Epilepsy was once believed to be a sure sign of criminality. There have been theorists who tried to explain criminal behavior by analyzing overall body type, by focusing on the appearance of the face, and by mapping the bumps on the surface of the skull. The physical dimensions considered "normal" have traditionally been those of white Europeans, which of course led to criminal perceptions of people who didn't fit the category.
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L: Cranial shape of skull of sane man compared to
skull shape of insane man. R:Franz-Joseph Gall (1758-1828) founder
of pseudo-science cranioscopy, which then became phrenology.
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While the more extreme examples of these theories may sound silly and outdated, some forms of biological determinism are still with us today. The belief that our parents pass along genetic material that makes us behave in certain ways isn't unpopular. In the U.S., issues of race figure prominently in criminal justice debates. The disproportionate number of African-Americans in the criminal justice system has confirmed or suggested, for some, that blacks are prone to crime simply because of their race. As we map the human genome, many are sure we will find a "criminal" gene.