The criminal, the narcissist

The literary archetype

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky’s aspiring criminal Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov tests his theory that the world exists only to serve the needs of a few exceptional men, to lift them to great heights and achievements. Raskolnikov convinces himself that laws apply only to average men, and not to those of his own intelligence and willpower:

[The extraordinary men] all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities...[I]f such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood...

To test his extraordinary man theory, Raskolnikov plans to murder a pawnbroker, presumably to use her money for good purposes. I won’t spoil the results of his experiment. But this narcissistic attitude, this sense of being above others and excepted from all rules and laws, seems to be universal among real criminals, leading me to think back to this character often.

The "right to crime"

White collar criminals, as mentioned in a past post, exhibit narcissism in spades. Warning signs of workplace violence, according to the study discussed, include a sense of entitlement and egocentric behavior. These offenders believe they are entitled to commit fraud, and feel victimized when challenged - much in the way that one teenage armed robber interviewed by psychologist Stanton Samenow believed he was the only real victim of his crime, since he was the one incarcerated.

The criminal act itself can betray a narcissistic perspective. Take the case of Thomas Lagenbach, a VP in a prestigious software company, charged with stealing discounts on Lego sets at Target stores by switching the barcodes on boxes. He not only resold sets on eBay at full price, but assembled many and put them on display in his own home. They would have served as visual reminders of successful burglaries, trophies in plain sight. Police found bags of bar codes at his home and in his car. It may seem remarkable that someone in a position with so much to lose would flaunt his crime so carelessly, not even bothering to take simple steps to avoid detection.

From breaking rules to breaking laws

The conveniences of technology, in addition to making life easier for law abiding folks, have made it easier to commit crime and for educated criminals in positions of trust to believe they are untouchable. This bar code scam serves as a good example. Stores are only able to catch offenders by carefully comparing inventory with sales and reviewing surveillance tape. The criminal, on the other hand, can go through checkout and leave the store with a receipt for his stolen merchandise.

But the other angle to this story is that with easy crime comes easy excuses. Many people, not exclusively criminals, suffer from some degree of narcissism. They may simply like to be the center of attention, or they may break small rules to prove their special status. But in most cases to break a law means to cause harm to another person, which goes beyond attention-seeking.

There are at least two ways, however, in which a person with feelings of entitlement and superiority could potentially cross this line. The first is to deny that real harm was caused, and in cases of property crime this is an easy rationalization for offenders to make. Crimes against businesses may create even more emotional distance from the act of theft, since no single individual appears to be harmed by it.

A second is, frankly, to be a sadist as well as a narcissist. The desire to control someone physically, to compel them to act in a certain way, leads to many forms of violent crime - from spousal abuse, to rape and murder. This worship of violence turns pain inflicted on others and their submission into an affirmation of the criminal’s power. Violent criminals don't evade the harm they cause, but derive pleasure from it.

Changing perspective

Given the widespread assumption that crime is an attempt to overcome poverty or some form of injustice, it’s a wonder that crime persists in the face of its total failure to do those things. And there are many cases, such as with this Lego thief, in which there is no apparent injustice that the crime is aimed at overcoming. Instead the crime just appears to be an irrational escape, an act of pure self-destruction.

Alternatively, if you consider that crime persists because it often succeeds at acquiring something for the criminal, then your focus shifts. And one thing it acquires is a delusional state of freedom from morality, Raskolnikov's "right to crime", which is freedom from accountability not only for his behavior towards others, but from the accountability of acting in his own interests.

On criminal impulsiveness

Self-control theory revisited

A General Theory of Crime by Gottfredson and Hirschi suggests that we can reduce crime by improving self-control. Inheriting the conservative idea that by nature we are all plagued by impulses to harm each other - that to quote Travis Hirschi on crime “we would if we dared” – they write that what distinguishes a law abiding person from a criminal is his successful suppression of those impulses. He learns from his parents and other authority figures that they are disapproved of, and develops the ability to abstain from acting on them.

Lack of self-control, they argue, is criminality. Having the impulse to commit a crime is taken for granted as natural and universal. Self-control theory, social bonding theory, and social control theory are all examples of conservative theories of crime containment rather than crime itself.

Interestingly, the theory does not distinguish between self-destructive behaviors and behaviors that are destructive towards others – both, they argue are symptoms of lack of self-control, the essence of criminality. G&H make a number of useful observations on criminals, indicating that they have low self-control not only in their commission of crimes but in other behavior such as alcohol and drug use, or sex. They conclude that a criminal’s self-control is much lower than the average person’s, accounting for impulsive behavior of all kinds. Many people have problems controlling unhealthy impulses, for example to overeat or spend too much money. But it is only at much lower levels of self-control where you will encounter behaviors such as theft or violent episodes.

Describing criminality in terms of self-control, however, is very problematic. To say a person lacks self-control is to say he acts without considering the costs of his behavior. This is why both deterrence models of justice and theories of socialization claim that punishment reforms criminals by giving them a negative experience to associate with the crime. Yet risk and cost are important factors to the criminal: first in choosing his victim, and in the location of the crime and the weapon used, if any. These factors are selected to balance payoff and risk of arrest, and he practices techniques to avoid being observed during the act. That a thief steals from a clothing store discretely (perhaps by hiding smaller items while pretending to use the dressing room) demonstrates that he is aware of the risk and has changed his behavior accordingly. To argue that he steals because he is ignorant of the risk or suffers from a disorder that makes him unable to control his actions, is contradicted by the crime itself.

Impulsiveness means a different world view

If, then, we are all are born with criminal impulses that we must control and both the criminal and the law abider demonstrate a capacity for self-control, then what’s left to explain the crime? The answer is that everyone does not share these impulses. The criminal experiences an impulse to steal, and often does exercise a measure of self-control to ensure he can pursue that action without getting caught. You or I on the other hand might have an impulse to eat cake, or to buy the latest gadget. Whether we plan a diet or budget around those choices or not, it’s the nature of the impulse that matters when defining criminality rather than how those impulses are managed.

