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Friday, June 7, 2019

Thornton P. Knowles On The Criminology Of Ugly

I met a criminologist at an academic conference who had applied for a government grant to determine if unattractive men were more likely to commit crimes. He wanted to examine thousands of mugshots and visit several high security prisons. I asked this criminologist how he defined, for purposes of his study, who was homely. He said, "homely is like pornography, you know it when you see it." The government denied him the grant. So, I guess we'll never know the ugly truth regarding physical appearance and crime.

Thornton P. Knowles

1 comment:

  1. Well that was dumb. The criminologist could have said less symmetrical faces or less proportional features or something like that. I have always thought the opposite. When I see mug shots(I go to police stations on a regular basis for work)I’m always amazed at how many criminals look better than average. I always figured it had something to do with entitlement.
    But what good can come from such a study? Let’s say we found a statistically significant 10% more ugly/beautiful people were prone to crime? So what? What about the other 90%? Do we really need another group of people to be rejected by employers/schools etc. for something they can’t control?

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