From trait to treatment: The genetic subject and crime prevention

• In Event: Digital Criminology: Criminalization and Crises

Abstract

Prevention debates have long been part of biosocial research on crime. Amongst other things such debates include references to human genetics (Bedoya and Portnoy 2023; Boisvert 2021), where the “person genetically ‘at risk’” becomes the object for regulation and control (Rose 2000: 17). What Rose described as a burgeoning scenario a quarter of a century ago has now become an established research strand in behavioral genetics. Vice versa, with the sophistication of geno- and phenotyping technologies genetic research now holds a more central position in criminological research on prevention. Though debates about direct causality or ‘crime genes’ are passé, research on the genetic disposition to aggression, violence and antisocial behavior renders prevention into an ever-more encompassing project: it includes anything from nutritional programs, to treatments for emotion regulation and autonomic functioning, or maltreatment prevention plans. Behavioral genetics, the study of the nature of individual difference in behavior, is becoming integrated with political agendas for subjects to behave in a particular way. Where, when and how does crime prevention become a part of the scientific project of behavioral genetics? This article combines an interview study including geneticists, criminologists and forensic scientists with a review of research published between 2000 and 2025 that focuses on genome-wide association studies and the relevance the Single-nucleotide polymorphisms for aggressive behavior. In analyzing advances in behavioral genetics and their relationship to prevention the article discusses how the convergence of these two influences our understanding of the genetic subject today.

Authors

• Mareile Kaufmann, University of Oslo

• Vilde Bergmann Winge, University of Oslo