Comments on: Reasons for teenage knife crime

By: Liberal Realist

Liberal Realist — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:50:58 +0000

“can imagine this happening when your thoughts are turned to something else. Not convinced about testosterone argument though.”

There is a fair bit of evidence that testosterone is linked to violent crime. A study of 4,462 men revealed that the overall picture among the high-testosterone men is one of delinquency, substance abuse and a tendency toward excess aggressive behavior. This is the classic picture of the teenage delinquent, gang member, etc.

These men have more trouble with people like teachers while they are growing up, have more sexual partners, are more likely to show disciplinary problems during their military service and to have used “hard” drugs, particularly if they had a poor education and low incomes.

http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar03sep-12.pdf

“Testosterone, crime, and prison behavior were examined among 692 adult male prison inmates. Testosterone was measured from saliva samples, and behavior was coded from prison system records. Inmates who had committed personal crimes of sex and violence had higher testosterone levels than inmates who had committed property crimes of burglary, theft, and drugs. Inmates with higher testosterone levels also violated more rules in prison, especially rules involving overt confrontation. The findings indicate differences between low and high testosterone individuals in the amount and pattern of their misbehavior.”

Testosterone, crime, and misbehavior among 692 male prison inmates Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 18, Issue 5, May 1995, Pages 627-633

By: Aishah

Aishah — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:37:56 +0000

Quote “Another factor sometimes cited is cognitive ability, for instance low iq puts someone at greater risk failing at school and dropping out. They are then more at risk of joining gangs etc.” Good point. I can imagine this happening when your thoughts are turned to something else. Not convinced about testosterone argument though.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:08:18 +0000

u all chat shit

By: Liberal Realist

Liberal Realist — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:21:04 +0000

“The swiss all have knives and guns and yet there are low crime rates, what are they doing right?”

Read my post above. Some groups are more predisposed to criminal behaviour due to higher average testosterone levels, low activity variants of MAO-A alleles & lower impulse control. The Swiss have fewer of this group.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:27:35 +0000

why does knife crime have blood involved

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:25:23 +0000

the government only pretend to be doing something to reduce knife crime. they appease the media frenzied masses buy making pointless laws like increasing the age to buy a knife, when as a teenager why would you bother to buy a knife when there are free knifes in your parents kitchen draws.
They need to spend the time on actually looking into why people are doing the crimes and how to prevent this. The swiss all have knives and guns and yet there are low crime rates, what are they doing right?

By: Liberal Realist

Liberal Realist — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:50:18 +0000

These crime trends are consistent across the world. Testosterone for instance explains part of the difference in men committing more crime than women.

East Asians (Chinese, Japanese ancestry) have lower testosterone levels on average than whites, who have lower levels than blacks. East Asians also have lower crime rates in the UK, US and other western countries than whites, who have lower crime rates than blacks.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741

Another factor may be low activity variant of MAO-A which can put someone at greater risk of aggressive behaviour – this varies in frequency amongst ethnic groups.

Another factor sometimes cited is cognitive ability, for instance low iq puts someone at greater risk failing at school and dropping out. They are then more at risk of joining gangs etc. Groups differ in average iq, gestation periods and maturation rates, and average brain volume. This is probably due to both genetic and environmental factors.

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php

psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/P&E%20Crime.pdf – (worldwide crime figures)

By: Ask_about_me

Ask_about_me — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:17:19 +0000

The reasons teenagers are the main focus of knife crime is because teenagers are the future. If their all knife carrying maniac’s now what hope does society have in the future when their all adults? There are honestly so many reasons for people carrying knifes it is in reality too hard to put it down to things like teenagers having nothing to do, etc. When I was growing up I knew a number of people in my area that use to carry knives, even when they where going to youth club or to play football at the park, so providing more things to do is not going to stop kids killing kids. You can not put the blame soley on the parents either. It is not possible to know what your kids are doing all the time. When they are young fair enough but once they are going out and about alone and with friends you can know what they tell you they have been up too…teenagers lie!

Has anybody considered how poverty plays a part. It would be worth looking into, maybe. Personally I think that it plays a major part.

Also pride and power are other things that adds to it.

As I grew up knowing alot of people that carried knifes, where victims of knife crime and one point carried a knife, I think most people that are looking into the issue are way off the mark. It is usually only those people involved or around this issue that have any real insight. The reality is only those people that carry knives can stop people getting killed, otherwise we are going to lose the little freedom we have.

YOU ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU EXPERIENCE…READING NEWSPAPERS, WATCHING THE NEWS OR READING ARTICLES ABOUT A SUBJECT LIKE THIS DOES NOT COUNT AS XPERIENCE!!!…ERGO IT IS NOT REAL KNOWLEDGE!!

It is what it is…how most people see the world nowadays. Especally if your poor!

By: Aishah

Aishah — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:45:07 +0000

I moved to Algeria four years ago because the lack of respect some of the teenagers have for adults in the uk. Also the lack of control we have over our kids, not being able to smack them etc. I have had personal experience of this a couple of times after telling off teenagers for swearing and behaving badly in the playgrounds where I was taking my kids. In the end I gave up like everyone else and I didn’t want my children to see the conflict. People are too scared to interfere when they see kids doing something wrong for fear of getting abuse or NOW being stabbed.
Here the kids have more respect and the teachers smack the kids in school for misbehaving. The other day my husband told a teenager off for smoking and he didn’t say a word, blushed, and put out his cigarette. That would never happen in uk.
However the teachers can sometimes abuse their power and smack them for silly things like getting a question wrong or writing too slow which is what happened to my kids. No win situation!
At the end of the day it depends a lot on the parents and how they bring up their kids. If you swear at your kids they will swear back at you!

By: Aishah

Aishah — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:27:52 +0000

Should be more things and places for young children to do? quote by Tiffany

Here the kids havn’t half the places to go to or do like they have in uk, although they do play outside more on the street like how I used to as a child.

However they still have more respect.