EPIGENETICS AND CRIME

The Cracow Instrument  is a comprehensive risk assessment framework designed to assist government and community agencies in developing intervention strategies aimed and reducing youth violence and serious juvenile delinquency. The instrument already incorporates pre- and perinatal items, the socioeconomic situation, the family environment, individual psychological functioning, and parenting skills. My contribution again rests in human biology, by incorporating genetic and epigenetic domains.

Genetic contributions to aggression and temperament are well known, particularly those that relate to neurotransmitter production and function, but less understood is how and why the presence of certain genes affects people differently. This is likely an interactional effect between genetics and the environment, referred to as epigenetic modification, which simply means genetic changes that occur outside the genome.

This burgeoning biological field is purely theoretical within criminological research, but studies indicate that nutrition, exposure to toxins, and trauma, may cause epigenetic modifications that alter the expression of certain genes that are related to aggression and violence. Epigenetic modifications can manifest in each of the domains of the Cracow Instrument and will be incorporated into the second iteration of the project.