Last night Larry King Live of CNN hosted a discussion about whether criminals can be rehabilitated. I think it will be re-aired this weekend so try to watch. One of the guests drew a distinction between “learned” criminal behavior and psychopathy. She stated she believed that criminals who have learned to be that way can unlearn but psychopaths cannot be rehabilitated. I know many of you also hold this belief so I would like to tell you why I strongly disagree.
First I will tell you my position:
ALL criminality stems from an interaction between a person and a situation. A person is a product of his/her genetics and experiences. So in a sense what makes up personality (the “person”) is learned for everyone including the psychopathic. We are preprogrammed by our genetics to learn certain things better than others.
In terms of situational variables solid research has demonstrated that antisocial associates, poor work and educational performance, substance abuse, poor family ties and poor recreational achievement are all associated with criminality. These variables operate independently from personality variables and are important for even the most psychopathic individuals.
The more psychopathic a person is, the more deeply ingrained is the lifestyle of parasitism and predation BUT even those with lower levels of psychopathy can be very resistant to change and very dangerous to society. The definition of response to treatment depends on what you are looking for. If a person cheats 8 people a week, then goes into a program and cheats 1 person a week, that is a change. Everyone has a different definition of “rehabilitation”.
Coincidentally, I just read a great book, Persons in Context: Building a science of the individual. It is a tribute to Walter Mischel, Ph.D. one of the great thinkers of modern psychology. In his chapter “Intelligence as a Person-Situation Interaction”, Robert Sternberg lists five fallacies of thinking. He says, “There is another dimension to person-situation interaction: the extent to which particular situations elicit ‘stupid’ thinking in intelligent people.” All of his 5 fallacies occur in the context of perceived power or dominance. They are:
- The unrealistic optimism fallacy. This occurs when one believes that one is so smart and so powerful that it is pointless to worry about the outcome of what one does.
- The egocentrism fallacy. This occurs when one comes to think that one’s own interests are the only ones that are important.
- The Omniscience Fallacy. This occurs when people think they know more than they do.
- The Omnipotence Fallacy. This results from the power one wield or believes one wields.
- The invulnerability Fallacy. This derives for the illusion of complete protection.
Dr. Sternberg is one of many scientists who have discovered that the experience of power changes the mind/brain. Some people are more prone than others to these effects of power. Since psychopathic individuals seek out power constantly like a heroin addict seeking a fix, they are never free from all of the above fallacies of thinking. Life is a situation of constant power or perceived power.
In the absence of a loving nature all power pursuit becomes antisocial. Now power pursuit and attainment can also stomp out a person’s loving nature, if it was ever present in the first place.
To rehab the psychopathic we have to strip them of any power and teach them to love and care for others. To my knowledge there is no program that has yet succeeded in doing this even for those “sociopaths” who score at the lower end of the psychopathy scale.
“When one link of the chain is broken to fight the spath, then that broken link becomes a link of power for the spaths. Just one believer in their lies can provide them with sufficient power to overcome what they perceive to be obstacles.”
This is so true!!!!
BUT….perseverence and tenacity of one person, can be the instant weld to those broken links!
Dear Liane,
Over the past couple of months I have been studying about prison and reformation vs punishment. Stripping them of their “power” would require solitary confinement, which was first suggested by the Quakers to give the criminal the quiet and peace to reflect on his crimes and his attitude….the problem is that solitary drives the prisoners insane and really did not lead to any penitence which was the purpose of it.
Incarceration, apparently from what I can find out, only works for keeping the prisoners off the street and to keep them from committing more crimes. The crime rate in the US has dropped significantly in the last few years as more and more people have been locked up. My idea is that enough of the really bad psychopaths are locked up that the crime rate has actually fallen.
While 25% of the prisoners have a PCL-R score of 30+, I read recently where the AVERAGE score of the rest of them is 22. The “average’ guy on the street is less than 5, so that gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of folks we have locked up right now in the US. If you total, prison pop, jail pop, parole and probation there are about 7 MILLION people in the “hands of the law” that have committed crimes enough to go to court for at any given time.
If you take “over a life time” there is a great percentage of people who will commit a crime serious enough to go to jail at least or get probation.
Depending on the population, there is between 40 and 70% recidivism rate within 3 years of being released. But, most prisoners, regardless of WHAT they have done WILL BE RELEASED, even in states with “three strikes” laws that double sentence for the second crime and give a 25-life for the third felony.
There is effectively no educational opportunities in prisons now, and any pretense at rehabilitation has been abolished due to “financial” concerns.
Yes, actually, I think most “high level” psychopaths, such as my son, enjoy the challenges in prison and get positive reinforcement for their games and con jobs, getting guards to smuggle in cell phones and contraband.
