Héréditaire begins with a brief summary of a murder case judged on appeal in Italy in 2009. One of the two experts appointed to undertake a psychiatric assessment of the defendant is a professor of molecular biology; the other a neurobiologist. Drawing on a scientific article that appeared in the prestigious journal Science, they argue that the accused presents a version of the MAOA gene that “predisposes” those who carry it to violence. During the hearing, one of the expert witnesses stresses that the genes associated with violence only express their harmful effects if the individual’s environment is disadvantageous. The court of appeal upholds the murder conviction but, on the basis of the expert witness reports and the genetic anomaly the accused is said to possess, reduces the prison sentence by one year. With this decision, it appears to be taking into account the perpetrator’s diminished responsibility owing to his “genetic predisposition”.

This case is a perfect illustration of the growing place of biological factors in contemporary conceptions of the aetiology of crime, both in the courts and in scientific contexts. Criminology, psychology and genetics have, since the 2000s, seen the birth of a strand of research devoted to studying the interactions between biological factors (genes, alleles, hormones, cardiac rhythm, neurons, etc.) and environmental factors in the appearance of criminal behaviours. This trend, most evident in the English-speaking world—particularly the US and the UK—is generally known as biosocial criminology.Footnote ¹ This book studies the historical development of this branch of criminology and offers a sociological analysis of its scientific products. More specifically, it analyses the development, the structure and the reception of biosocial criminology as a specialism within the field of criminology in the US. It does not consider the non-scientific arena (media, public policy, resistance from outside the world of science, etc.).

Working from the standpoint of the sociology of science, Larrègue uses Bourdieu’s analytical framework to address these questions, while also drawing on other authors with abundant, and always pertinent, quotations. He discusses the structural factors that explain the development and content of biosocial criminology, considering scientific disciplines, power struggles, turf wars and competition for influence, and communities that join forces or tear themselves apart. The key sources for the study include a corpus of 200 articles on biosocial criminology which are subjected to quantitative and qualitative analysis, biographical data on their authors, and approximately 20 interviews with biosocial criminologists and their critics. This approach forms the basis for convincing demonstrations and well-founded analysis, for example of the way criminology has been dominated by sociologists since it began to emerge as an independent field in the 1950s and 1960s, and how biosocial criminology has gained visibility through controversy.

The book follows the development of the criminological field and of biosocial criminology in the US up to the present day, beginning with the development of criminology as a discipline in the 1940s. It shows how sociologists spread into the institutions of the new field and rapidly came to dominate them—at a time when the issue of crime and deviance was a focus of their attention—with the result that professionals in the police and legal worlds were marginalised. The period from the 1960s to the 1990s saw some development of biological theories of crime—or rather, a return to the theories that had already been put forward in the 19th century, as noted below. This development took two forms. The first, championed by a few sociologists, is compatible with sociological theories of crime and seeks to use biological data to refine them. The second is much more subversive in relation to sociological theories, challenging them by drawing on behavioural genetics, which was itself borne up by the burgeoning of genetic approaches from the 1980s onward. But until the late 1990s, the structural dominance of sociology in the field of criminology was such that biosocial criminology was suffocated. Furthermore, with the move to consider violence and crime as a question of pathology, a phenomenon to be diagnosed and treated, public authorities tended to turn rather to psychologists, psychiatrists and geneticists than to biosocial criminologists when developing plans to counter violence.

