When they look at prisons, are they also including white-collar prisons? Those would have significantly higher IQs I would think.
When I read this thread this is the first thing I thought about. From what I know about prisons they mix the population. So people who did white collar crimes and people who did violient crimes are in the same place. So I guess maybe the question is what % of the people in prison did white collar crimes? How many of them are gifted? I'm not saying that there aren't gifted in the violient crime population, I just don't think it would be very high.
The book that was referenced earlier (the big link) states something like that people with high IQ commit as many crimes as people with lower IQ, but don't get caught as often. Not sure what they base this statement on, since if you don't get caught, how would you know the IQ of that person?
The study I found out of Chicago prisons, looked at people with shorter sentences, which would exclude extremely violent crimes IMHO. Also one study out of Louisiana prisons looked at 6,000 inmates across the board, so white collar crimes would be included there also.
There are so many variables and the studies out there aren't usually looking at IQ alone, but use it as a variable for something else. Therefore getting a cut and dry answer from them isn't always possible. This is an interesting topic though so I will take another look in the database I have.
Jen
