Last week, former Kerala DGP (prisons) Alexander Jacob, was speaking at a talk show on Asianet Plus when he made several startling statements, backed by seemingly bizarre logic, on how some people became criminals.
Discussing about “Criminal Tendency in Adolescents” on the show called “My Doctor”, Jacob said, “In America and France, scientist researched about people who have done shootouts in public places, especially schools. They found that 80 percent of them were born to caesarean birth. The newborn sees the doctor holding a knife dripping with his mother’s blood, no wonder that the child has criminal tendencies.”
Firing another salvo of his theories, he said “some people are born as criminals. Women are born with XX chromosomes, men with XY chromosomes. But some people are born with XYY chromosomes, they are born as criminals and will be so during their lives.”
Ripper killers are born to forceps delivery. They have a higher tendency to hack people on the head.Alexander Jacob, Former Kerala DGP (Prisons)
While there does not seem to be any concrete research on the forceps or C-section theory, on the XYY-chromosome front, nothing has been proven.
Superficial Theories
The News Minute spoke to a few psychiatrists and asked them if children born through C-section, one of Jacob’s most sweeping statements, end up having criminal tendencies in later life.
Dr V Jayanthini, a child psychiatrist based out of Chennai, said that such a research is news to her.
In my 40 years of experience, I’ve not seen a single such case where the child said that he or she remembers seeing a bloody knife associated with child-birth.Dr V Jayanthini, Child Psychiatrist
Adding that a huge number of babies born in several parts of the world are through C-section, she asked, “how many of them are criminals?”
I don’t know how far the research is true, but I have never seen or experienced any such case.
Dr Kumar Babu, a general psychiatrist in Chennai also holds the same view.
If there is an increase in robberies in Bengaluru in summer, we can’t say that it is because of the heat. It could be because more robbers come to the city around this time. Or let’s say, there are 100 murderers and all their names start with the letter ‘K’. This does not mean that if you give a ‘K’ name to your baby, he/she will turn out to be a murderer. So things that co-exist need not co-relate.”Dr Kumar Babu, General Psychiatrist in Chennai
Jacob had also said that mothers who read crime or thriller novels during pregnancy, some of the children born to them turned to be criminals. On the other hand, he said referring to a study, some children (not all) born to mothers who read novels about saints during pregnancy eventually became priests and nuns. Similarly, some who were born to women who read books on scientists and researchers became scientists.
Responding to his statements, child and adolescent psychiatrist GK Kannan, who practices in Australia, said that the arguments are “really stretched” and points to “not high-quality research”. He then goes on to describe the concepts of “co-relation” and “causation” stating that just because two variables correlate, it does not necessarily mean that one is caused by the other.
There is no biological explanation for it. It does not make medical sense. These sound like superficial theories.Dr Kannan, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
(Monalisa Das works with The News Minute.)
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