Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 17, 2019 Countryman, Features / Columnists
By Dennis Nichols
On any given day, there are maybe two or three violent crime reports in our newspapers. These are the sort of acts that a few decades ago would have been splashed across the front pages of our dailies. Not so now. Vicious murders, weapon attacks, and sexual assaults can sometimes be found buried in a few inches of column on the more obscure inside pages, and may be easily trivialized, or ignored.
Many of us, including fellow writers, must be simply tired of the sickening violations, and may prefer to tune out the unpleasantness rather than be reactive. But since crime affects all of us, directly or indirectly, we should at least attempt to understand the so-called criminal mind, probably at the expense of complacency and resignation.
People have always been puzzled by the actions of other people, and the way they can be justified. Why and how do some persons do things that are so obviously criminal, so intentionally hurting, triggering such nasty consequences, including for themselves, without question or qualm?
Does the man who rob and kill someone simply to get what his victim has, not realize that he is doing something wrong, and that he would likely be caught, embarrassed, jailed, or killed? Is he numb to the pain and trauma his actions can cause? If you are a ‘normal’ person, how do you get past all the thoughts telling you that what you’re about to do is very, very wrong.
That last sentiment comes from a guy named Nick Chester who ‘writes stuff’ for a Canadian magazine called Vice. Two years ago, he penned an article about how criminals justified their crimes to themselves. Like other more mainstream professionals, he came up with a number of ‘explanations’ that delve inside the minds of some reformed gangsters he had interviewed. Most could not be called hardcore felons.
He warns, with a quote attributed to criminology psychologist Shadd Maruna that, “Studies indicate … the majority of criminals either make excuses for, or attempt to justify, their actions. There’s little evidence that these justifications are made prior to committing the crimes, so it’s possible – and somewhat likely – that they’re thought up afterwards as a way to mitigate the guilt.”
He added that lawbreakers ‘tend to use a very consistent and discernable number of post-hoc rationalizations to account for what they did,” called ‘techniques of neutralization’ based on the concept of neutralization theory put forward by sociologists David Matza and Gresham Sykes. These are some big words to say that they act without thinking, or fail to connect action with result. Like here in Guyana, where outlandish reasons for the commission of crimes can range from amusing to incredulous.
Values are temporarily neutralized, he adds, by using one or more of five methods of justification. In ‘denial of responsibility’, the offender feels he is forced by circumstance to commit a crime. ‘Denial of injury’ insists the crime is harmless. ‘Denial of the victim’ is the belief that he/she deserves the offence. In ‘condemnation of the condemners’, the latter are seen as spitefully shifting the blame off themselves, while ‘appeal to higher loyalties’ says a crime was committed for the greater good of others. (Think of Robin Hood)
Here are two of the brief examples that Chester gave. A former homeless fraudster who robbed big catalogue firms and ‘rich-looking’ people felt that they wouldn’t miss the money; that they had so much more than him, and could afford the loss. That, Chester says, fell into both the ‘denial of injury’ and ‘denial of the victim’ methods
Another, a firearms offender, was hooked on the perceived wrongdoing of the authorities. He admitted, “I minimized, rationalized, and justified my wrongdoing to everyone, including myself. My justifications involved {blaming} corrupt politicians, police, and society.” This of course was identified as a classic case of ‘condemnation of the condemners,’ – one we are all too familiar with.
It is evident that these former ‘gangsters’ were in one way or another at some time, able or helped to look at themselves and their crimes quite objectively, and turn their lives around. But what about the more serious crimes and hardcore perpetrators who venture into extreme violence and bloodshed. These may constitute categories of offenders that are not so easily persuaded to reform.
Recently I listened to an enlightening TED talk given in 2013 by controversial brain disorder specialist, Dr. Daniel Amen, who specializes in brain imaging for diagnostic purposes. Amen, who claims to have, with his colleagues, scanned thousands of brains, including hundreds of convicted felons and murderers, opined that people who do bad things often have troubled brains with unusual activity, (mental illnesses?) and also that many of those brains could be rehabilitated. He did not say exactly how, and his fees are said to be astronomical.
This however ties in with what other psychiatrists and neuroscientists have been suggesting ever since a man named Charles Whitman, in 1966, killed his mother, wife, and 14 other persons, and was found via an autopsy to have had a brain tumour in the region of the amygdala, which is involved in the regulation of emotion and the fight-or-flight response. Had the lesion been discovered and treated, could the massacre have been prevented?
To this day, according to research in neurology and neuroscience, the neural causes of most complex behaviours are still not understood. Continuing studies suggest links between tumours, brain disorders, and certain types of criminal behaviour, but no definite conclusions have been reached.
Richard Darby, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, suggests prudence in applying the findings of such studies. “Our results can help to understand how brain dysfunction can contribute to criminal behaviour, which may serve as an important step toward prevention or even treatment. However, the presence of a brain lesion cannot tell us whether or not we should hold someone legally responsible for their behaviour. This is ultimately a question society must answer.”
My opinion is that in a society like ours, we can at least attempt a stronger coaction between psychiatry, criminal behaviour, and the law. Scores, or maybe hundreds, of young, and not so young, Guyanese, may right now be potential candidates for either prison service, or service to our nation as law-abiding, ultra-productive citizens. That synergy, and an unwavering resolve to address the root causes of crime, can make the difference.
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