James C Oleson, Criminal genius: A portrait of high-IQ offenders
| Author | Paul McGorrery |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0004865817712212 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
provides a historical overview of the development of NZ’s prison system and correc-
tional practices. It covers private prisons, specialist units, home detention, and post-
release care.
It is Newbold’s declared ambition that his book may ‘assist policy makers and execu-
tives to make informed choices, based on the lessons of history, about what factors may
affect crime rates in the future and what strategies may best be employed to control
criminal activity’ (p. 6). Regrettably, he does not deliver on this promise for three rea-
sons. First, Newbold fails to canvass the entire spectrum of available data which would
necessarily include self-report and victimisation surveys to obtain a complete picture.
Instead, he cites Wikipedia entries (e.g., pp. 30–31, 99, 101, 172, 212) and relies heavily
on news media sources. Second, Newbold disregards changes in policing priorities and
biases inherent in the criminal justice system, and how these two factors may have
affected statistical trends. Finally, significant changes in demographics and crime rates
are not considered in the analysis. Considering Newbold’s ambition to analyse general
crime trends and patterns, it also comes as a surprise that, in each chapter, he describes
(frequently in a war-story-like fashion) a large number of individual cases without con-
textualising them against crime trends. In sum, the book seems an appropriate comple-
mentary reading for undergraduate criminology students alongside more critical
analyses.
References
Cooper, E., & Wharewera-Mika, J. (2011). Healing: Towards an understanding of M
aori child
maltreatment. In T. McIntosh, & M. Mulholland (Eds.), M
aori and social issues (pp. 169–186).
Wellington, New Zealand: Huia Publishers.
Merchant, R. (2010). Who are abusing our children? (MA thesis). Massey University, New Zealand.
Statistics New Zealand (2016). New Zealand police recorded crime and apprehension tables.
Retrieved from http://nzdotstat.stats.govt.nz.
Webb, R. (2011). Incarceration. In T. McIntosh, & M. Mulholland (Eds.), M
aori and social issues
(pp. 249–262). Wellington, New Zealand: Huia Publishers.
James C Oleson, Criminal genius: A portrait of high-IQ offenders. University of California Press: Oakland,
CA, 2016; 335 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-28241-4, $39.95 (USD) (pbk)
Reviewed by: Paul McGorrery, School of Law, Deakin University, Australia
In his new book Criminal genius James Oleson offers a novel and previously unavailable
insight into the world of high-IQ offenders. Who are they? What crimes do they commit?
And how accurate is the long-standing assumption that there is a negative linear rela-
tionship between IQ and crime (that as IQ increases, criminality decreases)?
Oleson begins his book by introducing the concept of the criminal genius. There have
been countless notorious, enigmatic, and often charismatic, criminal masterminds
throughout the years, both the real (e.g. Ted Kaczynski, Frank Abagnale Jr, and
Pablo Escabar) as well as the fictional (e.g. Victor Frankenstein, Henry Jekyll, and
James Moriarty). Yet for the most part, there is little criminological scholarship directed
at understanding, detecting, and punishing high-IQ (130+) offenders. Perhaps, this is
understandable. They do, after all, constitute just 2% of the population. Why, then,
632 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 50(4)
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