r/K Theory Used to Characterize Crime?

A reader emailed this link to this blog:

The authors suggest using r-K theory to unify the understanding of crime: from the vantage point of evolution by natural selection,criminality is the product of individual variation on certain traits relevant to life history strategies. Natural variation is the key point in that it has resulted in some individuals falling further away from K than others. [] Individuals falling relatively further from K will exhibit faster maturation and lower levels of parental investment. Additionally, they will display greater mating output (i.e., more effort invested in mating, instead of raising children), higher rates of disease and shorter life spans.

The full paper is here.

It is a big step forward. Hedonistic sense of entitlement to free resources is the key quality, and it jibes perfectly with r/K. Dealing drugs, and many other forms of selfish crime, can easily be viewed as an attempt to bring about an r-selected environment of free resource availability. Those who will most desire that r-selected environment will be those who have, imbued in their very nature, an r-selected reproductive strategy.

One shouldn’t look at the criminal in isolation however. r/K shadows amygdala development, and thus often appears age-related to some degree, as does crime. Additionally, the criminal exists in harmony (or disharmony) with their environment, thus an r-strategist in an r-environment, where they need merely go to the welfare office and get a big fat check and free resources, is different from an r-strategist who is thrust into a more resource-restricted, K-selecting environment where resources are scarce, their competitive skills are sub-par, and thus their required free-resource availability is threatened.

From a perspective of prevention, it also pays to acknowledge that males appear to go from a more r-selected, amygdala-undeveloped psychology in their teens, into a more K-selected, amygdala-developed state in adulthood, and this transition can be guided. This should be combined with an understanding that some forms of crime have an element of K-selected psychological facets.

I think this is important because there can be a point where some young males can end up channeling K-urges like loyalty into things like gangs, which had they been grabbed up into the Marines or Army before the gang, they could have channeled those urges toward loyalty differently and had completely different life paths. Crimes of loyalty are different from crimes of opportunism and selfishness.

I think most aggressive K-strategist males who look back on their past will see a mentor who took them under their wing at some point. Those who were blessed with exceptional mentors, will often not be able to help but shudder at the thought of where they would have gone without that mentorship. Think even farther, and you might wonder what would have happened if your mentor had leaned more toward the dark side, and you personal circumstances had been different. Drop your younger self in an impoverished environment with absent parents, filled with violent threats, and cast your loyalty to the wrong crowd out of necessity, and everything can change.

That said, the linkage between the Misery Index and crime clearly speaks to the relation of resource availability and r/K to crime. If resource availability is related to crime, then so is r/K. The only missing element is a recognition that human environments can be r or K, and that the total picture requires a recognition of the contributions of both the individual and their environment, and how the two factors mesh.

r/K Theory has the potential to drive rabbits from the social sciences. Nothing is as noxious to them as a clear, concise explanation of their own selfish hedonism, and here we see it not only explaining the liberal/conservative political divide, but also likening the rabbits to criminals as well. As r/K is used to better explain humans to themselves, it will radically alter the political debate, and drive liberals crazy. I can’t wait.

Apocalypse cometh™