[as posted on the home page:]

The Ugly Face of Crime

By Richard Morin
Washington Post
Friday, February 17, 2006

"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.

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So ... what use should we make of this new information???

I think this can all be explained by appearance profiling. Officers are unfairly targeting ugly people. That also explains some of those booking photos we see.

But I became a lawyer...some say that proves the finding is true.

If the premise of this study/story (that pretty people tend to be educated professionals and ugly people tend to be ignorant criminals) is true, then I am what I've been described as all my life: an aberration.

quote:

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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

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I'm curious to know what crime was the 'aberration' for the ladies ...

My guess would have been a drug related offense but it looks like theft from the study.
http://www.iza.org/conference_files/TAM2005/tekin_e527.pdf

[This message was edited by Stacey L. Brownlee on 02-17-06 at .]

What does the study really prove. I would say that its limited look into only certain crimes does not give a real analysis of who might be a criminal. There are many attractive criminals, maybe not as many in that limited area of crime though. It is nice to know, according to their study I probably would have been rated unattractive by my high school friends so I should have been criminal instead of an ass't DA.

OK, a reply from the girl who sat home during proms, and could only rope one poor slob into a homecoming date (and would make a horrible criminal)

I've been representing clients for a few years now. I've seen a lot of mugs. There might be a kernel of truth to that study.

That theft aberration would explain this, Stacey:


(Winona Ryder listening to a jury convict her of stealing $5,500 worth of high-fashion merchandise from Saks Fifth Avenue)

I don't know Shannon, mixing fact with fiction, remember how manipulative she was in heading off her husband when Michelle Pfeiffer was around?

I'm wondering, though, if criminals become ugly because of the type of crime they commit (drug use, excessive alcohol use, violence), or if they gravitate toward crime because they're ugly. How many times do you look at a defendant's date of birth and go, "Geez, she's my age!" and she looks about 20 years older?

I had a forgery defendant a few years ago who was so pitiful looking that we couldn't do a photospread because we couldn't find 5 other women as unattractive as her. Poor thing, she looked like she'd been someone's punching bag her whole life. The cop went out to talk to the Middle Eastern clerk and asked him to describe the defendant, and he hemmed and hawed around trying to be polite, until finally the cop just blurted out, "Was she ugly?" and the clerk quickly agreed, "Yes! Yes! Very, very ugly!"

Crime does seem to age criminals, who almost always seem much older than their birthdates indicate. This is especially so for druggies and prostitutes.

But, as I understand the study, the ugly criminals were identified as ugly prior to their criminal career. Crime might have made them uglier, it was not the cause of their essential ugliness.

I wonder how often good looking crooks are allowed to skate because of their good looks? If that happens, statistically it would make the better looking appear to be less crime prone than they really are. Remember Lyle and Eric Mendendez? (not sure of spelling). They were tried together for murdering their parents, but each brother had his own jury (this was in Calif., of course). The evidence of guilt for both brothers was pretty overwhelming, but in the first trial both juries were deadlocked. Every female juror on both juries voted Not Guilty, while every male juror voted Guilty.

I think that sort of thing happens much more frequently with lesser crimes, where the victim's wishes make a great deal of difference whether a case is reported or prosecuted.

Even with that caveat, I must say I think the study's conclusions are true. Criminals, as a class, are uglier than the non-criminal class.