Catching Criminals Early

__"Interaction between Birth Complications and Early Maternal Rejection in Predisposing Individuals to Adult Violence: Specificity to Serious, Early-Onset Violence" by Adrian Raine, Patricia Brennan, and Sarnoff A. Mednick, in The American Journal of Psychiatry (Sept. 1997), American Psychiatric Assn., 1400 K St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.__

Efforts to prevent young people from turning to violent crime should begin when they are still in the womb. That’s the conclusion Raine, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, and his colleagues draw from their study of 4,269 Danish males born between 1959 and 1961.

Elaborating on an earlier, more limited study they did, the authors find that boys who suffered both birth complications (such as a breech delivery or forceps extraction) and early rejection by their mother (as indicated chiefly by her attempt to abort the fetus or by her placing the infant in a public institution for more than four months during his first year) were more likely to commit serious violent crimes by age 18.

Nine percent of the boys who had experienced both difficulties committed murder, rape, assault, or other violent crimes by the time they turned 18. By contrast, only four percent of the boys with neither characteristic followed that path. And the percentage for those who had experienced only one of the problems was even lower: three percent of the boys with only birth complications, and two percent of those with only maternal rejection.

The infants’ twin disadvantages played out early in life. Among men who turned to violence after age 18, there is no sign that these handicaps played any special role.

The authors suggest that disruption of mother-infant bonding early in a child’s life may result in "more callous, affectionless, unempathic, psychopathic-like" behavior. That increases the likelihood of violence— especially in individuals who also suffered birth complications, which can cause neuropsychological damage, weakening their selfcontrol and making them prone to "explosive, impulsive aggression." Providing mothers with better prenatal health care, the authors say, might be one way to fight crime.