Study looks at body type, crime leanings
BY Andy Boyle
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — If you’re in an Arkansas prison, odds are you don’t need to hit the weight room.
A new study found that most people entering the Arkansas prison system were likely to be athletically fit, or mesomorphs, rather than ectomorphs and endomorphs skinny or fat. But prison and police officials aren’t surprised by the news the role of physical traits in criminal behavior has long been debated.
The study, which was published in The Social Science Journal, was conducted by researchers at three schools including the University of Arkansas. It found that between 62 percent and 73 percent of Arkansas’ inmates were physically fit when they entered prison, and those not in shape were more likely to have been imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.
There’s some common sense involved in thinking people in shape are more apt to cause crime, said Sean Madden, one of the study’s authors and the University of Tampa’s chairman of criminology.
“Someone overweight is clearly not specifically designed to steal purses and then have to run away,” he said.
The study looked at the idea that certain body types are predisposed to certain types of crimes. If you’re big and strong, Madden said, you’d be more likely to pull off an assault than if you were small and weak.
The Arkansas Department of Corrections provided the researchers with information about 5,000 incoming prisoners’ height and weight, which was used to determine their body mass indexes. The researchers then used that information to decide whether a person was in shape, obese or skinny.
It’s a pretty weak gauge if you’re trying to determine whether someone is predisposed by size to committing a violent crime or a property crime, Madden said, but it shows an interesting link between fitness and crime.
Trying to link crime causality with physical characteristics is nothing new, said Dina Tyler, a Department of Correction spokesman. The prisons used to measure inmates’ arms, thighs and feet to try to find similar links, but it didn’t pan out.
The prisons even tried to find a correlation between hat sizes and crime.
“That one proved to not hold much water,” she said.
This study shows that there could be a link between dedication to physical fitness and dedication to anything, whether it’s good or bad, Tyler said.
“And this one may prove to be spot on, or off the mark,” she said. “What it ultimately tells us is it’s too soon to know.” Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said a lot of the people his department deals with are on cocaine or methamphetamine, which are “good weight-loss drugs” and cut down on the number of obese criminals.
Because of a criminal’s lifestyle, odds are that being in good shape isn’t really important, he said. Their lives have changed, so making time to keep their bodies fit isn’t important.
Hastings added, “I don’t know of any physical fitness program that criminals follow.”
Copyright 2008 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.