Shortly after I met serial killer Rodney Alcala, he invited me over to see his photography. At the time he was living with his parents even though he was 35. Upon entering the home, he introduced me to his mother who was visibly angry with him for inviting me over. Looking back now I can guess this was because he had been convicted twice of violent crimes against young girls.
I do not blame the Alcala family for the behavior of Rodney or for not telling me to get away from him. I only bring up this story to highlight the fact that when offenders are released from prison they become a problem for their families.
A person getting out of prison has no place to go, no home, no money and no job. It is only natural they turn to their families. It would take a pretty cold-hearted or perhaps enlightened family to refuse to help.
Criminologists consider family resources to be a buffer against recidivism. Although I have not thoroughly researched this field, I haven’t seen proof that families really prevent re-offense vs. Re-arrest. One authoritative web site says this:
Family-focused programs in community corrections are based on the recognition that families provide an informal agent of control that are more powerful than formal agents of control (probation, parole, law enforcement) for offenders under supervision in the community.
Now if you read that and understood the above quote you are laughing with me. While families may have a positive influence on offenders who are not disordered, to say that families have any power to stop a sociopath/psychopath is ridiculous.
I would like to see violent offenders evaluated for the presence of psychopathy. The reason is that many people especially the offender’s family members take the attitude “They served their time, give them a chance to do better.” In many cases offending is more reflective of a situation than an individual’s personality per se. But if a person goes out looking for prey, finds an innocent victim, lures them and then assaults them, we can’t chalk that up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the case of predation, assuming the person was not falsely accused/convicted, the crime has to reflect a personality disposition.
We should not be releasing psychopathic offenders (as defined by the PCL-R) to the care of untrained family members who haven’t the slightest idea what to do. In this case rather than the family serving as an “informal agent of control”, the family home serves as a secure base from which the offender can launch attacks upon the community.
For more on families as resources for offenders see the Center for Evidence Based Practice
I suspect that the statistics that suggest that families are able to prevent recidivism aren’t showing what the ideologues analyzing the data are looking for.
If released prisoners who live with their families have lower recidivism rates, maybe:
1. Released prisoners whose families will accept them back in the home are less dangerous than the ones who are not. (After all, the families do know these people better than anyone else.)
or
2. Maybe they re-offend as often, or perhaps more often, but their dysfunctional families provide cover for their predatory behavior.
Either way, it’s easy for ideologues to find hopeful statistics in data that doesn’t objectively prove what they want to find. They want to find hope so badly that they interpret the data improperly.
Dan and I have a hard and fast rule that anyone who might be bad for one member of the family may not be allowed in our home, even for a short visit. We don’t think “home” should ever be a dangerous place.
What we would do if one of our children grew up to be a predatory criminal is hard to know.
We noticed that in every “good” neighborhood we analyzed while searching for our new home, there was at least one known sex offender. In every case we investigated further, it turned out to be an adult child of an elderly homeowner. To what extent these people, usually men, endanger their community was hard for us to guess.
Every day I am reminded about families of socipopaths needing help when they are released from prison when I look down at my little JAck Russell Terrier. His original “mother” was the wife of a psychopath friend of my P-son’s who was released on life time parole. He married this woman, whom he had known before he had been incarcerated 20 years before for murder. She was a “classic victim” having been married to a psychopath prior to this and having given birth to two psychopathic sons.
The two of them set up housekeeping and her husband, I’ll call him Bill, got a low end job and they rented a tiny old house and Bill went to work and came home each day. They got a puppy and the wife kept house (she was also disabled) and tried to make a home for her husband.
I met them and got to know them, and liked both Bill and his new wife. I thought maybe Bill would ahve a chance at making some sort of life. His parents and other family lived near by and were supportive of him.
Four years went by and the next thing I know Bill walked out on his wife and went to live with his parents. Left her with the house dog. Then, I heard he was arrested again on drugs and for robbing an ATM. He went back to prison.
In the meantime, the wife made do on less than $600 a month disability payments, but still had to get food from the food pantry. I would occasionally stop by to visit her if I was in her neighborhood and I called ahead one day and asked about how she was doing. She said Bill was scheduled to get out of prison and wanted to come back to live with her. She couldn’t stand the thought of that and Bill’s mother was calling and screaming at her that SHE HAD TO TAKE BILL BACK because the family had apparently figured out Bill wasn’t going to reform.
The wife was planning on skipping town, going to live with her sister and asked me if I woujld take care of the Pup since she couldn’t even afford to feed him. I spent the night with her, and we ate the last of the cooked pinto beans she had from the food pantry, I felt guilty eating them, but didn’t want to hurt her feelings. We talked through the night and I realized that this woman DID GET IT what her husband was, and what my P son was. I bought a few things she had intended to sell at a yard sale before she left. I didn’t need them, but she needed the money I gave her. I took the puppy and hugged her and told her if she ever needed anything to call me.
