<p>Definately feel this subject has the potential to use cience in a BAD way, but my brother and I talk about this alot. He mentioned this book</p>
<p>Editorial Reviews</p>
<p>Amazon.com
Willie Bosket was charming, magnetic, and brilliant. He was also the most cold-blooded criminal the New York State penal system had ever seen. By the time he was in his teens, he had committed over two hundred armed robberies and twenty-five stabbings. Fox Butterfield examines the heritage of violence that followed Bosket’s family from their days in slavery in South Carolina to the present. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. </p>
<p>From Library Journal
In his early 30s, Willie James Bosket Jr., viewed by many as New York’s most violent criminal, is confined in tightly secured isolation in a Catskill prison. New York Times reporter Butterfield interviewed Willie and did extensive research on him, his forebears, and the historic use in this country of violence in defense of personal honor. A high I.Q. and often appealing demeanor have not mitigated Willie’s unrepentant, violently aggressive behavior. “The boy no one could help,” he has been mostly institutionalized since age nine. His family life was abysmal: he never met his criminal father, his mother was a negative influence, and he inherited a history of law-flouting male aggression. Butterfield delineates the complex elements of this young African American’s life gone irretrievably awry. Highly recommended for college level and up.
-?Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred</p>
<p>If you ever have the opportunity to spend much time with male prisoners, you will notice one thing common among the majority of prisoners. They either have no father or have a bad father. I think fatherhood trumps DNA any day of the week.</p>
<p>This reminds me of the movie “The Bad Seed”</p>
<p>excellent movie. Although if I told you why this post reminds me of it, it would ruin the movie. If anyone is interested in a good old-fasioned black and white movie related to criminal genetic behavior, check it out!</p>
<p>“In a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Gregg Stanwood, Ph.D., and Pat Levitt, Ph.D., report that prenatal cocaine exposure in rabbits causes a long lasting displacement of dopamine receptors in certain brain cells, which alters their ability to function normally.”</p>
<p>Rabbits? I would think public health epidemiology trumps rabbits. (Take it from me - NIDA has been spending tens of millions to try to show long-term cognitive and behavioral impacts. I get a report from them every month, complete with brain scans and etc. So far, they ain’t there. And the crack babies from the 80s are all now in their 20s, so there’s plenty of data to examine.)</p>
<p>"Incredibly high levels of cocaine – usually coupled with the abuse of other drugs – can lead to premature labor, preterm birth and low birth weight, Stanwood said. </p>
<p>“But in women who have abused relatively low recreational doses of cocaine, it is actually very hard to distinguish those children at birth from children born to anyone else,” he said. “However, as those children age, they do develop deficits in their cognitive and emotional development.” </p>
<p>These children often exhibit attention and arousal problems, similar to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the standard treatments for ADHD – Ritalin and other stimulants – are not always effective in these children. </p>
<p>Studying the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on the developing brain is difficult in human populations because cocaine abusers often abuse other drugs. Animal models can help determine how prenatal cocaine exp
'"/> </p>
<p>Gee, you mean we are wasting all the money doing research first with fruit flies, mice, rabbits, and other animals. Better let all the scientists to stop wasting their time and haul in the humans. Also we better junk all the cancer warning based on animal testing as most of them are.</p>
<p>And once again the apple does not fall far from the tree. In local news:</p>
<p>“She said Brown was the sweetest of her three sons and often shied away from fighting, even while squabbling with his siblings when he was a child. Battiste said Brown was born in California but moved to the Seattle area as a child to live with foster parents while she was in prison for bank robbery.”</p>
<p>We have 20 years of data comparing the former crack babies and their non-crack-baby cohorts. After correcting for household abuse, family income, etc., etc., we just can’t find any difference. No difference in academic performance, none in cognitive development, none in involvement in the juvenile justice system, none in involvement with the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>Having said that, it is also true that many of these “former” kids (remember, they are now in their 20s), don’t do very well. Many DO come from abusive, drug-using, low-income households, many do end up in the foster care system (you wanna see some terrible stats, go there). But what can be said with some certainty, with more than 20 years of data behind it, is that their prenatal exposure to coke wasn’t what put them at increased risk. (Alcohol is another matter.)</p>
<p>"
Policy Implications
These findings have policy implications. There were 4112052 births in the United States in 200455; 3.9% of pregnant mothers reported illicit drug use in 2004–2005 in the past month.56 Although estimates vary, even a conservative estimate of 45000 children born with PCE per year would suggest, on the basis of our study, that 12.7% will receive an IEP. Enrollment in special education in the United States costs an additional $8080 per year per student57 compared with nonenrolled students. The risk attributable to cocaine for an IEP is 1.79 – 1.00 = 0.79 (Table 3). Thus, additional cost per year for special education services as a result of PCE alone would total 45000 cocaine births per year x 12.7/100 (baseline IEP rate) x 0.79 (excess risk attributable to cocaine) x $5918 (additional cost per child) = $26718882. This yearly cost would then have to be multiplied by the number of years the child receives special education services in school. “Investing” in early intervention might not only relieve long-term suffering in these children but also be cost-effective. </p>
<p>Illicit drugs, such as cocaine, may not be the only prenatal exposures that lead to an increased use of special education resources. Legal substances such as tobacco and alcohol, which were controlled in our study, may have effects on these outcomes. Findings of special education use in children with prenatal alcohol exposure but not fetal alcohol syndrome (comparable to our study children) have varied.58–60 We found no studies that examined the effects of prenatal tobacco use on special education outcomes. These are important areas for future investigation. </p>
<p>" But what can be said with some certainty, with more than 20 years of data behind it, is that their prenatal exposure to coke wasn’t what put them at increased risk. (Alcohol is another matter.) "</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>“I can’t think of a single licensed medical professional who would recommend or encourage the use of cocaine by the mother during pregnancy.”</p>
<p>I think both of these can be true. I would not reccomend cocain use, but I also would not label a baby of a user a “crack baby”, with the implication that they are “doomed”, or that I can predict their future in any specific way.</p>
<p>I spoke to my H about this, who worked for many years in a majorly impacted city during the crack epidemic, as a pediatrician to the kids in question.</p>
<p>As mini says, he saw no evidence, nor research, that marked crack as the reason for kids’ behavior. And he was dismayed that assuming this led to assumptions that the kids were the way they were, and were not redeemable.</p>
<p>As he pointed out, there was a cocaine epidemic among many rich white folk at the same time, but we don’t see a concurrent coke baby story.</p>
<p>Some “crack babies” were also FAS, which does cause behavior issues in all races and SES’s, and many others came from bad life circumstances, which did not posit irredeemable-ness, if society was willing to take on the work of helping them change and function more positively.</p>
<p>But throwing up collective hands and calling them doomed crack babies was a way to abstain from dealing with mitigate-able circumstances.</p>