• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Ugly People Commit More Crime?

MrRING

Android Futureman
Joined
Aug 7, 2002
Messages
6,053
That's the claim by these folks:
The Ugly Face of Crime

By Richard Morin
Friday, February 17, 2006; A02

"I'm too ugly to get a job."
-- Daniel Gallagher, a Miami bank robber, after police captured him in 2003


The hapless Mr. Gallagher may have been ugly, but he was also wise.

Not only are physically unattractive teenagers likely to be stay-at-homes on prom night, they're also more likely to grow up to be criminals, say two economists who tracked the life course of young people from high school through early adulthood.

"We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime in comparison to those who are average-looking," claim Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University.

Mocan and Tekin analyzed data from a federally sponsored survey of 15,000 high-schoolers who were interviewed in 1994 and again in 1996 and 2002. One question asked interviewers to rate the physical appearance of the student on a five-point scale ranging from "very attractive" to "very unattractive."

These economists found that the long-term consequences of being young and ugly were small but consistent. Cute guys were uniformly less likely than averages would indicate to have committed seven crimes including burglary and selling drugs, while the unhandsome were consistently more likely to have broken the law.

Very attractive high school girls were less likely to commit six of the seven crimes, while those rated unattractive were more likely to have done six of seven, controlling for personal and family characteristics known to be associated with criminal behavior.

Mocan and Tekin aren't sure why criminals tend to be ugly. Other studies have shown that unattractive men and women are less likely to be hired, and that they earn less money, than the better-looking. Such inferior circumstances may steer some to crime, Mocan and Tekin suggest. They also report that more attractive students have better grades and more polished social skills, which means they graduate with a greater chance of staying out of trouble.
 
I would submit that ugly people are more likely to be accused and convicted of crimes, regardless of whether they committed them or not.
 
This idea crossed my mind just this week when I saw a webpage about a North Wales millionaire whose habits included beating up the homeless. He was a really evil-looking bloke and his henchman, convicted at the same time was almost a caricature of the criminal type.

Here

The idea isn't new though. Crime, madness, sexual delinquency and ethnicity were all related to facial characteristics from the time of Lavater onwards. Hospitals and asylums would produce catalogues of inmates, each labelled with their type. By the 1830s, this body of knowledge was so well-established that cartoonists and illustrators could assume it would be understood by the general reader.

Arresting people for being in possession of a criminal face has probably always gone on, though it will usually be justified some other way.

I suspect that class plays a large part in this. Is it just better grooming and a healthier diet that makes middle-class people more attractive or does selective breeding show in faces? There are, I think, some distinct public-schoolboy types. Though ironically, I suspect the poshest schools supply more than their fair share of prision inmates. Armed forces pattern? :shock:
 
I remember watching a program about how physical health is reflected in a person's attractiveness rating - people rated as less attractive tended to have more of a genetic disposition to poor health. Perhaps this is related?

I also remember there being a piece of psychological research saying that beautiful women were less likely to be convicted of crimes in court unless their beauty played a part in their crime.
 
Yeah , as in the study, I assume a crime is only defined if if there is some intervention from authorities , arrest, caution,conviction or imprisonment - It's quite like that the physically attractive are allowed the benefit of any doubt before it gets that far or are less likely to be suspected in the first place.

Or they don't go for burglary or drugs but harder to detect fraud or financial crime.



-
 
Wasn't this quite a prevalent idea in Victorian times? eg. that "criminal types" would show pronounced brows, or have their eyes close together? Also, in a Beardsley illustration i've seen, someone is denoted as a lesbian by her receding chin (apparently a symbol of moral degeneracy).
 
This reminds me of the Naomi Campbell libel case- apprently the judge accompanied her up to the witness box.... anyway, as you can guess she won it, but I think it's generally accepted now that her beauty played a part in the outcome.
 
Depressingly, this makes a lot of sense. Health/wealth status aside, I'm betting that ugly people are more likely to commit crimes because they're generally more misanthropic due to the way that they've been treated.
 
Having commited some crime of my own, I might disagree with this theory if only for vanity's sake. ;)

It does sound too easy a theory to be true. In fact, some criminals depend upon their good looks (many prostitutes, at least). Also, this study seems to be limited to 'blue-collar' crime- the nasty kind that doesn't involve duping hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people into emptying their pocketbooks. 'White collar' crime surely affects as many people, with equally deleterious results, though it is less punished and sometimes even condoned, since those who commit such crimes don't get their hands dirty.
 
In fact, some criminals depend upon their good looks (many prostitutes, at least).
Good grief. Have you ever been to Manchester? I've never seen a prostitute I'd consider 'good looking', except on TV.
 
Good grief. Have you ever been to Manchester? I've never seen a prostitute I'd consider 'good looking', except on TV.

The ones hanging around Holbeck in Leeds are as grim as they come too :shock: Don't know if they started out that way, or if it's some conbination of not looking after themselves from low self esteem, generally being pimped and used, or just plain drug abuse taking its toll on them :(
 
Shouldn't this be that ugly people are convicted more often, rather than commit more crime?

And isn't this whole thing just another Phrenology?
 