I have sinse lost touch with her, and I hope she still has my phone number, but every day when I see the dog I think about her. I pray for her and hope she is well. I thank God that she had sense enough to RUN! I’m glad I was there to rehome the dog.
Families who are forced or guilted to taking back an abusive family member are either dupes, or victims themselves. The system has no advantage in “cluing in” these people that they should NOT take back a psychopath,. because the system needs to find “placement” of SOME kind for these people so they can at least appear to be doing their “best” to rehabilitate these psychopaths.
When the Trojan Horse Psychopath (professionally Dx ASPD) was to be released on parole the parole board was going to ILLEGALLY release him to a half way house IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT ARK LAW SAYS NO SEX OFFENDER CAN GO TO A HALF WAY HOUSE.
The system as it is does NOT work—so they do MORE of it. It “sounds good” but it does not work, it only puts the families at risk.
Sexual offenders that are multiple offenders and have to stalk a victim (for rape or rape and murder, or children) are to me, SELF DIAGNOSED Psychopaths, and therefore should never be released at all. There is no valid “cure rate” for these offenders.
I have a great deal of EMPATHY for Richard’s MOTHER. I can imagine how she must have felt being the mother of such a monster. Taking him back into her home, seeing him doing the things she strongly suspected he was doing, but feeling I imagine TRAPPED into taking him back but being unable to control his behavior. Who knows, maybe she was a psychopath too, but I can imagine she might have just been another of his victims.
People have told me “You can’t give up on him (my son) because he is your SON!” or they say “Where there is life there is hope”—-and all I can say is, well, he should go live with them!
The system is not going to tell the parents that they are putting themselves at risk. In many cases the parents are going to be like I was and think “He doesn’t ahve ANY chance to straighten up if I don’t help him” but the truth is, a psychopath does not want to live a good straight boring life outside of prison. They want the excitement.
The psychopath has few if any “straight” friends left when he/she gets out after 15 or 20 years, the only friends they have are ones they met in prison. If they have to go to a half way house to live the people they meet there are just like them, and they are not going to advance past the lowest levels of career and society.
They are not going to get a “playmate center fold” for a GF, and they are not going to get a flashy car and a “great job” that makes lots of money, they are going to live in the netherworld of criminal society, and prey off of others if they can. They will use whatever coin they have, either looks or charm to con others into facilitating their lifestyle. They will return to criminal activities to make a “living” or continue their perversions.
I know the “system” is not going to “warn” the families about taking psychopaths back into the family home, and even if they did, many (most?) families would not take the warning seriously. I wouldn’t have until I finally DID GET IT! Now I will work as hard as I can to keep my own personal psychopathic offspring in prison for as long as I can.
I am hoping that in the future my story can warn other parents of psychopaths that the only way is NO CONTACT. We can’t help them, but we CAN help ourselves. Thanks Liane.
What Eliz C said about interpreting statistics made me remember an old joke about stats.
A man with one foot on a red hot stove and the other foot on a block of ice is ON THE AVERAGE, COMFORTABLE!
Statistics don’t PROVE CAUSATION either. Interpretation of statistics in fact, to me, seems to “prove” what the person is trying to “prove.”
There are stats to show that more psychopaths are left handed than the general population, but that doesn’t prove that being left handed CAUSES psychopathy.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that various social “proofs” are “proven” by statistics. For example, “more psychopaths come from homes that are poor, so therefore, if we do away with poverty, there will be no more psychopaths.”
It indeed may be TRUE that more psychopaths come from poverty than from affluence, but it can be that the POVERTY is caused by the psychopathy rather than the other way round. However, a lot of our “social scientists” (and defense attorneys) take the statistics and twist the CAUSATION to the point that there seems to be no personal responsibility for anyone’s actions. I rob a store, it is because 1) I grew up poor 2) my daddy spanked me 3) I had no mother in my home as a role model 4) I can’t get a job that pays more than minimum wage because I chose to drop out of school (see reasons 1,2, and 3) and so on, in circular logic.
Unfortunately, it seems that anything less than an ideal or perfect background gives a person justification for just about anything—and the parents a load of guilt/responsibility for whatever their child does.
I agree with the opinion that sp families most likely protect the predator. My ex’s do with the destructive choices/lifestyle and would protect if those were criminal ( and I know some choices that were) as well.
They are wealthy, powerful and well known so must keep the family indiscretions secret.Got to look good.
So Oxy,could the affluent sp’s be just as prevalent as those from poverty backgrounds?
I think so, but the tendencies serve them well in the business world, where exploitation moves you up the ladder…thinking of some politicians, sports icons…etc
Oxy, Its like {the law of causation] which says,”My cat has 4 legs, my dog has 4 legs,therefore my dog is really a cat.NOT!
