2007
Terrie E. Moffitt
Causes of crime.
Moffitt was lauded for her discoveries of the broad range of social, psychological and biological factors that increase or decrease individual risk of crime and wellbeing over the life-course. She also demonstrated how these factors may combine to produce better or worse outcomes, such as varying genetic vulnerability that can shield many people from negative environmental influences during childhood without increased risk of exhibiting violent behaviour later in life.Terrie E. Moffitt
Born 1955 in Germany. Terrie E. Moffitt was professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London (United Kingdom) and Duke University (USA) at the time of the award.
Showed how crime may be caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors.Showed how crime may be caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors.
Multidisciplinary research on human development and crime
Terrie E. Moffitt was awarded the 2007 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for her studies of the factors that increase the risks of people committing crime over the first four decades of life.
Research on crime patterns
Her research spans large groups of people studied intensively through birth, including twins in the UK and entire birth cohorts in a New Zealand city. Her discoveries include an early distinction between ‘adolescence-limited’ and ‘life-course persistent’ offenders and have inspired many other tests of this pattern, revealing important nuances and variability across societies and data samples. She was also among the first criminologists to examine risks of violence by individuals in intimate relationships and in relation to strangers.
Gene-environment interaction (GxE)
In 2002 Moffit and her colleagues published papers in the journal Science on the interaction between maltreatment during childhood and a low-active variant of monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene. The study showed that people who lack this predisposition and a history of child abuse had significantly lower levels of violent behaviour in early adulthood compared with people who had both of these environmental and genetic risk factors for violence.
This finding stimulated a global discussion on the idea of criminal intent and accountability and raised profound questions on humane crime prevention strategies for maltreated children.
Moffitt has also conducted an important large-scale follow-up of twins in the United Kingdom to investigate biological, psychological, and social influences on their development.