The economic concerns of various states too, view prisons in rural areas with few industries as a source of jobs and revenue for the area. The Texas prison system, where my son is confined, is one of the largest in the world.
Unfortunately, though, most of the psychopaths are not in prison. While the violent psychopaths commit about 80% of the violent crime, I’m not saying every violent person is a psychopath, but unfortunately many are.
Our society glorifies violence though, and people like OJ and Mel get by with their violence and are admired because they can throw a ball or act and are rich.
Until society realizes that there is no hope of reforming a psychopath, and quits trying with “anger management” classes and “sex offender classes” and locks sex offenders up and throws away the keys, locks murderers up and throws away the keys, and armed robbers, etc. and doesn’t send some poor kid with 2 ounces of marijuana to spend 20 years in the same cell with my son for a PhD in crime, to say nothing of that kid being turned out as bubba’s sex slave, and instead educates the kid and quits criminalizing what I see a victimless crimes and criminalizes MURDER AND RAPE, our society is going to be upside down.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, I don’t even know all the questions, but I do know that what we are doing now is NOT working with the repeat violent offenders and sexual criminals being turned lose again and again. You were almost a statistic because a man who had raped was turned loose, and while he was in prison he learned to not leave any witnesses, but sure wasn’t “rehabilitated.” He should never have been released in the first place after his first crimes.
Okay, I’m off my rant now! When I am elected dictator in november it may not be better but it will be DIFFERENT. Vote for Oxy for dictator in November! LOL
That’s right EB!! Operation Backspath in full effect!!! I just love that term!! I really do!! I know husband spath doesn’t know what to make of me!! He used religion in the beginning to snare me and I used religion in the end to expose him. And I refused to budge.
He would try and smooth talk me so I sent to him a verse from the Bible “Ye are of ye father the devil, and the works of your father ye shall do. He was a liar in the beginning and abode not in the truth.”
He would say something else and ask why I wasn’t behaving like the woman he met. You idiot because you weren’t acting like the man I met!! He took words that I wrote and asked me why I was behaving like the beautiful words I wrote. What I wrote was talking about atonement with one another. I said that those words were written for those who were true believers, not those perpetrating as ones. So you wouldn’t understand.
Can we be friends he asks? I said I don’t sit down and play pattycake with the devil! I was cold as ice! That was one link he wasn’t going to break!!!
Witty:
“But the natural course of things is at some point to let them go. You can’t teach them “real” independence, if they don’t fly the nest and learn to live independently.”
It’s like any journey……………it’s an evolution.
there is no magic answer.
I think the quandry is…..we know they can’t fly….because they’ve clipped their own wings……but soon…..it may be time to push! Im just hoping he grows his feathers quickly enough to soften his fall, cuz this tree nest is really up high! 🙂
I miss you and your wonderful perspective to things…..
XXOO
EB
Healing:
That’s right……keep that fire turned up to HIGH! Operation BACKSPATH is in full force!
Love it!!!
The key is to reverse the balance to off center for them……
Like being on a see-saw…..if your the one at the top I don’t care how much you wiggle…..that see saw ain’t going down….the weight isnt there….
We need to be the fat chicks sitting on the other end of that see saw with the taunt and look in your eye……Ya want down???????
EB!!!!! ROTFLAMO “The fat chicks sitting o n the other end of the sea saw….ya want down?” ROTFLMAO OH, that is toooooo much! I cna’t breathe EB! choke, snort, bray!!!! Whew! LOL
🙂
And when your the fat chick on the bottom….you can push/jerk up slight and fast and bump em around too!
🙂
Someone who is completely powerless and relies on someone else to teach it how to love is what I would call a BABY….at least on an emotional level.
Babies are completely powerless and depend on their caretakers for everything, especially LOVE.
I think the sad fact of life is that if babies are not taught Love during infancy/childhood, they may never learn it.
And once that window is closed, it’s closed forever.
And some are considered bad seeds right out of the womb.
It seems they will never learn to love no matter what they are taught or how well they are nurtured.
Just as some will grow up to love and have empathy no matter how horribly they were abused as children.
In “Without Conscience”, Robert Hare describes psychopathy as a “rock solid personality structure that is very resistant to change”.
So, I’m not surprised that no one is willing to do the hard work that is necessary to help them change.
I would not want that task, either.
The thing about sociopaths that makes them so slippery is that there is always at least one person who is willing to “ride or die” with the socio.
It’s very difficult to isolate a socio and render them powerless.
They are very adept at making themselves appear “useful” and even “indispensable” to certain people.
Rosa:
GREAT POST!
“The thing about sociopaths that makes them so slippery is that there is always at least one person who is willing to “ride or die” with the socio.
They are very adept at making themselves appear “useful” and even “indispensable” to certain people. ”
And this is where our frustrations lie!!!