I watched a programme on TV last night, “Worlds most violent towns”-this programme was about Cape Town, S. Africa,which Ive visited twice, a beautiful place, torn apart by crime and drugs and poverty. Where on average 8 people die every single day from drug induced violence.They have also lost 8 cops so far this year alone to shootings.The main problem is the illegal drug known as Kit, a mixture of heroin, crack cocaine, bleach, and peroxide. Its main sourse of supply are Russian drug overlords, who supply the poor black townships, like cape flats
In the progarm they interviewed this lovely middle aged black woman who had just been convicted of first degree murder of her teenage son, a “KIt” addict.She told the reporter, he used to kick in the windows, beat her up, she worked FT asa cleaner, and he stood over her to get all her wages. he threatened many times to kill her.This went on for years. No-one would help her, neither the police, the courts, the child protection agencies, NO ONE. One day, she said, “He was sleepin,drunk, and spaced out from the drugs. I took a thick strong, rope, put it around his neck, twisted it, and pulled hard. I tied one end to th bedpost, and the other I pulled as hard as I could. I strangled him.Im not sorry. hed have killed me for sure. he was not my lovin litl e boy no more.” Now this poor woman has been charge d with Murder in the first degree.Where is justice for her? Love, Gem.
Dear Gem,
Your post made me tear up. I bleed for that woman, and she could have been me.
Yes, I love Cape Town and I have friends who live there now, and it is so violent. I have friends who live more inland and they know people who have been murdered, friends of theirs, and their lives have been threatened as well. It is such a shame that the psychopaths have hooked people on drugs so that they will do anything to get them. I bleed for that woman, and I will pray for her. I actually imagine that as bad as her life will be in prison she is probably safer there. I CAN imagine what a sword she must have felt was hanging over her head. I hope the jury and the law is compassionate to her.
Let’s keep her in our prayers! In fact, the millions of mothers of psychopaths all over the world, not just her and you and me, and the others here at LF, but the millions of mothers who have to deal with this. (((Hugs))))) and thanks for sending this. It may have made me shed a few tears but I am more than ever determined to reach out to these women and men in some way, the parents of the monsters!
Oxy. yes, believe me I teared up too when I saw the programme, this poor woman! the expressions of pain on her face were terrible. You could just tell she was a lovely clean, nice, God fearing woman, and she was driven to the absolute BRINK because NO_ONE would help her! Talk about the valley of closed doors! I just hope someone has the compassion and good sense to see that this woman had no choice but to do this, to save her own life.Yes, lets pray for her. There are SO many like her. I loved Cape Town, but it is so violent . Everyone you meet had a story of some close friend or relative who was murdered. The same mix of poverty, boredom, lack of work, drugs, offering an escape,around 8 blacks ,{usually young men} senselessly murdered every single day. And the rich whites living behind razor wire and
bars on their windows.Such a shame as its a stunningly gorgeous city.David and I went there last July for 3 weeks, for our silver wedding anniversary.Loe, and {{HUGS}} Gem.XX
By the way, did you see my blog on “Baby face Williams?”
Dear Flower,
I think a lot of povery is caused by psychopathic traits where the people won’t work, so they steal, go to jail, that impoverishes the family, drinks and drugs and keeps the family in poverty, low IQ along with mental illness and/or psychopathic traits or just people who have been trained to lead disordered lives because their parents didn’t nurture them.
I don’t think, though, that poverty itself alone causes psychopathic behavior. Some of the nicest, best humans I know grew up in poverty that you can’t even imagine, with abusive parents that make Casey Anthhony appear mother of the year, and yet, they work, they got as much education as they could and worked hard to do it, they nurtured their children and so on. Some of them literally cannot write their names yet they worked hard and prospered.
I know some rich psychopaths who put their p-kids through medical school, or law school, etc. and yes, they cover up the family bad boys. So affluence and education don’t protect from psychopathic traits either, just put enough polish on them that they can become “Bernie Maddoff” or president of Enron! Or governor of NY or SC. Or a judge!
A psychopath is a psychopath regardless of where he comes from on the socio economic scale I think. But I do think that a lot of the traits and the “rolling stone” and inconsistencies of relationships, life styles, and jobs etc does cause poverty.
There are plenty of people here on LF whose husbands/wives have deliberately left them in poverty. Or fighting for their children has left the nurturing spouse in poverty. Or the thefts of assets and so on has left someone broke and wounded.
I’m pretty sure my ex-husband is a sociopath.He is in prison for another few years. He has burned through his entire family and all he has left is our daughter. I am VERY concerned for when he gets out. I’m afraid he is going to make her life a living hell, and don’t know what to do about it.
Dear Allure,
How old is your daughter? I would teach her age-appropriate information about psychopaths and bad behavior. There is a thread on here about a girl, can’t remember the name of the thread and article about the girl being the daughter of an inmate who kept trying to suck her in, but she saw through his cries of “I love you” and saw him for the monster he was.
It is painful for a child to not have a father’s love, but a Psychopath is incapable of loving a child or anyone else. They are just objects to be manipulated. Use the time you have until he gets out to educate (gently) this girl! Good luck and God bless.