The 2000s marked a turning point, with the development of independent faculties of criminology eroding the dominance of sociology, while biosocial criminology emerged from its invisibility. The book continues with an analysis of the different sub-trends of the biosocial strand, and their understanding of the respective roles of genetic and environmental factors in criminal behaviour. It shows that the main sub-group is formed of academic criminologists who graduated from less prestigious schools. They are especially prone to challenge the dominance of sociology, maintaining that only biosocial (but not social) variables exist.Footnote ² The two other, smaller sub-groups consist, on the one hand, of psychologists with a background in behavioural genetics or neurology, and on the other of sociologists who seek to refine sociological theories. While the academic criminologists insist that there is a genetic explanation for criminal behaviour, and the psychologists focus on the role played by the brain, the sociologists study the role of the environment in gene expression. This discussion leads neatly into the next chapter, which focuses on the return of the nature vs. culture debate within a movement that nevertheless claims to go beyond it. The debate centres mainly on the relevance of research based on twin studies, which analyse samples of dizygotic and monozygotic twins in order to quantify the role of genetic and environmental factors in the explanation of human behaviour, often seeking to demonstrate the “heritability”, and hence the genetic element, of criminal behaviours. This chapter is particularly interesting because it considers the results, or rather the claimed scientific results, of biosocial criminology. It deconstructs the concept of heritability, pointing out that it is based on the assumption that the environment of monozygotic twins is no more similar than that of dizygotic twins. However, other researchers, who describe this assumption as a “fatal flaw” and call for an end to studies of heritability, have shown that monozygotic twins are more likely to be treated in the same way by their parents, to have the same friends, to spend time together, etc., than dizygotic twins. The book moves on to consider the strategies of biosocial criminologists, who adopt an oppositional attitude toward sociologists that enables them to accumulate scientific capital and gain strong visibility within the field of criminology, through an increase in the number of citations in scientific journals. It has to be said that it is difficult for the reader to understand the relative roles played by strategies and the effects of controversy in these practices. However that may be, biosocial criminologists attack sociology as ideological, or even leftist and pseudo-scientific, often presenting themselves as conservatives in a liberal-dominated social context.Footnote ³ They readily exhume the 19th century Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, whose theories on the alleged atavism of crime are widely ridiculed elsewhere. However, these attacks make little mark on sociologists, who fall back on their position of strength. In fact the strategy whereby biosocial criminologists depict the position of their adversaries––the sociologists––as a moral or political stance is quite familiar to historians and sociologists of science.

During the early 2000s criminology came into being as an independent field, paving the way for a crystallisation of biosocial criminology. In addition, the excitement surrounding the sequencing of the genome at the turn of the millennium fed the development of behavioural genetics, whose researchers were keen to disseminate their theories and their data by making them accessible. This allowed biosocial criminologists to have access to databases and methods emerging from genetics, and to a lesser extent data from neuroscience, which was also developing rapidly but was more difficult to use owing to the high cost of brain imaging technology. This twofold collaboration with genetics, and to a lesser extent with neuroscience, enabled genetics and neurobiology to be articulated in the theories of biosocial criminology. Behaviours described as antisocial were ascribed to poor impulse control in the context of adverse genetic foundations, with the brain sitting between genes and behaviours. More broadly, genes, alleles, neurons, cardiac rhythm and hormone levels were considered in terms of their interaction with one another. These theories were further refined with the development of epigenetics, the study of the influence of the environment on gene expression. For adherents of a pro-genetic biosocial criminology, the source of the problem remains DNA, treated as a single cause in behaviour analysis. For those who support a pro-environmental biosocial criminology––a minority within this trend––the idea is not that certain genotypes are deficient, but that they are more sensitive to the environment, a perspective that might be described as the incorporation of the social.

Though biosocial criminologists thus draw on data and methods emerging from genetics, Larrègue points out that the type of genetics used is out of date. Although genetic techniques based on the study of the genome (known as genome-wide association studies) developed rapidly in the 2000s, biosocial criminologists only have access to older methods based on candidate genes,Footnote ⁴ which are not well-suited to the complexity of behavioural analysis. Despite this limitation, the book’s conclusion reveals how a biosocial parlance is becoming widespread in contemporary societies, including in France. This is manifested in the growing use of biosocial criminology by defence lawyers in court proceedings, aiming to minimise the responsibility of those charged,Footnote ⁵ and in a collective mindset based broadly on neuroscience. Larrègue notes that the spread of this mindset augurs the likelihood of public policies that prioritise medical solutions with a preventive aim—applied before the crime is committed, or even administered to children. The book ends with this observation: “The usefulness of genetic tools is that they can bring together habitually separate communities which now speak a common and unifying language. Biosocial criminology is one variant of this lingua franca that continues to gain ground […].”