It’s true that criminals are often guilty of making very poor choices aside from crime, including alcohol and drug abuse, irresponsible spending, and fits of rage when dealing with others. However when discussing self-control, the other side of the coin is the reward of action. Does the criminal recognize and pursue the kinds of rewards that others do, and how might that impact his choices? If he scoffs at the 9 to 5 “suckers” who work, save and invest, is he likely to set goals similar to theirs? Will he put the money away from his latest score, or blow it on cocaine, confident that there are enough victims for tomorrow? Why would he wish to learn to express his anger more respectfully, when he believes his fists are all he needs to get his way? His impulsive actions are not merely a failure to consider consequences, but reflect his deeply held beliefs about the world.

Gang crime, and crime as a hobby

Is crime really about wealth?

One persistent idea, chiefly advocated by strain theory, is that crime is motivated by the pursuit of wealth or opportunity. That is, a person commits a crime in order to better his life. We may not approve of his methods, but after all, don’t we all want the same thing in the end? And some crimes do involve either increasing the offender’s wealth or his perceived status among peers. Take the example of gangs. The gang some argue offers friendship and, through drug dealing or theft, the potential for riches - riches the member feels are otherwise beyond his ability, due to limited education or unjust discrimination.

However despite its lucrative reputation, the benefits of the drug trade to the average gang member are pitiful even compared to opportunities in poorer neighborhoods. Steven Levitt, one of the authors of Freakonomics, wrote a paper with a sociology graduate student to determine the workings of a large drug operation. The student had received the financial records from a gang he was interviewing in 1989. This gang was one of 100 branches of a drug trading organization. Those at the top, the 20 "bosses", each received a $500,000 annual salary from the total revenue, and the head of each branch received $100,000. However a "foot soldier" would earn only $3.30/hr, or less than minimum wage. This, he jokes, is why drug dealers still live with their moms. Add to this the risk of arrest, and clearly a job at a drive-thru window is both safer and more profitable for most than work in a drug gang.

Why, then? Because they enjoy it.

Most gang crimes are not aimed at any material gain at all, nor are all gangs involved in the black market. An early study conducted by Albert Cohen in his book Delinquent Boys found that the gang activities observed were instead an exhibition of “gratuitous hostility”.

A group of boys enters a store where each takes a hat, a ball or a light bulb. They then move on to another store where these things are covertly exchanged for like articles. Then they move on to other stores to continue the game indefinitely. They steal a basket of peaches, desultorily munch on a few of them and leave the rest to spoil. They steal clothes they cannot wear and toys they will not use.

In Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency, Walter Miller observed that gangs act on certain ideas of "toughness" or "smartness"; entertainment would come at the expense of others either through intimidation, baiting and violence, or swindle. Miller notes the disdain of delinquents for honest work and formal education, the latter being “overtly disvalued and frequently associated with effeminacy”.

Whatever benefits a youth gains from a gang, material prosperity is low on the list. Furthermore, the crime is not a means to obtain benefits; the opportunity to commit crime is a benefit - a benefit enjoyed because of certain attitudes and beliefs not shared by the general population.

Scratching the surface

A gang is a group of young people which enjoys similar delinquent activities, much as other groups are formed based on shared interests, such as sports or video games. The crimes they commit are not a means to some other universal goal, but are a form of entertainment in themselves. In fact why they should find crime entertaining is a question that receives very little attention. Instead, we have an endless parade of theories suggesting that the criminal is merely a victim of pressures from his community, the “inequities of capitalism”, or from television and video games. He is either lashing out because he’s been made poor and helpless, or because we’ve brainwashed him with violent impulses beyond his control.

Of course not all crime shares entertainment as the motivation. Some crimes are recreational, while others are outbursts of anger or attempts to act out perverse fantasies (such as in the case of serial violent crimes, including murder, rape, and arson). Underlying these emotions are attitudes and worldviews – such as a victim mentality or worship of physical force and violence. The criminal behaves differently, unsurprisingly, because he thinks differently.

The error of putting yourself in a criminal’s shoes

Many people develop natural but erroneous assumptions about motives for crime. These include:

1) The crime was committed to fulfill a need.
2) The crime was a response to unique stress or emotional distress.
3) The criminal believes what he is doing is right.

For example, when we fiction readers think of a thief, our mind might go to the character Jean Valjean, from Les Miserables; in other words, to a criminal created from the desperation of poverty and human suffering. And street criminals are far more likely to win the sympathy of listeners than a wealthy embezzler or extortionist. The presence of suffering invites sympathy as a reflex, and we end up putting ourselves in the criminal’s shoes. When we do this we imagine scenarios where even we might break the law.

This begins what is known in intelligence analysis as “mirror-imaging” - when a person processes information about an event through his own experience. By substituting his experience and personality for the other person’s, this can lead to a greatly distorted understanding of behavior.

Seeing someone suffering commit a crime, one imagines himself in a similar position and draws conclusions about what might have caused the behavior. For example he decides that a criminal without a job would be less likely to recidivate if he had work skills or a better education. But because he is extrapolating from his own psychology, these conclusions only blind him to facts. He doesn’t notice that the criminal had a job, but lost it for mouthing off to his boss and missing work; that he was in school, but dropped out. And the underlying reasons for those behaviors are invisible, because they aren’t being studied.

This is why psychology is such a valuable tool for criminology. To avoid carrying assumptions to an analysis of crime, we have to fill in that blank space titled “why did he do it?” with research, not role play.

What is terrorism, really?

The word “terrorism” refers to acts of destruction used against groups to compel them to make changes in behavior or policies. Examples of terrorist groups range from the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) to Al Qaeda. The climate of terror during the aftermath of an attack, due in part to the trauma of victimization and also to the threat of future attacks, is intended to cow communities and leaders into submission.

However, the use of fear to control others is not a tactic particular to “terrorism”, making the term a somewhat inappropriate identifier. Fear and intimidation are also used in acts such as kidnapping, ransoming, and rape. This fear might be used to extort money, favors, or silence and passivity from the victim. The common denominator is not any particular form of demand - which will vary by the offender - but the desire for the power to make those demands.

