unit two - ac4.1 (biological theories influencing policies)

Question 1

drug treatments

Answer 1

• used in some situations to treat or control criminal or anti-social behaviour, affect the body’s biochemical processes

Question 2

alcohol abuse

Answer 2

• can trigger violent behaviour
• Antabuse used in aversion therapy to treat alcoholism
• prevents the body from breaking down alcohol immediately causing very unpleasant ‘hangover’ symptoms

Question 3

heroin addiction

Answer 3

• often leads addicts to commit crime to pay for drug
• methadone used to treat addicts, long-term alternative
• prevent withdrawal symptoms
• legal, medically controlled substance

Question 4

sex offenders

Answer 4

• stilbestrol form of ‘chemical castration’
• female hormone that supresses testosterone to reduce sex drive
• can have serious side effects, breast development, feminisation and serious psychiatric disorders

Question 5

managing prisoners

Answer 5

• sedatives and tranquillisers, Valium, Librium, Largactil
• used often keep potentially troublesome or violent prisoners calm

Question 6

diet

Answer 6

• can be modified to change anti-social behaviour
• Gesch et al found that supplementing prisoners’ diets with vitamins, minerals and fatty acids cause a reduction in anti-social behaviour (up to 37% in the case of violent incidents)
• Vitamin B3 used to treat some forms of schizophrenia, disorder sometimes associated with violence

Question 7

surgery

Answer 7

• has been used to alter offender’s brains or bodies with the aim of preventing them from offending

Question 8

lobotomy

Answer 8

• major procedure, involves cutting the connection between the frontal lobes of the brain and the thalamus
• has been used to treat paranoid schizophrenia, sexually motivated and spontaneously violent ciminals
• can have serious side effects, very few now performed

Question 9

surgical castration

Answer 9

• sex offenders
• has been used in the past in attempt to change offending behaviour in Denmark & USA
• results have been mixed

Question 10

crowd control and public order offences

Answer 10

• policies use methods aimed at controlling by using chemical substances
• tear gas or disperse rioters, cause uncomfortable or distressing sensation (vomiting, breathing difficulties and disorientation)
• can also cause lung damage and even death

Question 11

genetic theories: eugenics

Answer 11

• fear that the human race was in danger of ‘degenerating’ because the poor were breeding at a faster rate than the higher classes
• were passing on supposedly inferior genes for low intelligence, insanity, poverty and criminality more quickly than the higher classes were passing on their ‘superior’ genes, lowering average intelligence and moral quality of the population

Question 12

compulsory sterilisation

Answer 12

• eugenicists argued that the ‘genetically unfit’ should be prevented from breeding
• led them to favour policies such as compulsory sterilisation of ‘defectives’ such as criminals, those with mental illnesses and learning difficulties
• set up pressure groups to campaign for their policies, introduced in several countries
• 1927, US supreme court ruled it was legal to compulsory sterilise the ‘unfit’ for the ‘protection and health of the state’

Question 13

nazi’s ‘racial purity’ policies

Answer 13

• most extreme case of eugenic policies was the Nazi Germany, strongly favoured such policies as a means of ‘purifying’ they ‘Aryan master race’ by eliminating those they deemed as unfit to breed
• initially targeted the physically and mentally disabled, 400,000 people sterilised against their will and 70,000 killed under nazi euthanasia policy
• eugenic policies became the justification of for the Nazis’ genocide of ‘inferior’ races
• at least 6 million jews killed, up to 1.5 Gypsy/Roma killed
• many thousands of others defined as ‘deviants’ were killed including gays, lesbians, drug users, alcoholics and the homeless