The Dysgenics of Crime and Why Rehabilitative Justice Doesn’t Make Sense

The most insidious impact of random violent crime (“street crime”) is its dysgenic effect on society. Generally a low IQ, substance abusing, dysfunctional member of society inflicts long-lasting, most often life-changing violence upon a higher functioning, productive member of society.

There is no possible worse outcome for a society that seeks to move forward.

Over 80% of the criminal class (those chronically incarcerated) are functionally illiterate. What is commonly called “street crime” (armed robberies, car-jackings, muggings, etc) is almost always the result of dysfunctional humans seeking a way to garner commodities without benefit of work. These people, like most of the chronically poor are impulsive, reckless, prone to substance abuse and irresponsible.

Crime victims, tend to be those who are productive, if not prosperous – that is, store owners, people who have things like cars, jobs (some money), etc.

The focus on “rehabilitative justice” with adult felons is extremely misguided primarily because as the saying goes, “You can’t get silk out of a sow’s ear,” meaning you can’t replace that productive victim with a “rehabilitated” predator – the requisite skills the predator has are too low to begin with, in most cases.

When a doctor is car-jacked and murdered by a typical thug, society loses greatly. It loses a productive physician, who most likely has an IQ above 130, and we’re left with one or more dysfunctional thugs, more often than not, illiterate, and almost certainly of very limited capacity. That doctor will not be replaced via the rehabilitation of 1,000 such rehabbed thugs.

Just as in the case below, with the murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, America lost two College students, certainly literate, probably intent on leading productive lives and we’re left with five extremely dysfunctional street people, all, no doubt, barely literate and even if they COULD be rehabilitated, they almost certainly lack the basic skills and capacities their two victims possessed.

While random violence or “street crime” inflicts a huge human toll on the individual victims themselves, it inflicts an even larger, more devastating cost upon society at large.