When concerning rape this point is generally understood. The ultimate goal of the rapist is not sex, but the submission of the victim. According to the FBI's Crime Classification Manual, "for some rapists the need to humiliate and injure through aggression is the most salient feature of the offense, whereas for others the need to achieve sexual dominance is…" Stanton Samenow writes that,

At stake in a rape is the criminal's affirmation of his image of himself as powerful and desirable...Her attempts to ward him off only heighten his excitement. Then he tries to reduce her to a quivering, pleading speck of humanity and helps himself to what he believes was rightfully his from the start. Brute force is rarely necessary because intimidation works.

The victim's humiliation not only excites him, but serves as his protection. A humiliated and demoralized victim is less likely to report the crime or resist future attacks.

As the goal of a rapist is the subjugation of an individual to his wishes, terrorists seek to subjugate a community, business or government to theirs. This is accomplished, as it is with rape, through a combination of physical attacks and intimidation.
 
Understanding terrorist statements to the public

One obstacle to understanding the motives of terrorists is that even when their violent actions are almost universally condemned, the grievances and demands they present usually resonate with the mission of some peaceable activists. This clash of values creates debate and mixed sympathies. And this is not accidental, but by design. Demands are used by terrorist groups to cast themselves as victims of their target's unjust policies. It is important to view any public statement made by terrorists not as the ultimate reason for their actions, but as an attempt in itself to assert moral superiority and diminish the confidence and moral certainty of their target. Essentially they attempt, as rapists do, to "reduce [their victim] to a quivering, pleading speck of humanity". This is pursued through public statements and even flyers containing moral denouncements of the target group.

However for a moral denunciation to be effective, it must be rooted in a belief held by the victim. A rapist uses a woman’s insecurities against her. Denouncing her in the language of his own misogynistic world-view would be ineffective. Similarly, many times the grievances of terrorists are presented in a way to exploit moral controversy.
 
For example, in The Al Qaeda Reader, Raymond Ibrahim analyzes and compares communications by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to audiences in Muslim countries and to audiences in the West. The narratives differ completely. Al Qaeda urges Muslim audiences to kill Americans as part of their duty to religious jihad. Religious scripture is quoted extensively to justify violence in the name of compelling infidels to submit to the word of Allah. The West, and America especially, are villainized because they dare to write their own laws, defying religious commandment. The government of Saudi Arabia is denounced as corrupt for its alliance with the secular US, and for allowing American presence on its holy soil. However if this reasoning had been directly communicated to the US and to American Muslims, it would have emboldened Americans to fight against a tyrannical ideology not unlike that of the Christian Church during the Dark Ages.
 
Instead, bin Laden chose to confine his public rebuke to America’s military presence, its strikes against targets in the Middle East, and support for Israel - policies that have been the subject of serious controversy and public uncertainty in America for decades. While Al Qaeda certainly wishes the US to break its alliance with Israel, it was not expedient to also explain the underlying and much broader goal of spreading state Islam and subjugating or killing non-believers.

Interestingly, the picture bin Laden painted of America is one of a despotic world bully, which seems hypocritical in light of his own support for the truly barbaric and brutal rule of the Taliban. It seems hypocritical, that is, unless you consider that public statements and propaganda issued by Al Qaeda are intended to advance its goals as much as any planned attack. A victim who feels guilty, who believes he is responsible for the attacks against him, will lack the strength to resist.

Terrorists are not freedom fighters

It is sometimes said that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", suggesting that the actions of a terrorist could be viewed as monstrous or heroic depending on the side one is on. Following 9/11 the question ringing in the air was, "why do they hate us?" Perhaps projecting their own experience and morality onto our attackers, some (such as Ron Paul) believed that the attacks were retaliation for American policies violating freedoms in the Muslim world. However, terrorists do not act to advance their own freedoms, but to deny the freedoms of others. They are not fighting for the betterment of their lives, but for power over the lives of others. Certainly they represent a "side", but theirs is the side of rapists and dictators who thrill in breaking the spirit of their victims.

Conservative vs. liberal criminology

Two perspectives on crime

So far I’ve spent much time in the blog reviewing (and criticizing) what are sometimes referred to as “conservative” theories of crime. While these theories are described as defending individual responsibility, individual choice and rationality, they do these things in name only. From the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham to the social control theories of today, I’ve argued that conservative models are in fact deterministic. Mandatory sentencing and drug prohibition are examples of policies attempting to manipulate criminal thinking, treating criminals as machines whose behavior can be changed with pokes and prods. Alter the punishment for a crime and, it’s argued, that crime will cease to be appealing. Clean his body of drugs and, it’s argued, the criminal will no longer feel violent impulses. At no point is the criminal’s actual motivation and thinking engaged or challenged.

And sadly, no better theories exist within the “liberal” schools to address this deficit. At first, there seem to be a variety of theories that present motivations for crime, motivations that would set criminals apart from other individuals. However these motivations are not derived from psychological research or interviews, but are instead deduced from a sociological worldview. While I won't fully explore each theory in this post, I do want to introduce that worldview.

If I were to name the essential premise of the conservative school of criminology, it would be that humans are criminal by nature, and must learn to suppress or otherwise disincentivize this behavior.

If, then, I were to name the essential premise of liberal theories, it would be that “crime” is backlash caused by social injustice. “Crime” is in scare quotes here because these theories treat criminal behavior as a symptom, a consequence of problems in society. To punish an offender, according to this school of thought, ultimately “ignores the disease”.

Determinism

What are examples of the "disease"? According to strain theory, inequalities of wealth and status. These inequalities create feelings of envy and frustration that are relieved by means of criminal activity, such as theft.

Labeling theory argues that crime can be caused by the internalization of negative labels. A juvenile who is repeatedly called a “delinquent” by authority figures may feel forced to accept the label and the role.

Others argue that many criminals are simply mentally ill, and that crime results because we are punishing offenders rather than seeing that they get the treatment they need.

