Stevenson and Cox on Eugenic Criminology and the Birth of Predictive Algorithms in Criminal Justice

Megan T. Stevenson, University of Virginia School of Law, and Robynn Cox, UC Riverside, University of Southern California, Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, have published Eugenic Criminology and the Birth of Predictive Algorithms in Criminal Justice. Here is the abstract.

This Article tells the story of the birth of predictive algorithms in criminal justice. Known as risk assessments, these tools are widely used today to make decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole. Their roots trace back to the 1920s, when statistical prediction tools were first proposed for use in criminal justice decision-making. In this Article, we show that risk assessment found its origins in the ideas of eugenic criminology: namely, that crime is mostly caused by an inferior subclass of humanity, tainted from birth. Risk assessment was conceptualized as a way of sorting between the "normals" who were amenable to reform and the "sub-normals" who, due to their inferior genes, were not. Such "born criminals" were seen as requiring indefinite confinement within isolated penal colonies in order to protect society from crime, prevent procreation, and provide care for those in need of paternalistic guidance. We tell this story in part because it is a fascinating piece of history, marked by bigotry, bravado, and an almost fanatical optimism about mankind's ability to engineer a perfect society. But we also tell it because the ideas and practices of eugenic criminology are not widely known. While "tainted origins" do not automatically condemn the ongoing use of risk assessment, understanding history can help identify ways that the past lives on in the present.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Suuberg on Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test: Putting Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century @alessuube

Alessandra Suuberg, indepdendant scholar, has published Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test: Putting Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century. Here is the abstract.

With its 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court embraced the American eugenics program, which was then at its peak. An association with fascism and a discredited pseudoscience was one reason why the Buck case would later became infamous. Another reason was that, rather than resolving a true conflict, the case was seen as contrived: designed strategically to validate a particular Virginia law and ensure the success of the eugenics movement. Because the strategists were a close-knit group of elites and eugenics proponents, and the guinea pig at the center was poor and disadvantaged, the case provided a striking example of the way that a legal system intended to protect the most vulnerable members of society can instead be manipulated and used against them in the name of reform. Today, it is important to remember Buck and its legacy in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Download the article froM SSRN at the link.

Appleman on Deviancy, Disability, and Dependency: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration @lawandlitprof

Laura I. Appleman, Willamette University College of Law, is publishing Deviancy, Disability, and Dependency: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration in the Duke Law Journal. Here is the abstract.

Racism, harsh drug laws, and prosecutorial overreach have formed three widely-discussed explanations of the punitive carceral state. These three narratives, however, only partially explain where we are. Neglected in our discussion of mass incarceration is our largely-forgotten history of the long-term, wholesale institutionalization of the disabled. This form of mass detention, motivated by a continuing application of eugenics and persistent class-based discrimination, provides an important part of our history of imprisonment, shaping key contours of our current supersized correctional system. Only by fully exploring this forgotten narrative of long-term detention and isolation will policy makers be able to understand, diagnose, and solve the crisis of mass incarceration.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The History of the North Carolina Eugenics Movement

Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, School of Law, and Elizabeth Lea Troutman (Independent Scholar), have published The Eugenics Movement in North Carolina as UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2650083. Here is the abstract.

“The Eugenics Movement in North Carolina” places North Carolina into the social, political, and legal context of the movement in the United States that resulted in the sterilization of more than thirty thousand people from the 1920s through the 1960s. We sketch the social and political arguments that were mobilized to support sterilization, as well as the arguments judges developed alongside these arguments from the 1910s through the 1930s. State courts slowly accepted sterilization until the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 1927 in Buck v. Bell. Then courts and legislatures around the United States more readily accepted it, even as legal scholars expressed reservations about sterilization. North Carolina was one of those states that embraced sterilization. The machinery of the state went into facilitating sterilization. The Eugenics Board of North Carolina, the state board in charge of reviewing petitions from public health officials for sterilization, produced pre-printed forms to facilitate the approval of sterilization. They presided over the petitions and routinely granted the vast majority of them. The few sterilization orders that were challenged in court were also routinely upheld. For nearly two decades, until the United States’ entrance into World War II, sterilization was broadly accepted by courts. But the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Skinner v. Oklahoma in 1942 began to turn the tide against sterilization, as did unease with a procedure that was reminiscent of what was happening in Germany during the War. Yet, even after Skinner v. Oklahoma and after World War II ended, as the rest of the nation began to abandon sterilization, sterilizations continued in North Carolina. We conclude with a discussion of the recent legislation in North Carolina to provide modest payments to the victims of the state’s sterilization program. In particular we discuss the design of a payment regime and how the legislature can justify payments for this concentrated episode of state infringement on personal liberty. And we suggest that the North Carolina legislation may provide a model for future legislative action aimed at payments for people sterilized involuntarily in other states.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

John Harvey Kellogg and the Search For Spiritual and Physical Wellness

Indiana University Press has published:


Brian C. Wilson,  Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living (2014).


Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

2014 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards finalist

Purveyors of spiritualized medicine have been legion in American religious history, but few have achieved the superstar status of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his Battle Creek Sanitarium. In its heyday, the “San” was a combination spa and Mayo Clinic. Founded in 1866 under the auspices of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and presided over by the charismatic Dr. Kellogg, it catered to many well-heeled health seekers including Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Presidents Taft and Harding. It also supported a hospital, research facilities, a medical school, a nursing school, several health food companies, and a publishing house dedicated to producing materials on health and wellness. Rather than focusing on Kellogg as the eccentric creator of corn flakes or a megalomaniacal quack, Brian C. Wilson takes his role as a physician and a theological innovator seriously and places his religion of “Biologic Living” in an on-going tradition of sacred health and wellness. With the fascinating and unlikely story of the "San" as a backdrop, Wilson traces the development of this theology of physiology from its roots in antebellum health reform and Seventh-day Adventism to its ultimate accommodation of genetics and eugenics in the Progressive Era.

Kellogg is notable for his development and marketing of a breakfast cereal which he called Granula and later Granola. Because of a patent dispute, he later changed the name to Corn Flakes. He established a sanitorium at Battle Creek, where one of his patients was C. W. Post, who created his own line of breakfast foods. Kellogg thought that Post had pilfered the formula for his cereals from Kellogg's own recipe. Kellogg was particularly concerned about what he thought were social and individual sexual excesses, and he supported the work of such moralists and social reformers as Anthony Comstock.