During the 1980s, a professor at the University of Southern California, Sarnoff A. Mednick, and his colleagues proposed a theory that involved the criminal's inheritance of an autonomic nervous system that is less sensitive to outside stimuli; in other words, these individuals are slower than normal at learning to control aggression or antisocial behavior. Due to this inherited predisposition, they are more likely to commit crimes.
This theory proposes a combination of biological predisposition to criminal behavior and the subsequent inability to deal with certain environmental stimuli. In essence, this theory suggests that an individual's level of arousal is directly related to his criminal behavior --- in other words, an individual with a low level of arousal is less likely to learn alternative ways of dealing with his feelings of aggression and violence.
Gene-based evolutionary theory focuses on the genetic material of a criminal getting passed down through natural selection. As criminals survive by manipulating the odds in their favor by breaking legal restraints, they are more likely to survive to pass on their genetic predispositions to partaking in criminal behavior to their offspring.
This theory also travels in the vein of hereditary predisposition; however, it focuses on the chromosomes of the individual. While women have two X chromosomes to define their biological gender, males have an X and Y chromosome. Super-male individuals possess an extra Y chromosome. This theory suggests that these super males have more testosterone due to this extra Y chromosome, making them more prone to violence and aggression.