So while conservatives subscribe to a psychological determinism, liberal theories subscribe to a social determinism. In other words, these theories hold that crime is caused by social forces, not individual choice. For an example on how this approach is used to study crime, see my blog post on the article, "Dropout and Delinquency". Rather than studying the mind of juvenile delinquents or criminals, social determinists attempt to predict social forces that would account for behavior, and measure their presence. Just as conservative research measures the presence of alcohol or drugs, or discipline in the home. In this way, the two perspectives don't appear so different in their treatment of the criminal, as a person moved like a puppet by outside forces.

White collar crime and feelings of entitlement

Myths surrounding white collar criminals

In "The Perils of Fraud Detection", an article published recently in The Forensic Examiner, Frank Perri exposes misperceptions about white collar criminals. Generally they are regarded as "one-shot" offenders. They have the reputation of being "'good people' who committed a 'bad act'". You might have in your mind characters from the comedy "Office Space", who fantasized about and then carried out an embezzlement scheme against their "evil" employer that quickly got out of hand, with humorous results and one-liners about prison rape.

In fact, according to Perri, white collar criminals are often repeat offenders and share the same attitudes toward crime as non-white collar criminals. The article reviews six cases in which individuals under investigation for fraud or embezzlement committed murder in the attempt to avoid detection. In one case, the head of a diamond company fabricated invoices to get advance payments and then hired a hitman to kill co-workers who could implicate him. Perri is clear that such cases are rare, yet they shatter the myth that white-collar criminals are innately nonviolent or otherwise averse to criminal behavior.

The article then describes warning signs that can be used to spot potential for workplace violence, using profiles of white-collar criminals. Personality traits he warns of include: "blames others for his or her problems, displays a sense of entitlement, exploitative, egocentric, grandiosity, difficulty taking criticism, and feels victimized." Offenders believe that they are entitled to commit fraud and feel victimized when that entitlement is challenged. Narcissistic psychopaths are more likely to then retaliate with violence or homicide.

I should call special attention to feelings of entitlement and victimization, which appear common among the criminal population, as explored in a previous post. Also, in Inside the Criminal Mind, Stanton Samenow described an exchange with a teenage delinquent he believed was characteristic of the criminal's lack of empathy for their victims. The teen had robbed a bank at gunpoint. Because he had not fired the gun, he could not understand that any harm was caused.

Even though he knew full well that he had done something very wrong, serious enough to land him in detention and perhaps to be tried as an adult, he did not think of himself as having inflicted any real harm. From his perspective, he was the only true victim because he was incarcerated.

Entitlement mentality vs. Strain theory

Strain theory is one popular explanation of criminal activity. The theory argues that crime is the result of inequalities of wealth and opportunity. An individual commits a crime, according to this theory, in order to satisfy universal needs and wants. Because of his own poverty or due to prejudices in society, he lacks access to education and high paying work. He sees others living richly - driving expensive cars, wearing expensive clothes, using the latest gadgets – and is frustrated that his own position keeps him from having these things. Since he cannot pursue these comforts by legitimate means, he resorts to crime.

Yet millions of dollars are extorted and embezzled by highly educated men who are themselves symbols of “white privilege”, who had the opportunities to earn wealth legitimately but took to crime instead. In fact, in their capacity for manipulation and violence they have more in common with their street crime cousins than with coworkers.

The mindset of white collar criminals seriously discredits the notion that crime is a phenomenon of "the poor" inviting economic explanations. Whatever a person's income, they may choose to earn their way honestly or take the "shortcut" to wealth by stealing from others. Just as crime models based on family breakdown cannot explain why one child of abusive parents turns to crime while another does not, strain theory is unable to explain why most residents in poor neighborhoods do not become robbers and thieves despite suffering the same conditions. The common denominator of criminal behavior here is not income or social barriers or prejudices, but lack of personal responsibility for ones own actions, and feelings of entitlement to the work and property of others.

Desistance and the “aging out” phenomenon

One of the most fascinating topics in crime is the “aging out” phenomenon. The number of offenders recorded across gender and race spikes in the early twenties, before sharply declining. (The example from UK data shown here is taken from a Cambridge article on the subject ) The number of offenses also decreases sharply, meaning that this curve cannot be explained only by a spike in one-time adolescent offenders; repeat offenders, responsible for the majority of criminal activity, also appear to begin desisting from crime at that time.

What during those early years is most responsible for turning individuals away from crime? There are many possible reasons, including:

1) Guilt. Remorse for the harm caused to others is a powerful motivator for change.
2) Lifestyle incentives. Career success and relationships are incompatible with criminal activity, which may create incentives for young adults to change their ways.
3) Perception of risk. Offenders may become more aware of the risk of personal injury, or physical aging may present limitations to the commission of crimes.
4) Increased skill. Over time, criminals may learn to avoid detection and capture, reducing recorded crime.
5) Incarceration. Offenders cannot commit crimes if they have been removed from society, and this may deter them from future offenses.

Item 4, if a significant factor, would imply that the age curve is inaccurate since it would not reflect a real desistance trend. However crime we cannot detect by definition cannot be factored into a measure of desistance, so this possibility is currently a dead-end.

Item 5 also has limited value for explaining desistance. 2009 prison inmate statistics reveal that 209,100 inmates were ages 20-24, dwarfing the 23,800 reported for ages 18-19. Assuming that these 20-24 year olds were not incarcerated for a first offense, this would help to account for a reduction in recorded crime from ages 18-24. Yet incapacitation is not “desistance”, and for some categories of crime imprisonment appears to have little if any deterrent effect. According to one BJS study, robbers, burglars, larcenists and motor vehicle thieves were the highest re-offenders at 70-75%. Overall, 67.5% of prisoners were rearrested within 3 years. While incarceration reduces crime for its duration, it cannot explain reduction over the life-course.

A valuable distinction that is frequently overlooked in literature is criminal activity and criminal psychology. Desistance is defined as the cessation of criminal activity, yet this can only be measured by reported crime. How, then, would you distinguish between a reformed criminal and a criminal biding his time? Neither are maintaining a criminal record, and both may be attending required therapy, reporting to work, and following their parole; yet one intends to re-offend. The most important indicators of criminal reform are psychological, not behavioral. For this reason I focus on the attitudes and thinking of offenders, and consider items 1-3 to be the best contenders for explaining desistance, and therefore the best areas for research.

