Governments and the scientists who advise them seem happy to let doctors prescribe powerful drugs for hyperactive children. So why are they so reluctant to act on research suggesting that vitamins can improve the behaviour of young offenders (see 鈥淔ull of goodness鈥�)?
True, there have been some questionable attempts to link poor diet to antisocial behaviour. But the latest research has no obvious flaws. And while it is always good to repeat studies on a larger scale, where鈥檚 the harm in taking steps to improve prison diets now? Perhaps left-wingers fear that giving vitamins to prisoners is the slippery slope to coercive drug-induced conditioning. But it needn鈥檛 be so if the nutrients are voluntary and prisoners know why they are being offered.
Maybe right-wingers think physically unfit inmates are easier to control or see vitamins as a privilege that prisoners should be made to forgo. But a balanced diet is not a dangerous luxury, and food supplements may be a cost-effective way to ensure prisoners are on one.
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Others perhaps worry that linking bad behaviour to poor nutrition opens the door to criminals offering a 鈥渏unk food鈥� defence in court. But from this it follows that we should close down all research into the causes of crime to prevent future generations of offenders offering, say, the 鈥済hetto鈥� defence or 鈥渂ook-deprived childhood鈥� defence.
In reality, it would be ridiculous to suggest bad food somehow eliminates free will or responsibility. It is perfectly possible to distinguish between predisposing factors 鈥� diet, home life, genetic make-up 鈥� that act in a statistical sense on entire populations, and the more immediate reasons why one individual commits a particular crime, which might well be greed or wickedness. The law does this at present. Handing out a few vitamin pills will not bring the penal system to its knees.