Scholars Gather to Debate Genetics-Crime Research : Conference: Meeting in Maryland will explore the implications of studies into whether some people are inherently predisposed toward criminal behavior.

Do some people carry a “genetic marker” that predisposes them toward crime and violence?

Without the fanfare or controversy that surrounded an aborted 1992 conference to debate that question, dozens of scholars gathered here Friday to resume their emotional and academic sparring on one of the most sensitive issues in criminology and social science.

Labeled “The Meaning and Significance of Research on Genetics and Criminal Behavior,” the three-day conference brought together dozens of psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, criminologists, political scientists and historians in what organizers predict will be a contentious weekend.

“People who are gathered here disagree on a number of levels,” said conference organizer David Wasserman, a research scholar at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, which is sponsoring the meeting. “We don’t expect to reach a consensus, but we do hope to clarify the issue.”

That the conference was taking place at all is an accomplishment, Wasserman said. Three years ago, it was derailed by NAACP leaders and other civil rights activists who persuaded the National Institutes of Health to withdraw its $72,000 grant for the meeting.

The cancellation of that session triggered an outcry by supporters of research into the genetic linkages to crime. They argued that the federal government was buckling to interest groups at the expense of academic freedom.

Conference organizers say the discussions are not intended to prove that any group of people is genetically superior or inferior, but to explore the implications of genetic research. Among the documents distributed to participants was a defense of the canceled conference, written by Wasserman and published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“I share the concern of many critics that criminal behavior is poorly defined and socially constructed--a very unlikely candidate for direct genetic influence,” Wasserman wrote. “Yet I also believe that genetic and biological factors may affect behavior in a variety of oblique but significant ways, and that some of the research claiming to find such influence needs to be taken seriously.”

Many of the participants are engaged in research on the roots of crime and human behavior, and some argued that their works seem to suggest that people who have criminal records share genetic traits. Although biological geneticists have never found a so-called “crime gene,” some researchers have pointed to the large proportion of African Americans in the nation’s prisons as evidence that crime may have genetic causes.

This line of academic inquiry is highly offensive to many civil rights activists and other scholars who fear politicians may use science to support their attempts to grapple with education, employment and crime prevention programs--and in ways the activists fear would be racist.

In fact, several speakers at the conference said they were attending the meeting because they wanted to refute any ideas that might feed political use of genetics.

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Paul R. Billings, a professor at Stanford University and chief of general internal medicine at Palo Alto Veteran Affairs Medical Center, said he feared that the current preoccupation with genetics harks back to eugenics movements that attempted to find biological reasons that could validate racist public policies.

“How do we know the bad old days are over?” Billings asked during the opening panel discussion. “I would argue that the evidence is that the bad old days aren’t over.”

Wasserman and other organizers said that they had learned from the experience of having the previous conference canceled and expanded the list of invitees to include more critics of genetic-criminality studies.

Although civil rights activists denounced the idea that genetics impact criminal behavior, Wade Henderson, Washington director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said he was aware of no organized protests against the conference.