Victims of crime and their recovery

Heaven's Rain

For this post I decided to focus not on criminal choices but on the choice of victims during their recovery. I recently attended a small premier for a movie based on a true story, titled “Heaven’s Rain”. A synopsis of the film can be found here.

For the survivors of violent crime, the greatest damage is psychological rather than physical. The film tells of siblings Brooks and Leslie Douglass, who were left for dead after their parents were murdered during a home robbery. The official site notes that Brooks “struggled through high school and college, repeatedly failing out, drinking heavily, and given to bouts of rage”. Leslie, “once a beauty queen with a beautiful voice, fought to put her life together as she dealt with recurring nightmares and struggled in relationships.”

How the victim responds to this suffering can determine whether happiness in their life will be possible, or whether they will remain consumed by grief, anger, and undeserved guilt. Brooks went to law school and became a Senator in Oklahoma. At the start of the film he is shown sponsoring a bill for victim’s rights. However in his private life he remains obsessed and miserable. The movie, influenced strongly by the Christian background of its creator Brooks Douglass himself, proposes forgiveness as the answer.

Letting go

The meaning and impact of forgiveness in the film, however, is not completely clear. In the climactic scene, Brooks forgives one of his two attackers during a visit to the prison. This follows a tense exchange in which he admits he is incapable of granting forgiveness, even knowing that his father would have done so in his place. He is visibly angry and grief-stricken, at one point giving the prisoner the keys to his handcuffs, as if daring him to start a physical confrontation. The scene culminates when he stands and announces that the anger and suffering need to end, suggesting that the decision to forgive was prompted less by the credo that one should “love the sinner” than by the need to heal.

Since we had the pleasure of a Q&A with Mr. Douglass at the premier, I did receive some elaboration. One audience member had asked what effect the death penalty has on crime victims. He said that with the execution of one of the attackers, Steven Hatch, he felt deep relief that he would never be brought again to relive the events of his parents’ death in court. It gave him final resolution. He also related a sense of betrayal when the shooter, Glen Ake, received a retrial and was sentenced to life imprisonment. My personal takeaway from these comments is that “forgiveness” used here does not relieve the criminal of culpability, but helps the victim to move past his suffering to live again.

His success in getting over the pain of his past gave Brooks Douglass a new life and inspired his sister’s own recovery. He not only started the movie project but acted in it as his own father, pursuing an old dream to make movies while finally telling his story and serving his passion for justice and victims’ rights.

Further thoughts

Although I started this post noting that my focus would be on victims during recovery, it also provides interesting food for thought on the behavior of criminals. Many criminals were at some point victims of violent crime or abuse by their own parents. And it would be grossly unfair to expect anyone, especially as vulnerable as a child or adolescent, to suffer violence without wanting to lash out in anger and pain.

As I discussed in a previous post, however, criminals do not appear to deal with victimization by attempting to overcome their feelings of anger; instead, this pain is embraced and used to excuse the harm they inflict on others. Real victimization mingles in their mind with imagined conspiracies, Jack Abbott's "hostile world". Child victimization alone is not a reliable predictor of crime in adulthood. However, perhaps how a child deals with trauma could be an indicator of that potential.

Criminal “toughness” and victimhood

In From Hard Time, Understanding and Reforming the Prison, Robert Johnson studies accounts of institutional life.

The “tough and menacing pose”, state-raised convict Jack Abbott argues, is the only way “to keep a hostile and rejecting world at bay”. He defends his malice and capacity for violence as the result of persecution by an “uncaring and impersonal” society. In fact, Abbott was the victim of physical and sexual abuse while in foster homes as a child. Yet he experienced a long line of “failures to adjust”: first by dropping out of the sixth grade, being committed to a training school for six years, leading later to alcohol abuse, fraudulent check printing, stabbing a fellow inmate during incarceration for his crime, throwing a water pitcher at his judge and attempting to choke a juror. After escaping prison during his 20 year sentence he robbed a bank, again “failing to adjust” to the institutional life he was confined to by an allegedly “hostile world”.

Abbott bemoans an institution that is “uncaring and impersonal”, that fails to show empathy and understanding for his lifetime of criminal actions. He may rail against the behavior of others, their lack of understanding or compassion, but he holds his own behavior to no such standard. Violence, he explains,

is what makes us effective, men whose judgment impinges on others, on the world…Here in prison the most respected and honored men among us are those who have killed other men…It is not merely fear, but respect.

An ex-inmate, Shroeder, went even further, claiming that

if you could convince inmates and guards that you had absolutely nothing to lose and that your countermeasures…would be totally unrestrained…then you were given respect and a wide berth, and people looked to you for leadership and advice. “He’s crazy,” they’d say admiringly, even longingly, when the name came up. “He’s just totally, completely insane”.

In civilized society, a person might demonstrate his independence by developing a special skill or knowledge to bring to the job market. Such a skill is then a commodity to trade with others. In convict culture, however, the only commodity is “respect”, developed by openly demonstrating ones capacity for wanton, indiscriminate violence and destruction. To the outside world, a convict may plead for understanding, may defend his behavior as self-protection; among his fellow convicts, however, violence is not regarded as something to be excused or defended, but is praised and encouraged as a sign of efficaciousness and strength.

"Making Good"

I am currently reading a fascinating book called Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives, by Shadd Maruna. The book focuses on one element referred to as the “self-narrative”, defined as how individuals make sense of their lives. According to Maruna, “sustained desistance most likely requires a fundamental and intentional shift in a person’s sense of self.” His research set out to compare the self-narratives of those who persist in committing crimes, and those who have desisted from crime.

Some aspects of the author’s approach I find mistaken. For example, he does not attempt to understand or acknowledge that crime is the result of criminal thinking. In fact he shows open disdain at attempts to differentiate the psychology of criminals from the psychology of the law abiding, calling such views a belief in the “bogeyman” or “mark of Cain”. He argues that the “bogeyman” is a fascination of Americans, who prefer to think of criminals as irredeemably evil. They draw comfort from the fact that they have nothing in common with such monsters. Maruna, on the other hand, treats criminal activity as merely one form of addiction, a condition from which one can recover with work.

