Cesare Lombroso, the infamous 19th-century physician who identified various facial (and racial) features with criminal traits, also saw left-handedness as evidence of pathology, primitivism, savagery and criminality.
He took to escorting groups of well-to-do gentlemen into penitentiaries to point out the criminal traits of the inmates, and would guess, from head shapes, the crimes of these wretched men and women.
The research, conducted by University of Texas at Dallas criminologist J.C. Barnes and colleagues, analyzed the genetic and environmental influences on criminal traits of 4,000 people.
They also tend to be white, and richer than the typical American criminal: those traits should confer no privilege, nor be seen to confer any, when sentence is passed.
The program is part of a forty-two-million-dollar contract drafted in 2014, and collects data such as telephone records, addresses, social-media content, immigration history, biometric traits, and criminal records.
The VSSI requires approximately 45-minutes to complete and assesses demographic characteristics, medical history, lifetime and past year use of 55 volatile solvent inhalants (e.g., gasoline, paint thinner, etc)., other drug use and substance-related problems, current psychiatric symptoms, suicidality, trauma history, antisocial traits and criminal activity.
For the most violent of criminals, there are 14 traits of serial killers.
James McCready, the Suffolk detective who led the interrogation, said during the trial that such tactics were not uncommon because all criminal suspects have one trait in common: "They all lie".
At a minimum, the profilers want to determine if major white collar criminals share enough personality traits and behavioral patterns that agents in interrogations and investigations could use the information they glean.
Even so, since Paulhus tends to focus on everyday evil rather than criminal or psychiatric cases, the traits are by no means apparent on the first meeting.
It seemed reasonable that the brains of exceptional people — whether geniuses or criminals — must share common physical traits that fostered those respective traits, and so scientists obtained and preserved exceptional brains for post-mortem study.
