Crime, prison and why death penalty doesn't work.
Criminal records are full of facts that, according to the public opinion, would deserve an eternal penalty.
According to Hervey M Cleckley, Psychopathy is diagnosed using an assessment tool that scores individuals against a series of criteria. Those above a certain threshold are officially classified as psychopaths, but not all psychopaths are criminals. They may even be quite successful in their business.
Among imprisoned violent offenders, a minority are psychopathic. One recent UK study put the prevalence at around 8% of male prisoners and 2% of female ones. [1]
Psychopathy clearly doesn't explain all violent crime. But once a psychopath is in prison, it is important to figure out how to better rehabilitate them: they are up to 4-times more likely to reoffend than non-psychopaths.
Psychopaths seem relatively untouched to punishment, which makes them very difficult to manage. It's not just that psychopaths are immune to punishment; they are processing it in a different way. Often they consider themselves as superior to their fellow prisoners and therapists.
For example think of a stalker. If he's a psychopath, punishment can hardly deter him to continue on his way.
More prevalent is antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), estimated to affect between 50-80% of the general prison population. Although people with ASPD may look likeable, in the face of conflict they can quickly snap and become frightening. They get frustrated and irritated; they often over-react, or see threats where none really exist; and lash out or use reactive aggression to sort out their problems. [1]
Studies have suggested that ASPD individuals struggle to read facial expressions and show other impairments in "mentalisation": their capacity to understand both their own, and other people's actions in terms of their thoughts, feelings, wishes, beliefs and desires. Not only could this cause them to misinterpret actions as more threatening than they are; it could also make it harder for them to regulate these emotions, because they struggle to understand their own feelings. [1]
Both psychopathy and ASPD are also associated with a history of neglect and abuse in childhood.
There's something about the idea of a long prison term, that gives the impression that justice is being served. But does a long prison sentence actually keep the streets safer? [2]
When a judge hands a sentence to someone who's about to go to jail, there are 4 main factors that go into the decision.
Retribution (punishing the person for doing something wrong),
Rehabilitation (correcting problematic behaviour),
Safety (keeping threats out of the community) and
Deterrence (making sure both they, and others, are scared off of breaking the law in the future).
Some people – mostly criminal prosecutors, especially in countries like the US – believe that a long prison sentence checks all these boxes. They believe that it gives prisoners time to think about what they've done wrong, and that the thought of going back into prison is a motivator to stay on the straight and narrow.
But having prisoners serve long sentences can overcrowd prisons. It's also extremely costly to tax payers.
In a 2016 report released by the New York University School of Law, for instance, it was estimated that the US could save $200 bn (£147 bn) over 10 years if 40% of the country's inmate population was reduced.
Research shows that long prison sentences don't really work on several fronts. Criminals seem to value the future less than non-criminals, one study found, meaning that long sentences can seem "arbitrary", and only work to deter up to a point. Education played a role too, with lesser educated criminals seemingly less put off by a harsher sentence. Studies also show that reoffending remains high. In the UK, almost 70% are reconvicted within a year of release. One reason is because many criminals think they won't get caught… even after they've been caught once, experts say. The threat of a long prison sentence does not therefore deter them from a criminal lifestyle.
In the US, the number of prisoners has quadrupled since the 1970s – and now, as prison terms get longer, people are spending even more time in prison. Today, the US leads the world with more than 2.2 million people currently in prison, a system that costs the states $56.9 bn (£42 bn) per year.
Politicians capitalise on the anxiety caused by violence.
From Vietnam war the US saw an absolute explosion in prison population: from 200,000 in 1974 to more than 1,500,000 in 2002. The US also has some of the longest prison sentences in the world due to its cultural values including an extreme emphasis on personal responsibility, religious belief in good and evil, and the idea that a community has the moral imperative to stamp out bad deeds.
So, are there alternatives to letting prisoners stew for decades? Norway shows some promising results. There, capital punishment was abolished in 1902 and life sentences in 1981. The maximum prison sentence is 21 years.