This book is valuable for the clarity of its approach to at times complex questions. It is precise in its argument, and the demonstrations are easy to follow. It does not fall into the trap of simplifying or homogenising the “field” of biosocial criminology. In this respect, the fact that pro-environmental biosocial criminology has more affinity with structuralist criminology than with studies in pro-genetic biosocial criminology allows Larregue to avoid simplifying assumptions about this sub-trend. Moreover, it is particularly interesting to note the effects of these scientific debates in the judicial realm and on certain practices (not discussed as they fall outside the scope of the book) relating to the medicalisation of the behaviour of young children or of pregnant women.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is its observation of the gap between the scientific impasses of biosocial criminology, whose methodological and theoretical limitations we have noted, and its rising visibility and legitimacy. Larregue explains that one of the reasons for this gap is that articles in the field of biosocial criminology are published in criminology journals and evaluated by criminologists mostly trained in sociology, who are unfamiliar with genetic research, or by biosocial criminologists. It is indeed entirely possible to make use of methods that have been progressively abandoned by geneticists without incurring censure in the field. The book thus invites questions about some of the limitations of poorly mastered interdisciplinarity, in a context where interdisciplinarity is valued by the majority of institutions. The problem goes still further. Larregue refers to the celebrated study published in Science in 2002, according to which the polymorphism of the MAOA gene explains why some children develop antisocial behaviours as they grow up and others do not. Larrègue explains that this study is to be treated with caution. In fact, dozens of studies have attempted to replicate and extend the results of this research, more or less unsuccessfully, and thus have not really resolved the debate as to the validity of those results. Similarly, the vast majority of results obtained from studies of candidate genes have not been reproduced by the more recent technique of genome-wide association studies, suggesting that these were probably false positives. Despite this, the legitimacy of these studies appears firmly established, as illustrated by the trial cited in the introduction. The burgeoning of neuroscience through medical imaging also partly explains the “success” of the combined approaches of genetics and neurobiology, and biosocial approaches.

More broadly, the issue that Larrègue raises at the end of the book is one of major importance. Indirectly, it is that of the relationship between sociology and biomedical science at a time when epigenetics and neuroscience could spur more unified and standardised approaches. What kinds of collaboration should be engaged, on what basis, and at what cost? Which conceptual principles, and which conceptions of the relationship between nature and culture, do social science researchers wish to uphold? The question of the hierarchy of disciplines, an old one for sociology of science, is also raised.

Larrègue takes care to limit his project to the analysis of a scientific field. While the book clearly shows how the work of a researcher or a laboratory is the product of a position within a space that has its own internal logic, there is no discussion here of the historical, cultural, political and ethical context in the US, which could nevertheless shed light on the dynamics of the biosocial criminology trend. Indeed, it is striking to note that analysis of the national “context” is often demanded of sociological and anthropological studies located outside the US, but not always for those relating to the US, as if this context was known to all or was not so important. In addition, while it cites some historical sources, the book does not make reference to any anthropological studies, despite the fact that the discipline’s contribution to the debate on the relationship between nature and culture is well known.

Larrègue mentions more broadly the shift in personnel involved in expert witness assessment, including the “turf wars” among professionals who seek to monopolise the diagnosis, handling and treatment of social problems. More specifically, he raises the problem of the division of labour between medicine and the law for the control of at-risk groups. However, the book devotes little attention to relations between scientists and judges on this issue, or to judges’ resistance to scientists, as its concern is not the work of the justice system. But the great value of good research and good books is precisely that they raise new questions for study.