An edition of Creating born criminals (1997)

Creating born criminals

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Last edited by MARC Bot
August 7, 2024 | History
An edition of Creating born criminals (1997)

Creating born criminals

  • 0 Ratings
  • 1 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

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.

But Creating Born Criminals is much more than a look at the past. It is an exploration of the role of biological explanation as a form of discourse and of its impact upon society. While The Bell Curve and other recent books have stopped short of making eugenic recommendations, their contentions point toward eugenic conclusions, and people familiar with the history of eugenics can hear in them its echoes.

Rafter demonstrates that we need to know how eugenic reasoning worked in the past and that we must recognize the dangers posed by the dominance of a theory that interprets social problems in biological terms and difference as biological inferiority.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
284

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Creating born criminals
Creating born criminals
1997, University of Illinois Press
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

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.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-270) and index.

Published in
Urbana

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
364.2/4
Library of Congress
HV6047 .R33 1997, HV6047.R33 1997

The Physical Object

Pagination
xi, 284 p. :
Number of pages
284

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL996987M
Internet Archive
creatingborncrim0000raft
ISBN 10
0252022378
LCCN
96035672
OCLC/WorldCat
35548813
Library Thing
1851495
Goodreads
1671331

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
August 7, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
June 20, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 28, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
July 14, 2017 Edited by Mek adding subject: Internet Archive Wishlist
December 8, 2009 Created by ImportBot add works page