We can identify men at risk of committing sex crimes, but will we help them take responsibility?
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Version 0 of 1. When it comes to self-analysis, humans are funny old things. We’re happy to accept that genes play a large part in the way we look, and in our medical susceptibilities. We understand that they may dictate our talents, and therefore what we do with our lives. But suggest that they also shape the likelihood of us committing criminal behaviour and a lot of folk start banging on about attacks on the idea of personal responsibility and assaults on the concept of free will. Scientists from Oxford university and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute have analysed data from 21,566 sex offenders and have found that the brothers of men convicted of sex crimes are five times more likely to commit a sexual assault than an average man. Half-brothers were much less likely to carry out attacks than full brothers, even if they were brought up in the same household. The study’s conclusion is that around 40% of the risk of committing a sex crime is genetic. The scientists are at pains to emphasise that their findings do not imply that it is inevitable that some men will carry out sex attacks, or that they will not be responsible for their actions if they do. They understand all too well how wary society is of evidence that seems to offer people excuses for their aberrant, abusive or cruel behaviour. Those who conducted the study speak instead of targeted psychological support for men at risk of sex offending. And while this sounds eminently civilised, it’s hard not to offer a bitter smirk when the scarcity of resources for similar interventions is so well known. Consider, for example, the Glasgow initiative for combating male violence that achieved stunning success – but lost its funding anyway. It seems awful to me, the fact that humans have advanced enough to understand how dangerous people can be made less dangerous, but not enough to actually try to do it. Oddly enough, no one ever seems to argue that such societal investments cannot be made because the preservation of free will and personal responsibility is more important. Instead, the usual problem is that there’s not enough money. Related: Risk of sex offending linked to genetic factors, study finds Free will and personal responsibility are an interesting pair. The idea seems to be that you preserve your free will by accepting personal responsibility. Or achieve personal responsibility by curbing your free will. Something like that. I’m not against personal responsibility, of course. But I’m more than a bit sceptical about the idea that humans have free will. Anyway, even if we do have “free will”, it’s a bit of a useless superpower. Civilised life is all about understanding that personal responsibility is largely about living within a framework established by others and abiding by rules you didn’t make. Some people find it harder to abide by those rules than others. Some people are in a better position to benefit from those rules than others. Access to personal responsibility, and to the guidance that can foster and build it, isn’t equal, not by any means. Inequality is generally talked about in terms of money. But the ease or difficulty people have in taking personal responsibility for their lives is judged by whether they are able to support themselves financially and pay their bills. People talk about personal responsibility as if it’s something that everyone has an equal ability to achieve, rich or poor, vulnerable or privileged. People who walk 40 miles to work are admired because they are so rich in personal responsibility. People who refuse to work for minimum wage because they’re “better off on the dole” are reviled because they have such a paucity of it. But none of this helps people to take personal responsibility in their own lives. It’s one of those remedies that everyone prescribes while conveniently ignoring the fact that its provision is hard, painstaking and expensive. Fetishising the idea that everyone has equal access to personal responsibility is another way of saying “there’s no such thing as society”. Which is another way of saying: “Go away, taxman. This is my money and I’m not going to squander it on stopping women and children I don’t even know from being raped.” Whatever the philosophers say, free will most commonly manifests itself as selfishness. Likewise, personal responsibility, lauded as it is, is often a denial of responsibility of anybody except oneself and one’s own family. No wonder people are so keen on this brace of reasons not to intervene. Meanwhile, the scientists are at pains to stress that they have not found a “sex offending” gene. They say instead that some kind of combination of genetic characteristics creates a predisposition. They mention “increased impulsivity, egotism, decreased intellectual ability”; it’s easy to see how a combination of these would combine to foment disaster of one kind or another. Anyway, if your close relatives share these characteristics, it’s hard to hope that the environmental 60% of your predilection for committing sexual offences is going to be entirely exemplary. Clearly, someone from a family displaying these characteristics would need more help in achieving personal responsibility and more help in curbing their desire to do as they please. Our society, with its endless funding shortfalls, and its insistence on low wages for the unskilled, is instead organised so that the people likely to get the least help are generally the ones who need it most. While everyone is able to exercise their free will to insist that this is not their personal responsibility, it isn’t going to change. It’s charming, the idea that we’re all born equal. But it’s really one of those notions than ensures that inequality keeps on growing. |