This emotional response to the study of criminal thinking seems to be based on a soft determinism. He describes reformed offenders as having an “exaggerated sense of control over the future and an inflated, almost missionary, sense of purpose in life.” Maruna refers to this as the “process of willful, cognitive distortion” or “making good”. The process is a distortion because the offender is rejecting the notion that he is doomed or fated to his situation, a fate Maruna himself calls “rational realism.” Persisting offenders

felt they had little chance of achieving success in the "straight" world’…[and] from what we know about the causes of criminal behavior, they might just be right.

Certainly if criminals are fated to be so because of their social circumstances, it is unfair to stigmatize them. Yet if the offender can change after shifting his “sense of self”, is this not proof that he is not fated and that the core of his condition is his thinking and not his environment? In fact while he presents a world that an ex offender cannot succeed in as “rational realism”, Maruna admits this view “probably does the individual a disservice”. If you can only succeed in life by rejecting your view of reality, you might want to rethink that view.

It is interesting, then, that an author with this outlook could offer such a promising idea as the “self-narrative”. And I agree with him that understanding how ex-convicts maintain their efforts to desist from crime would help greatly in rehabilitative efforts. It would also help to identify early the signs that a juvenile is headed down that path. I will write a follow-up post to review the results of his research.

Sociology and the criminal mind ignored

“A priori” dead ends

In the study “Dropout and Delinquency” (Sweeten, Bushway & Paternoster, 2009) on the relationship between school attendance and delinquency, the authors argued that the researcher’s role is “to generate meaningful a priori theoretical predictions”. Theories are not developed from observation, but essentially from imagination, projecting possible explanations to be measured. Survey results are then used to either lend weight to or disprove these theoretical predictions.

In their research, Sweeten, Bushway and Paternoster requested that respondents classify their reasons for dropping out using one of the following categories: school reasons, such as expulsion, suspension, poor performance or social difficulties; personal reasons, such as getting married or pregnant, or having conflicting responsibilities at home; economic reasons, such as being offered a job, entering the military, or having financial difficulties; or other unclassified reasons. This range of reasons was developed using popular sociological theories on the influence of stress and social control.

The challenge of taking an a priori approach is sometimes embarrassingly clear. Only “unclassified reasons” for leaving school appeared to have a criminogenic effect, suggesting that the researchers were unable to anticipate any valid causal explanations for the behavior of their subjects. They concluded that “concern about the event of dropout may be misplaced. Instead, attention must be focused on the process that leads to dropout and criminal involvement” – ignoring that this was precisely the subject of their own study.

Behaviorism

Of course there is a challenge with all surveys in attempting to understand human behavior. Individuals may not themselves be fully aware of the reasons for what they do, or they may give dishonest reasons to prevent personal embarrassment. There is a great uncertainty, therefore, about what is really going on in the mind of the subjects.

Yet some theories do not regard this as a limitation. A juvenile delinquent may have developed unsuccessful approaches to dealing with stress or responding to authority, but these cannot be captured in a questionnaire. What can be captured is whether he is receiving failing grades. If you believe that individuals are programmed to behave as they do by their environment, then his thoughts and motivations are of marginal importance. We only need to study a person’s behavior and how it is affected by various stimuli, according to this perspective. It is the grades that then lead him to drop out of school, and the resulting poverty that leads him to crime. Even when the evidence fails to validate the theory, the underlying cues to a person’s behavior – his thoughts and beliefs – remain ignored.

Social learning theories vs. choice

Differential association

“White collar” crime refers to crimes committed by those in positions of trust or authority (e.g. employees, businessmen, public officials). The name was coined by Edwin Sutherland, who had argued that “the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups.” (“Differential Association”) Although white collar crime is sometimes also referred to as “economic crime”, its classification was based on the group characteristics of the offender rather than the types of crime committed. For example, embezzlment is considered white collar crime because it is a crime committed by white collar workers. The term “blue collar” crime is less often used, but can refer to crimes typically committed by lower income brackets, such as robbery.

As a general observation, it seems intuitively obvious that groups can promote the learning of criminal activity. For example, gangs not only provide an environment where delinquent activity is permissible, but minimize the chance of apprehension through cooperation. Similarly, large scale white collar crime requires the complicity of multiple offenders to succeed. It seems highly unlikely that one individual could have planned and executed the Enron accounting fraud.

Yet Sutherland does not merely say that groups are where one learns how to commit crime. According to his theory of differential association, criminal behavior results when an individual is exposed to an excess of “definitions” favorable to law breaking. The beliefs of the group actually produce criminal behavior in individuals, by “association”. Individuals in lower economic classes may be exposed to definitions favorable to vandalism, theft or robbery; individuals in wealthier groups may be exposed to definitions favorable to business fraud or embezzlement. The degree of exposure has, according to this theory, a direct effect on the resulting behavior.

Problems

However, in A General Theory of Crime Gottfredson and Hirschi observe that white collar criminals are especially concerned with hiding their crimes from other employees, suggesting that if these crimes are developed in groups, such groups are small in relation to the organization. Does this not suggest that there is an excess of definitions favorable to law abiding behavior?

There are various theories that take a group approach, claiming that behavior is the product of group learning. However the notion that individuals become criminals by some form of osmosis, automatically absorbing the ideas of the group, must artificially limit what counts as “the group” in order to account for behavior. An employee who embezzles money may work within a group of other corrupt employees, but does he not also work within a much larger community of law abiding ones? A delinquent is drawn to criminal behavior because of the influence of other delinquents, but why is he not likewise influenced by his family, law abiding siblings or the many role models he encounters at school and in the community?

Social learning theories also raise the question: if a person’s values are determined by those around him, then where did they get their values from? Presumably from another group, and then what about them? Social learning is not an explanation, but an infinite regression.