These Norwegian prison sentences help lead to rehabilitation, something not always seen in long prison sentences. Research shows it has among the lowest rates of reoffending in the world – 20% compared to 67% in the US over two and three years of leaving prison, respectively. Even more surprising perhaps is that the average prison sentence length in Norway is only eight months. [2]
Still, there's a caveat. "Officers will expect more of you in an open prison," Ugelvik says. "You have to go to work or school, exhibit the right positive attitude. Also, you can escape any time you want to, so in an open prison, you have to choose to stay every day. You have to live with temptation."
Another misconception is the idea that the most severe punishment – the death penalty – might deter the worst crimes. US president Donald Trump said in April 2018 that he wanted the death penalty for drug dealers, although research has shown that capital punishment isn't an effective deterrent.
According to Prof. Ashley Nellis, if you don't think you're going to get caught in the first place, death penalty doesn't really matter.
According to Dr. Jonathan Groner, associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine, The psychological mind-set of the criminal is such that they are not able to consider consequences at the time of the crime. Most crimes are crimes of passion that are done in situations involving intense excitement or concern. People who commit these crimes are not in a normal state of mind.
Experts suggest that criminal behaviour and the nation's murder rate may best be curbed by addressing the environmental and social factors that contribute to violent crime. Groner explains, "The murder rate is most closely associated with the socioeconomic health of the country. The murder rate in the U.S. was highest during the Depression. Also, the majority of people on death row are from the most blighted parts of the U.S. They are very poor and very impoverished. A very high percentage have mental health problems. Good access to health care and improving the socioeconomic health of our country's cities would reduce the murder rate more effectively than executions".
In 2007 the American Bar Association released the results of a three-year study of the death penalty. Although the American Bar Association takes no position for or against the death penalty, they issued a moratorium on the death penalty because "the process is deeply flawed." As a researcher of aggression and violence for over 25 years, I also believe the death penalty is "deeply flawed." There are at least eight serious problems with the death penalty. [4]
1. The Death Penalty Models the Behaviour it Seeks to Prevent
The death penalty is used to deter killers, but it models the very behaviour it seeks to prevent. It teaches the lesson that it is acceptable to kill, as long as the state is the one doing the killing.
2. You Might Kill the Wrong Person!
William Blackstone, the English jurist, judge, and Tory politician of the 18th century, said, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." The death penalty is irreversible, so it is critical that it be used on the actual killer.
3. The Death Penalty Does Not Reduce Murder Rates
The available evidence indicates that the death penalty does not reduce murder rates. FBI Unified Crime reports show that states with the death penalty have homicide rates 48-101% higher than states without the death penalty.
4. The Death Penalty Targets the Poor
Of the 22,000 murders that occur each year in the U.S., about 1% result in death sentences. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty."
5. The Death Penalty Targets People of Colour
The American Bar Association three-year study concluded: "Every state studied appears to have significant racial disparities in imposing the death penalty, particularly associated with the race of the victim, but little has been done to rectify the problem."
6. The Death Penalty May Constitute "Cruel and Unusual Punishment."
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "The capital punishment system is discriminatory and arbitrary and inherently violates the Constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
7. The Death Penalty Costs More than Life in Prison
Some people may be surprised to learn that the death penalty is far more expensive to implement than life in prison without the possibility of parole. Take the state of California, for example. The California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. In addition, California spends $250 million per execution.
8. The Death Penalty Negatively Impacts Jurors, Justices, Governors, and Executioners
Any discussion of the death penalty should also consider the potential psychological impact of executing another human being on the jurors, justices, governors, and executioners involved.
Five countries in the world account for 80% of state killings: (1) China, (2) Iran, (3) Iraq, (4) Saudi Arabia, and (5) the United States.[36] The other five countries in the top 10 are: (6) Pakistan, (7) Yemen, (8) North Korea, (9) Vietnam, and (10) Libya. The U.S. State Department recognizes 194 independent countries around the world, and the death penalty is banned in 140 of these (72%) as of May 2103, including Russia.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180518-can-you-ever-change-a-violent-psychopaths-mind
[2] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180514-do-long-prison-sentences-deter-crime
[3] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/2200
[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-psyched/201401/it-s-time-kill-the-death-penalty
According to Hervey M Cleckley, Psychopathy is diagnosed using an assessment tool that scores individuals against a series of criteria. Those above a certain threshold are officially classified as psychopaths, but not all psychopaths are criminals. They may even be quite successful in their business.
