Those Dehumanizing Psychological Models

I have worked inside a number of prisons for a number of years now - and met up with all manner of criminals, including serial killers, pedophiles, murderers and rapists. Many of the text books that talk about sex offenders use labels such as; sociopath, psychopath, etc whilst also saying that these people lack empathy and/or a whole range of human emotions considered normal.

Well let me tell you -I have met some very amiable and friendly violent offenders - who can be kind, considerate, thoughtful, empathetic, intelligent people who have mums and dads and girlfriends and wives and children and friends just like most of us have.
I think that attempts to use the psychological conceptual models that dehumanize perpetrators do not serve in helping us to understand their crimes and in working towards eliminating them. In my experience most perpetrators' often do not themselves understand their own uses of the dehumanizing strategies that propel and feed those powerful forces that drive them to commit heinous crimes.

My own personal experiences within the prison system have trained me to be better able to spot criminal tendencies in the people in the outside world at large so now let me tell you a story that I think typifies something. And that something is certainly something that I find very disturbing.

My friend and I (who also works in prisons) were in a newsagent's one Saturday morning buying a newspaper and because we knew of the personal particulars and details of the case that was being covered on the front page we commented on it very quietly between ourselves.
The owner of the newsagent's shop was sitting chatting to a good friend who was seated next to him. He asked us if we worked in prisons - then proceeded to pour forth all kinds of vehemence and vengeful comments about that particular type of crime.
And what struck me big-time was a great sense of irony - irony that the person he obviously considered to be his good friend seated next to him was - to my guessing - what I would call the archetypal pedophile. This friend too rejoined him in his vengeful and angry missive against child sex offenders!

So to my thinking the "average" person knows little or nothing about criminals - or indeed how to recognize them. This is something that I think seriously needs to be addressed within society, and if I can help to bring this about through a periodic writing of crime related issues and commentary I shall feel in some way more fulfilled. And, I believe, until this situation changes we, in society as a whole, have little chance of effectively dealing with crime. Crimes happen within the context of society. As such it is society as a whole who allows all crimes to be committed; therefore I believe we need a holistic approach to preventing crime.

This brings to mind a story of when John Douglas (a former FBI agent who writes books on criminal profiling) recalled that he was being interviewed by a journalist and he was discussing some of the more gruesome aspects of a particular crime when the journalist interjected saying that she did not want to know such stuff. He retorted that until Mr. and Mrs. Average could "swallow" this kind of stuff that these crimes would continue to be perpetrated and committed.

And I agree with him.
So - ignorance of how such people come to be as they are is an extreme and silent form of sanction. And, I believe, "psych" labels that brand such people as something other than people with normal human emotions, needs and desires are equally useless.
Don't get me wrong - I am happy that some people are right off the streets. And the thing is that many of them have told me that they too are also more than happy that they are off those streets.

I said once to one of my "rapist friends" that I would probably have killed him if I had caught him in the act that he had performed to land himself in gaol. He answered that he would have killed himself too if he had caught someone doing what he had done.
To be completely contentious here may I say that I believe we are all composed of a 'victim and perpetrator' mix of personality traits. A sweeping remark I know - but one that is intended to put most of us, if not all of us, into the same heading, that is a human model that sees in all of us those roles of victims and perpetrators.
I place perpetrators of grossly indecent acts merely as being at an extreme end of a scale on which we are all represented somewhere. And most of those extreme perpetrators have invariably been on the extreme end of being victimized too.
Indeed what else could drive such acts I ask of you?

The conceptual models aimed at giving some understanding of such behaviors that take humanity out of the equation are nothing more than entirely useless to my thinking. And, I believe that those people who shout the loudest about vengeance are most likely those who are the least likely to come up with any constructive and effective system of deterrents.
Sure I think prison should be used as a safety valve for society. How to treat those offenders once they are in there is yet another matter for further debate later in other articles.