Social learning theories promote crime

The problems of social learning follow from ignoring the fact that individuals can choose the groups they wish to join. Just as you may join a community group that shares an interest in tennis or theater, so criminals seek out associates who aid in their activities. As a child, were you automatically inducted into a group of other students, or did you choose your friends and have to win their approval by demonstrating similar attitudes or interests? In any community there is a diverse range of groups with competing values. This very observation contradicts social learning theories, which if true would discourage differences and spread similarities.

And this is the real danger of social learning theories. By taking the position that criminal behavior is merely learned from others, they excuse individuals from the responsibility of acting by their own judgment. The criminal becomes a victim to be “treated” rather than punished. More than this: by giving the ideas of the group primacy, they say in effect that individuals have no power over their own lives. Consider the logic. Criminal activity infers that criminal values are in the majority. Individual behavior is the product of the values of the majority. Therefore, if you are a law-abiding individual in a crime-ridden community, you are doomed. If you have children, they are doomed as well. No attitude could aid in the spread of crime more than this.

Investigating the drug-crime link

A correlation between drug use and crime can hardly be denied. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS), National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) and Home Office in the UK all report high rates of positive drug tests among arestees. For example, DHSS reported in 1997 that arestees tested positive for drugs at rates ranging from 42.5% in Anchorage, Alaska to 78.7% in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yet correlation is not proof of a relationship between these variables, and certainly not enough to wage a “war on drugs”. So there are three basic arguments policy-makers have used to establish a causal relationship between drugs and crime:

- that drugs have a pharmacological influence on its user, causing aggressiveness and violent crime
- that drugs cause a dependency and need for financial funding satisfied through the commission of crime
- that the illicit drug trade itself generates violent crime.

Pharmacological influence

Evidence of crime based on the effects of illegal substances is surprisingly shaky. The DHHS, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and NCJRS gather this evidence in part through inmate self-reporting, where subjects are asked if they were under the influence of drugs at the time of their offense. In one 2004 study, 39% of state inmates guilty of a property offense reported committing their offense under the influence of drugs. In addition, 24% of violent offenders in federal prison reported the same. BJS and NCJRS noted that many victims of violent offenses report that their offender appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The 2005 NCVS found that 27% of victims believed their attacker was on drugs or intoxicated.

Interestingly, all of this evidence is correlative and says nothing about the reason for the crimes in question. To conclude that drugs were responsible would requre that we assume the offender was not motivated to commit the crime prior to the drug use. More importantly, it requires that we assume the drugs are capable of generating violent impulses, which is begging the question. The fact that alcohol is often included in surveys to obtain larger numbers also does not speak well for this causal explanation. Stevens, Trace, & Bewley-Taylor note that although cocaine is often linked to aggression and heroin to property crime, more crime involves alcohol. In a Canadian survey, 40-50% of crime was attributed by inmates to either alcohol or illicit drugs: 10-15% to illicit drugs only, 15-20% to alcohol only, and 10-20% to both alcohol and illicit drugs. They also mention that in one study of 22 cities in the US, no link was found between levels of heroin or crack use among arrestees and crime rates.

On “supporting the habit”

DHHS, BJSS, NCJRS as well as the EMCDDA used inmate feedback to determine whether they had committed their offense to buy drugs, supporting the “economic-compulsive” theory. For example, NCJRS cited one study in which 27% of state and federal inmates incarcerated for robbery and 30-32% of those for burglarly reported they committed their offense to support their drug habit. The Home Office survey was less specific, asking inmates if they perceived a connection between their offense and their drug use. However the results of these surveys is suspect, and not simply because criminals may be lying to provide more sympathetic excuses for their crimes.

Benson, for example, argues that illicit drug use in young adults is associated with higher wages. In a 1986 survey, almost 50% of regular users reported having a full-time job in the previous year. Also, according to a BJS 1989 survey, 65.6% of daily users had wages and salaries as a source of income. Benson also criticizes the implication that drug use means drug dependency. In one survey of cocaine users over 25, only 1 in 11 “lifetime” users reported use in the last month. He noted that heroin users abstain for substantial periods of time, and that pharmacologists describe heroin withdrawal as a “bad case of one week flu”. It may be the case that property offenders are often addicted to drugs, but the drugs themselves do not appear to lead automatically to addiction, let alone to crime supporting such addiction.

Illicit drug trade

The most curious causal link used by government regards the black market drug trade, since it would seem to indict the “war on drugs” itself. In a 1988 study of New York City homicides, 74% were associated with the illicit drug trade. DHHS suggested that violence may be generated through several factors: competition for drug market, disputes and rip-offs in illegal market, and tendency toward violence of those who participate in drug trafficking generate violent crime. The NCJRS report, in fact, explores the possibility that violence in the drug market is caused by its illicit nature. The authors suggest that system violence is caused by a combination of factors, including the value of the drug being traded, the greater risk of enforcement by police, and the increased violence and aggressiveness of users. Because illicit markets are not protected by property rights, no contracts are enforceable except through threat of violence. The crack market, they argue, could be associated with violence because of the special risk of dealing in the drug given its high value and risk of punishment.

Problem with temporal ordering

In order for drug use to be a cause of crime, it must be shown to occur before the crimes it causes. Yet this is more often not the case. Urbis Keys Young find that criminal behavior most often precedes drug use. According to a DUCO study 54% of inmates reported offenses occurred before drugs, vs. 17% reporting that drugs started first and 29% that they started at the same time. Benson also contests the claim that drug use precedes other offenses. According to a BJS survey of prison inmates found that about half of those who used a major drug and three-fifths of those who used a major drug regularly, did so after a nondrug crime. More than half of jail inmates who reported being a regular user said their first crime was an average of two years before drug use.

Conclusion

I won’t argue here that drugs and crime are unrelated. Drugs may not cause crime, but that does not discount other possible relationships. Clearly drug use and crime are highly compatible activities, or they would not occur together so frequently. Yet current research seems to focus either on proving the government’s case, or disproving it. I am not familiar with the kind of research I would need to draw serious alternative conclusions. So for the time being, I will pose a few thoughts and questions for follow-up:

- In what ways might the high of drug use be similar to the high of crime? It is reasonable to expect that an offender will seek activities that satisfy a common psychological craving. Also, could the escape of drug use be a method to avoid dealing with the consequences of criminal behavior?