Among imprisoned violent offenders, a minority are psychopathic. One recent UK study put the prevalence at around 8% of male prisoners and 2% of female ones. [1]
Psychopathy clearly doesn't explain all violent crime. But once a psychopath is in prison, it is important to figure out how to better rehabilitate them: they are up to 4-times more likely to reoffend than non-psychopaths.
Psychopaths seem relatively untouched to punishment, which makes them very difficult to manage. It's not just that psychopaths are immune to punishment; they are processing it in a different way. Often they consider themselves as superior to their fellow prisoners and therapists.
For example think of a stalker. If he's a psychopath, punishment can hardly deter him to continue on his way.
More prevalent is antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), estimated to affect between 50-80% of the general prison population. Although people with ASPD may look likeable, in the face of conflict they can quickly snap and become frightening. They get frustrated and irritated; they often over-react, or see threats where none really exist; and lash out or use reactive aggression to sort out their problems. [1]
Studies have suggested that ASPD individuals struggle to read facial expressions and show other impairments in "mentalisation": their capacity to understand both their own, and other people's actions in terms of their thoughts, feelings, wishes, beliefs and desires. Not only could this cause them to misinterpret actions as more threatening than they are; it could also make it harder for them to regulate these emotions, because they struggle to understand their own feelings. [1]
Both psychopathy and ASPD are also associated with a history of neglect and abuse in childhood.
There's something about the idea of a long prison term, that gives the impression that justice is being served. But does a long prison sentence actually keep the streets safer? [2]
When a judge hands a sentence to someone who's about to go to jail, there are 4 main factors that go into the decision.
Retribution (punishing the person for doing something wrong),
Rehabilitation (correcting problematic behaviour),
Safety (keeping threats out of the community) and
Deterrence (making sure both they, and others, are scared off of breaking the law in the future).
Some people – mostly criminal prosecutors, especially in countries like the US – believe that a long prison sentence checks all these boxes. They believe that it gives prisoners time to think about what they've done wrong, and that the thought of going back into prison is a motivator to stay on the straight and narrow.
But having prisoners serve long sentences can overcrowd prisons. It's also extremely costly to tax payers.
In a 2016 report released by the New York University School of Law, for instance, it was estimated that the US could save $200 bn (£147 bn) over 10 years if 40% of the country's inmate population was reduced.
Research shows that long prison sentences don't really work on several fronts. Criminals seem to value the future less than non-criminals, one study found, meaning that long sentences can seem "arbitrary", and only work to deter up to a point. Education played a role too, with lesser educated criminals seemingly less put off by a harsher sentence. Studies also show that reoffending remains high. In the UK, almost 70% are reconvicted within a year of release. One reason is because many criminals think they won't get caught… even after they've been caught once, experts say. The threat of a long prison sentence does not therefore deter them from a criminal lifestyle.
In the US, the number of prisoners has quadrupled since the 1970s – and now, as prison terms get longer, people are spending even more time in prison. Today, the US leads the world with more than 2.2 million people currently in prison, a system that costs the states $56.9 bn (£42 bn) per year.
Politicians capitalise on the anxiety caused by violence.
From Vietnam war the US saw an absolute explosion in prison population: from 200,000 in 1974 to more than 1,500,000 in 2002. The US also has some of the longest prison sentences in the world due to its cultural values including an extreme emphasis on personal responsibility, religious belief in good and evil, and the idea that a community has the moral imperative to stamp out bad deeds.
So, are there alternatives to letting prisoners stew for decades? Norway shows some promising results. There, capital punishment was abolished in 1902 and life sentences in 1981. The maximum prison sentence is 21 years.
