production, then I think we do them and our society a disservice; it's treating them as cattle. Instead, I'm sympathetic towards a more contractualist approach that mandates we treat all citizens as autonomous individuals who enter into an implicit social contract by virtue of enjoying the benefits of society, such that we would be doing them a disservice of sorts if we didn't punish them for their crimes. Let me try to put that in a maxim: you're an adult, you're a citizen; you fucked up, now you pay the price. If we didn't make you pay the price, we'd be treating you like a child or an animal.
Obviously lots more to be said here, but I'll save my follow-ups for the comments. Curious what others think.
Is this a joke? I am legitimately unsure if you are just doing a bit or if this is what you actually believe.
I was going to write a more serious response to this but I don't want to put the effort in if it turns out that was just me missing some obvious sarcasm.
This is a reframing of the original point in an uncharitable, unflattering way that makes thinking less clear and reduces understanding of the topic. Every single one of your objections was created by your poor understanding and misinterpretation of the point being made.
And it doesn't have to - when you remember that the actual statement is "propensity for criminal violence is heritable", then this problem disappears. At some point between then and now, something in the population and culture shifted in such a way as to reproductively reward genes which give a propensity for criminal violence.
Africa has a huge variety of differing tribes, clans, people and ethnicities. Different populations and groups have differing selections of traits, and the genes which contribute to that violent criminal propensity are not evenly distributed between them. The Igbo people, for instance, are outliers on a number of traits as well - and this only becomes a problem with your uncharitable phrasing, not the original idea.
This has nothing to do with the statement in question. The most straightforward response is that those countries simply do not have as many of those criminality-propensity-increasing genes - a low IQ is associated with criminality, but that's not what we're discussing here (and I think those two countries specifically have some interesting recent history which could definitely impact levels of violent tendencies in the remaining male population).
Genes which promoted a propensity for criminal violence were selected against among US white populations and so the level of expression of that gene was lowered as a result. Explained perfectly by the original claim, but not your rephrasing.
Black communities in Europe were selected in very different ways and from different populations (the Igbo are relevant again here) - the original statement provides explanatory value, your rephrasing obscures meaning and makes understanding harder.
Of course. That doesn't mean the genetic component doesn't exist.
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