Crime and The Bell Curve: Lessons from intelligent criminology

In their best-selling book, The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray argue that Ie is a powerful predictor of a range of social ills including crime. They use this ''scientific reality'' to oppose social welfare policies and, in particular to justify the punishment of offenders. By reanalyzing the data used in The Bell Curve and by reviewing existing meta-analyses assessing the relative importance of criminogenic risk factors, the present authors show empirically that Herrnstein and Murray's claims regarding Ie and crime are misleading. The authors conclude that Herrnstein and Murray's crime control agenda is bared on ideology, not on intelligent criminology.