Creating born criminals
Nicole Hahn Rafter (Author)
Genetic screening, new reproductive technologies, the promise of gene therapies, and the possibility of cloning have made biological solutions to human social problems seem plausible. Creating Born Criminals shows us how history can guide us in responding to the reemergence of eugenics. In this first social history in sixty years of biological theories of crime, Nicole Hahn Rafter examines those theories' origins as well as their content and demonstrates their undue influence on crime control in the United States. Rafter reveals the astonishing reality of eugenic prisons, designed to hold "unfit" criminals for life, which existed as late as the 1960s and which sought to label some offenders not only as inferior but also as a threat to future generations
xi, 284 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780252022371, 9780252067419, 0252022378, 025206741X
35548813
Introduction : born criminals, eugenics, and biological theories of crime
Before eugenics : idiots and idiocy in the mid-nineteenth century
Feeble-minded women and the advent of eugenic criminology
Criminalizing the mentally retarded
The rise of the moral imbecile
Degenerates appear in the prison system
The anthropological born criminal
The criminal imbecile
Defective delinquents
Psychopaths and the decline of eugenic criminology
Defective delinquent legislation
The aftermath of eugenic criminology