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can better nutrition decrease criminal activity? presentation
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Can better nutrition decrease criminal activity? Claire: politicians like to claim that they’re tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime but what are the causes of crime. But what are the causes of crime? Broken homes, poor education and poverty are often implicated, yet many people survive all of these with out so much as a parking ticket. Stephen: a group of British researchers now claim that a huge amount of antisocial behaviour, for example swearing, is simply down to poor nutrition. Their research suggests that a daily dose of vitamins, minerals and fatty acids could stem the tidal wave of crime that threatens to swamp the prison system, and perhaps society at large. It is an astounding claim that has been met with widespread scepticism. If the researchers are right, they’ve succeeded where generations of politicians have failed. The research was funded and organised by natural justice, a charity the researches the causes of criminal behaviour. Its director is Bernard Gecsh, a senior researcher in the physiology department of Oxford University. “People assume that antisocial behaviour is entirely a problem of personality he explains “but there is a whole substratum of physiological factors that can be measured scientifically” he believes many prisoners are suffering from “subclinical malnutrition” not bad enough to bring about physical symptoms such as scurvy, but bad enough to cause a range of anti-social behaviours. Natural justice’s programme began in 1988 when gecsh persuaded magistrates in Cumbria to let him try nutrition supplements on a juvenile offender who had resisted all other attempts of rehabilitation. He says the result was a sudden improvement in the subject’s behaviour. In a second case study, natural justice claims to have halted one girl’s criminal career just by increasing her intake of micro-nutrients to the governments recommended daily allowance. The latest natural justice study was carried out over 9 months at a young offender’s institution at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. It followed the behaviour of 231 inmates, about 75% of the prison population who had given their consent for taking part of the experiment over that period. By monitoring the number of official reports of bad behaviour they received from prison staff. Half the prisoners took daily nutrient supplements containing 28 vitamins. Minerals and fatty acids while the rest were given placebo pills. The researchers used all the methods of a rigorous medical study to ensure the results were reliable e.g. the trial was double blind so that neither prisoners nor guards knew who got the real pills and who the dummies and it was randomised so that the prisoners on the real pills were scattered throughout the prison. Not just grouped in to one wing. About 60 prisoners dropped out of the trial, mostly because they were transferred or released, but statistical analysis weeded out any anomalies that this might have caused. Claire: the results were startling. Prisoners taking the nutrient pills committed 37% fewer serious or violent offences than the placebo group. When the trial finished, levels of violence quickly returned to normal. Not surprisingly many scientists are wary of reading too much in to the results. Professor Chris bates of the medical research councils human nutrition unit in Cambridge proffers a topical view. Stephen: “one always has to retain a position of scepticism until at least one or more replications produce the same results” Claire: David Benton of Swansea university who studies the link between diet and moods adds Stephen: “prison is a setting that magnifies the effect of diet because the environment is relatively similar for all, so dietary changes have an impact that would not be apparent elsewhere.
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