Inductivist

Research indicates that the typical criminal has an IQ of around 90.  Since the mean IQ of Hispanics is in the same range, I wondered if the deportation of criminals is not eugenic for the Hispanic population.

Using General Social Survey (GSS) data, I estimated mean IQ for Hispanics who have ever been arrested and those who haven't.  I limited the sample to native-born Latinos since IQ tests in English are biased against people who don't speak English well (sample size = 92).

Arrestees have a mean IQ of 92.2.  For non-arrestees, the mean is 92.9--not much higher.

So it looks like removing criminal aliens does not raise Hispanic IQ.  On the other hand, removing them does help the US IQ which is around 97.  Also--removing criminals makes the Hispanic and US population less criminal. 

Folks should know some basic facts about criminals before applauding the Senate's vote for sweeping federal criminal justice reform.

One basic finding in criminology is that criminals are not specialists. They are opportunists who like to cut corners by stealing stuff, selling drugs, and using violence to get their way.  Serving a sentence for drug dealing in no way implies that the offender is simply a businessman who never steals or attacks people. He happens to be serving a sentence for a drug conviction, but next time it is almost as likely to be for a property crime or violence.

Also--criminals who are serving time in federal prison for a drug offense are not decent people who simply have a drug addiction problem. They are traffickers.  More than 90% of all felonies are plea bargained, so it is not uncommon for someone charged with trafficking to get it reduced to a lesser offense like possession in exchange for a guilty plea. The only druggies who are locked up in federal prison are people who commit other types of federal crimes--i.e., serious stuff.

Almost all ex-convicts recidivate.  A recent study that tracked former inmates for 10 years found that more than 80% were reconvicted and returned to prison, many within two or three years. And those were only the criminals who were caught.  Research shows that many offenders will commit dozens of crimes without ever being apprehended, and some criminals are more skilled at evading arrest and conviction than others.

All the evidence points to criminality being a life-long trait that is highly influenced by genes. Noticeably bad behavior emerges early in life, it becomes more obnoxious and dangerous when the boy (it's typically a boy) reaches adolescence; serious criminality peaks around age 20; and the criminal impulse weakens as a man ages into his 30s and beyond.  It follows testosterone levels over the life-course. (There is another pattern of rebellious adolescence which starts later, ends much earlier, and remains more superficial than what we see with the hard cases.)

And one of the only ways to stop the biologically-driven career criminal is to incapacitate him behind bars. 

And perhaps even dumber than setting hard cases free is to allow them conjugal visits, so we increase the rate of hard cases into the next generation.

Jim Bowery made a good suggestion in the last post that I display averages by race. Here is the mean number of offspring by race and lifetime number of arrests (inmates are between 45 and 54):

Mean number of children

White (n = 259)
One lifetime arrest 3.26
Two 2.87
Three 2.54
Four 2.72
Five 2.67
Ten 2.71

Black (n = 250)
One 2.74
Two 3.15
Three 3.08
Four 3.37
Five 2.55
Ten 3.71

Family size does not decrease with more arrests for either race. The correlation between number of offspring and number of arrests is -.02 for whites and .02 for blacks; in other words, there is no relationship. According to the MIDUS Study of non-criminal men aged 45 or over, the mean number of children is 2.62.  Criminals have just as many, if not more, kids. (I'll look for prison inmate data--jail inmates have a lower average level of criminality.)

I found more data (from the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails) on the question of whether criminals have fewer kids than non-criminals because of being locked up. I calculated the mean number of kids--biological, step, and adopted--of jail inmates ages 45-54 (sample size = 537). It's 3.04--not lower than the general population. Let's see if family size falls with a more serious criminal history:

Mean number of children

One lifetime arrest 3.00
Two 2.95
Five 2.86
Ten 3.38

More serious criminals have just as many kids as minor ones, and as many as non-criminals. The correlation between number of offspring and number of arrests is .04--basically non-existent.  Evidently, criminals are sufficiently alpha to have as many kids as anyone else, in spite of their low social status and time behind bars.