From the New York Times:
"Looking at records from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, they have found evidence that shorter men are 20 to 30 percent more likely to end up in prison than their taller counterparts, and that obesity and physical attractiveness are linked to crime."
The article is interesting throughout, so read the whole thing.
It’s unclear to what extent the effects are purely relative — for example, there will always be shorter people in any population, so will those people be more prone to criminality even if they are tall or healthy in the absolute? Or perhaps it matters whether your traits are valued in the labor market, and there is some evidence for that:
"In [the 19th century] increased body weight was associated with a lower risk of crime. In the 21st century, though, in which service jobs are much more common, Mr. Price found that being overweight was linked to a higher risk of crime."
But you can bet that body weight was a lot lower back in the 19th century, and a higher body weight may have indicated vitality, not disability. Being underweight may have indicated lower health.
The bottom line: Health has real implications for our society beyond just health care costs.
One thing that was striking to me reading In Cold Blood was the diet of the two criminals- basically sugar and refined carbs. It’s hard to say whether that led to some of their behavior, but it’s clear that both were nutritionally deficient.
They were just on a sugar high, it’s not their fault. 😉
JD, these the weight and the crime are derivatives of poverty, not each other. The obesity comment would mirror what was poor / rich (poor people were more likely to thin in the 19th C; in the 21st C, poor are more likely to be heavy)
To that extent, if males which are more "manly" turn to higher crime rates due to the fact that they cannot find a mate.. it makes me wonder if the types and frequency of such crimes will rise. for instance rape. scary..
Hello, hunter-gatherers,
Please allow me to blatantly advertise the ‘crime’ tag on my own blog, Ecowar. Especially the post from today (including ‘your’ link) and the oldest about weather and crime.
I’ll keep an eye on your blog from now on 😉
It was an interesting article. A lot of the article was along the lines of what Weston Price hypothesized when studying cultures and nutrition and wrote about in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration ( http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html ). Funny how nutrition is just a small sidenote of these current behavioral studies, when it probably is the most important variable of size/shape vs. crime.