Genetic Explanations

Why Do Men Commit most of the Crimes?



Testosterone is one of the factors but it is just one of the chemical messengers that make men more risk taking and aggressive.  The real question is why did men evolve to be more risk taking and aggressive in the first place?

There is an (incorrect) assumption that the behaviour and insecurities of men and women is received solely via “socialisation” i.e. an interaction with their environment.  For example a male preoccupation with aggression and risk taking is “caused” by being exposed to other male role models.  This incorrect assumption is based on flawed and discredited social “science” research that fails to correct for genetics.




Human females have a pathetic ability to reproduce, having no more than a dozen pregnancies in their lifetime. Each pregnancy is life threatening and she will generally only produce offspring one at a time. Their fertility declines sharply at 35 and falls off a cliff at 40.  Human children are unusually vulnerable in infancy and take many years to reach maturity.  Women therefore engage in a long, energy sapping and life threatening investment in their children to ensure these (few) offspring reach childbearing age.  She must choose her mate with great care to ensure her offspring receive beneficial genes from the father, which in turn maximises the chance of her own genes prospering in the next generation.  It also means she must carefully and selflessly look after the few offspring she manages to produce.  She (i.e. her genes) has no other choice.  So she evolved to be nurturing.


It is also worth pointing out why men are so disposable in evolutionary terms, whilst at the same time being more valuable for getting large numbers of genes in subsequent generations if they are very successful and / or out-survive other men.  A population of 100 women and one man has a good chance of survival.  A population of 100 men and one woman is probably doomed.  If men kill off their competitors (in a good war for example) the population can survive and the surviving men’s genes will massively prosper.  If women are killed off their genes won’t prosper due to their very limited ability to reproduce.   Evolution of genes explains why men will be more risk-taking, aggressive and competitive.  Evolution of genes explains why women are dramatically less aggressive.  It’s not in her genes’ interests if the whole population dies out. This also explains why men and women are more likely to put men in harms way and feel more protective towards women (reference: Moral Chivalry).


Men are programmed to advertise their success and achievements in order to attract a high social status mate.  It is worth taking risks to achieve this status because the genetic rewards can be enormous.  For example about 8% of the men in a large region of Asia have Genghis Khan’s Y chromosome.  He clearly had many willing and unwilling sexual partners but took great risk to achieve this.



But to put the male of our species in context here are two relevant facts:
1. Men commit most of the crimes.
2. Few men commit crimes.

Actually we men evolved into a social, altruistic species, with a few violent exceptions.

Also whilst men commit most of the crimes, they are also its main victims:

Men are the main victims of violence and violent death


Moral Chivalry



5 thoughts on “Why Do Men Commit most of the Crimes?

  1. Pingback: Chivalry – An evolutionary explanation | RGAmbler

  2. Pingback: Why do male students get more first class degrees at Oxford University than female students? | RGAmbler

  3. Many people will apply the kind of thinking you see in “The Selfish Gene” to this – probably rightly. Human beings paired off in large numbers for several generations, and the genders took on different roles. This is not unusual for humans, the same happens in many species – though the roles differ between species. In a few, the genders will do more or less the same role.

    Of course none of this is very popular with the feminist “critique” of this science – basically an attempt to undermine a good scientific model because it doesn’t suit some politicians. This needs to be addressed.

    If our genes have evolved to give us gender roles – and it looks as though they have – then it would be very helpful to see *how* this process works. Firstly which genes are involved (it will be more than just SRY, I think) and secondly what hormones and brain differences between the sexes account for the consequent differences in behaviour.

    It seems to me that a particular calibrated balance of chemicals and possibly partially inherited responses to stimuli must be at work. How this results in boys playing more lego (the fighting is more understandable) and girls wanting to play princesses (perhaps some female version of status) is quitea leap. If we *could* explain these things convincingly it might put an end to an irritating, divisive part of the gender war.

  4. Pingback: Why Crime Rates Have Fallen Over The Last 30 Years (hint: it’s not prison) | RGAmbler

  5. Pingback: Men are the main victims of violence and violent death | RGAmbler

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