I dunno. "Lucky" Luciano was handsome. "Legs" Diamond was handsome. John Dillinger's looks were almost exactly the same type as Humphrey Bogart's and that strong resemblance may have been one of the reasons Bogart rose to superstardom.

And these things are comparative. During his lifetime Abraham Lincoln was known as "the Gorilla Man" and "the Human Ape" but today we speak of "Lincolnesque good looks."

But what if Lincoln had turned to a life of crime?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
And these things are comparative. During his lifetime Abraham Lincoln was known as "the Gorilla Man" and "the Human Ape" but today we speak of "Lincolnesque good looks."

Funny, that. A lot of men are described as 'ruggedly handsome', which usually means that they're not. Handsome, that is. :)

Every time I look at the news and see an account of a man (or woman) who's committed an awful crime, the picture usually shows them as being pretty darned ugly. I'm sure there must be some correlation, although not every ugly person is a criminal type.
 
Every time I look at the news and see an account of a man (or woman) who's committed an awful crime, the picture usually shows them as being pretty darned ugly. I'm sure there must be some correlation, although not every ugly person is a criminal type.

Is it not more likely that the mugshot or film of miscreant being led away in handcuffs is unlikely to be especially flattering? I doubt many people would look especially attractive in those circumstances.
 
ElishevaBarsabe said:
You should discuss this matter with someone from the USA deep south.

I've talked to a lot of Southerners who believe that the Reconstruction period would have been a lot more tolerable had it been overseen by Lincoln.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Every time I look at the news and see an account of a man (or woman) who's committed an awful crime, the picture usually shows them as being pretty darned ugly.

But the stock-in-trade of confidence tricksters is their decent, trustworthy looks.

Well-featured fellows also turned up among the train and bank robbers of the Old West - including Jesse James and his brother Frank as well as Harry Longabaugh, "the Sundance Kid."
 
Quake42 said:
Is it not more likely that the mugshot or film of miscreant being led away in handcuffs is unlikely to be especially flattering? I doubt many people would look especially attractive in those circumstances.

A case in point would be the infamous full-faced mugshot of child-murderess Myra Hyndley, for several decades the only photograph available in the United States. It wasn't until the coming of Google Image Search that I found numerous other photographs, several of which showed the woman to be a fairly attractive (bottle) blonde.

Doesn't change the ugliness of what she did, of course.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Quake42 said:
Is it not more likely that the mugshot or film of miscreant being led away in handcuffs is unlikely to be especially flattering? I doubt many people would look especially attractive in those circumstances.

A case in point would be the infamous full-faced mugshot of child-murderess Myra Hyndley, for several decades the only photograph available in the United States. It wasn't until the coming of Google Image Search that I found numerous other photographs, several of which showed the woman to be a fairly attractive (bottle) blonde.

Doesn't change the ugliness of what she did, of course.

I think I've seen every picture of Myra in circulation (very local story, local interest) I wouldn't say she was attractive! Personal tastes vary of course!

Chris Morris said it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxNyyZpP3GM
 
jefflovestone said:
I think I've seen every picture of Myra in circulation (very local story, local interest) I wouldn't say she was attractive! Personal tastes vary of course!

She was a hard-faced woman with cold eyes. Not attractive at all.
 
Mythopoeika said:
jefflovestone said:
I think I've seen every picture of Myra in circulation (very local story, local interest) I wouldn't say she was attractive! Personal tastes vary of course!

She was a hard-faced woman with cold eyes. Not attractive at all.

Even going brunette didn't really do much to soften her features.

~drafts a pitch to Channel 4: 'Murderer Make-Overs'~
 
Gang, the specific photograph I was thinking of is one where Ian Brady (I believe he is seated) has his left arm around Myra (I believe she is standing). She's wearing a polka-style skirt with dark square checks. I thought that here she looked reasonably attractive.

Again, nothing even remotely begins to justify her crimes. Americans were every bit as horrified and disgusted by this nasty pair as were Britons.

(The other one that got American blood boiling was the murder of young James Bulger. The Wests, though, were totally ignored by the U. S. media, for reasons I've never understood.)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Gang, the specific photograph I was thinking of is one where Ian Brady (I believe he is seated) has his left arm around Myra (I believe she is standing). She's wearing a polka-style skirt with dark square checks. I thought that here she looked reasonably attractive.

Don't backpedal! :lol: ;)

(The other one that got American blood boiling was the murder of young James Bulger.

That particular crime still makes my own blood boil when I think of it.
 
Not All Bells Ring Sweetly

And then there was young Mary Bell. I've always wondered if she'd seen the film THE BAD SEED and consciously decided to emulate it. There are remarkable resemblances between the motion picture and Mary's actual crimes.

In any case she was a very fair-featured child and certainly not ugly.
 
Aaah - failing memory, early hours, beer...

There was the black guy arrested (convicted?) - murder of a PC during a riot - Broadwater Farm? (Can't be arsed googling right now...)

The 'tabloid' photo showed an evil, glaring, ugly bastard - but the pic was allegedly taken just after he'd been backed forcefully into a wall, and was uncharacteristic, to say the least.

But the public perception was coloured by the pic, so despite dodgy evidence, he was a murderer...

Sorry, vague - will clarify later, unless some kind person gets in first...
 
Back
Top