These Norwegian prison sentences help lead to rehabilitation, something not always seen in long prison sentences. Research shows it has among the lowest rates of reoffending in the world – 20% compared to 67% in the US over two and three years of leaving prison, respectively. Even more surprising perhaps is that the average prison sentence length in Norway is only eight months. [2]
Still, there's a caveat. "Officers will expect more of you in an open prison," Ugelvik says. "You have to go to work or school, exhibit the right positive attitude. Also, you can escape any time you want to, so in an open prison, you have to choose to stay every day. You have to live with temptation."
Another misconception is the idea that the most severe punishment – the death penalty – might deter the worst crimes. US president Donald Trump said in April 2018 that he wanted the death penalty for drug dealers, although research has shown that capital punishment isn't an effective deterrent.
According to Prof. Ashley Nellis, if you don't think you're going to get caught in the first place, death penalty doesn't really matter.
According to Dr. Jonathan Groner, associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine, The psychological mind-set of the criminal is such that they are not able to consider consequences at the time of the crime. Most crimes are crimes of passion that are done in situations involving intense excitement or concern. People who commit these crimes are not in a normal state of mind.
Experts suggest that criminal behaviour and the nation's murder rate may best be curbed by addressing the environmental and social factors that contribute to violent crime. Groner explains, "The murder rate is most closely associated with the socioeconomic health of the country. The murder rate in the U.S. was highest during the Depression. Also, the majority of people on death row are from the most blighted parts of the U.S. They are very poor and very impoverished. A very high percentage have mental health problems. Good access to health care and improving the socioeconomic health of our country's cities would reduce the murder rate more effectively than executions".
In 2007 the American Bar Association released the results of a three-year study of the death penalty. Although the American Bar Association takes no position for or against the death penalty, they issued a moratorium on the death penalty because "the process is deeply flawed." As a researcher of aggression and violence for over 25 years, I also believe the death penalty is "deeply flawed." There are at least eight serious problems with the death penalty. [4]
1. The Death Penalty Models the Behaviour it Seeks to Prevent
The death penalty is used to deter killers, but it models the very behaviour it seeks to prevent. It teaches the lesson that it is acceptable to kill, as long as the state is the one doing the killing.
2. You Might Kill the Wrong Person!
William Blackstone, the English jurist, judge, and Tory politician of the 18th century, said, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." The death penalty is irreversible, so it is critical that it be used on the actual killer.
3. The Death Penalty Does Not Reduce Murder Rates
The available evidence indicates that the death penalty does not reduce murder rates. FBI Unified Crime reports show that states with the death penalty have homicide rates 48-101% higher than states without the death penalty.
4. The Death Penalty Targets the Poor
Of the 22,000 murders that occur each year in the U.S., about 1% result in death sentences. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty."
5. The Death Penalty Targets People of Colour
The American Bar Association three-year study concluded: "Every state studied appears to have significant racial disparities in imposing the death penalty, particularly associated with the race of the victim, but little has been done to rectify the problem."
6. The Death Penalty May Constitute "Cruel and Unusual Punishment."
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "The capital punishment system is discriminatory and arbitrary and inherently violates the Constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
7. The Death Penalty Costs More than Life in Prison
Some people may be surprised to learn that the death penalty is far more expensive to implement than life in prison without the possibility of parole. Take the state of California, for example. The California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. In addition, California spends $250 million per execution.
8. The Death Penalty Negatively Impacts Jurors, Justices, Governors, and Executioners
Any discussion of the death penalty should also consider the potential psychological impact of executing another human being on the jurors, justices, governors, and executioners involved.
Five countries in the world account for 80% of state killings: (1) China, (2) Iran, (3) Iraq, (4) Saudi Arabia, and (5) the United States.[36] The other five countries in the top 10 are: (6) Pakistan, (7) Yemen, (8) North Korea, (9) Vietnam, and (10) Libya. The U.S. State Department recognizes 194 independent countries around the world, and the death penalty is banned in 140 of these (72%) as of May 2103, including Russia.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180518-can-you-ever-change-a-violent-psychopaths-mind
[2] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180514-do-long-prison-sentences-deter-crime
[3] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/2200
[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-psyched/201401/it-s-time-kill-the-death-penalty
