The Economist has a piece about how the study of evolution can be useful to policymakers. I’m unqualified to opine on that however the article did contain some fascinating bits of research:
That murderers are usually young men is well known, but Dr Daly and Dr Wilson dug a bit deeper. They discovered that although the murder rate varies from place to place, the pattern does not. Plot the rate against the age of the perpetrator and the peak is the same (see chart). Moreover, the pattern of the victims is similar. They, too, are mostly young men. In the original study, 86% of the victims of male killers aged between 15 and 19 were also male. This is the clue as to what is going on. Most violence (and thus most murder, which is simply violence’s most extreme expression) is a consequence of competition between young, unemployed, unmarried men. In the view of Darwinists, these men are either competing for women directly (“You looking at my girl, Jimmy?”) or competing for status (“You dissing me, man?”).
Research also shows why capital punishment may be ineffective as a deterrent against murder. If murder is indeed motivated by reproductive competition, you could conclude that capital punishment is ineffective because it presents the same risk of reproductive failure which motivated the crime in the first place.
Then there’s this, on rape:
For similar reasons, it is no surprise to Darwinists that those who rape strangers are also men of low status. Oddly, considering it is an act that might result in a child, the idea that rape is an evolved behaviour is even more controversial than the Darwinian explanation of murder. Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, who proposed it on the basis of criminal data and by comparing people with other species, was excoriated by feminists who felt he was somehow excusing the crime.
To a Darwinist, the most common form of forced mating, so-called date rape, which occurs in an already charged sexual environment, looks a lot like an adaptive response. Men who engage in it are likely to have more offspring than those who do not. If a genetic disposition for men to force their attentions on women in this way does exist, it would inevitably spread.
I don’t think research of this kind “excuses” rape at all. It merely explains why, at the fine toothed biological level, the urge to rape may occur at all. I imagine all of us at one point or another visualize criminal acts (perhaps not those as severe as rape or murder) in the course of our day. The very existence of traffic jams all but guarantees it. A person is still accountable for the urges they choose to act on.