- The illicit nature of the drug trade means that some criminals (“pushers”) may be drawn not by drug use but by the thrill of the criminal market itself and illegal income.

- What is the role of gang activity on drug use?

Although criminalization has strengthened the correlation between drugs and crime, even after legalization there could be persistent associations – as is the case with alcohol and crime. Ultimately the issue comes down to understanding the criminal lifestyle, seeking integrated explanations for their behaviors.

Website of interest: Dr. Stanton Samenow's homepage

I introduced quotations from Dr. Samenow,a forensic psychologist, in earlier posts. I would be remiss if I did not mention that he maintains a website listing his work and, much to my excitement when I discovered it, a blog-style "Concept of the Month". This month he discusses the challenges of reforming from crime.

I have currently only read one of his books, Inside the Criminal Mind. However I expect that his others are filled with further experiences supporting and elaborating on those ideas. Don't let the barebones design of his site fool you. If you have enjoyed the beginnings of my blog, please take a look; you won't regret it.

“Crimes of passion” and two approaches to motive

Sources: Inside the Criminal Mind, A General Theory of Crime, FBI’s Crime Classification Manual, Daily Mail

The “crime of passion”

Reading an article the other day, I remembered the alleged category of “crimes of passion”. These crimes are spontaneous, unpredictable, and occur in response to a sudden emotional trauma. For example a husband, hearing of his wife’s infidelity, murders her or her lover in a fit of blind rage. In fact, this account of events follows naturally from conservative criminology, which claims that criminality results from lack of control. The husband may have been a law abiding individual, may have been the perfect family man and neighbor, but this behavior was the result of decades of conditioning by laws and society. The emotional shock simply loosened those controls, leaving him unable to hold back his anger.

On first inspection of the crime, details would support that view. The FBI calls this a “spontaneous domestic homicide”, spontaneous because it is unstaged. The crime usually takes place at the offender’s residence with a weapon of opportunity. And often there will be signs of “undoing”, indicating remorse following the kill. This means the offender may do things such as wash, redress or cover the body, or reposition it on a sofa or bed to give the appearance of sleep. They do this for their own benefit in the attempt to erase the crime from their mind, not for the purpose of concealing it from authorities. If you stop here, you may conclude that suddenly the offender was overwhelmed with rage and lost his mind. After the episode he regained his senses and was hit by the realization of what he had done.

However, the profile of these cases includes a history of abuse or conflict between the offender and victim, dispelling the illusion that the violence was new or foreign to the character of the offender. Criminal psychologist Stanton Samenow observed this pattern, rejecting the view that such crimes are truly unplanned. Previous acts of violence or threats may be hushed up by the family, making the homicide appear sudden and out of character. He discusses one case he was referred by the court: the offender had no prior criminal record and appeared to have just gone “berserk”. The offender himself claimed that he had just snapped and did not know what he was doing. However over the course of interviews it was clear that the marriage had been plagued with fights, that in fact he had struck his wife on several occasions and once even attempted to drown her in the bathtub. Because no one knew of this violence, they could not explain the murder. Samenow concluded that,

…the act was not the product of a deranged mind, nor was it perpetuated by a man to whom violence was an alien impulse. The idea of ridding himself of his wife had occurred to him again and again. In that sense, he was programmed to murder his wife—programmed not by someone else, but by his own habitual patterns of responding to conflict.

People seem to want to conclude that such violence is sudden even when it clearly is not. In the article mentioned earlier, a man killed his wife and four others after complaining that she did not cook his eggs the way he wanted them. The title of the article: “Husband enraged over how his wife cooked his breakfast eggs kills her and four others in Kentucky shotgun rampage”.

After shouting at his wife, she fled to a neighbor’s trailer. He chased her with his shotgun, firing dozens of shots and killing 5 people, before finally killing himself. Despite the title of the article, the offender’s behavior was not a sudden, new anger over something as ridiculous as breakfast, but was the climax of months of brewing hatred. He was about to be evicted because of increased hostility toward neighbors, and one neighbor reported a history of violence.

Discussion

There are two approaches one could take in analyzing such cases. One would be to identify the offender’s problem as “impulse control”, which is often done by conservative criminologists. However, to do so smuggles in this word “impulse”, which needs to be explained. Would you say that the primary problem in the last case was that the offender “failed to control his impulse to kill wife and neighbors”? Is “control” really the proper focus of the analysis, or are you wondering instead why he had this desire to kill that needed controlling? This is one clear example of the conservative “nothing to see here” attitude toward criminal motivation. An “impulse” is taken for granted as something natural to everyone, with the only difference that criminals have difficulty controlling them.

For example, according to Gottfredson and Hirschi in A General Theory of Crime, the nature of criminality is “lack of self-control”. Interestingly, this defect manifests both in criminal behavior and in behaviors such as over-indulgences of food, alcohol or sex, and drug use. They suggest that by improving self-control in even a non-criminal behavior, this should improve self-control in criminal behaviors, since the source is the same. There is no qualitative distinction made – with reference to motivation – between overeating and murder.

The alternative presented by Samenow is to examine how the offender has habitually responded to conflict. Those who commit “crimes of passion” have a history of responding to conflict with anger and threats. The nature of the conflict itself is of trivial importance; it could be over an affair, or over how eggs were prepared at breakfast. It is natural to feel frustrated by conflict with others, however rather than examine the reason for the conflict and either resolve it or come to terms with it, the offender takes his own frustration as a primary for the other party to acknowledge and bend to. If they do not adapt their behavior to his liking, he responds with further threats, escalating into murderous fantasies.

The Classical School and conservative criminology

The roots of the American criminal justice system are mixed in nature, divided between what is known as the Classical School of criminology - consisting of the works of Cesaria Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham - and the works of the Enlightenment thinkers. Despite their differences, together they helped to civilize the Western world by fighting against the use of torture and for the rule of law. It was from these reforms that the modern penal system was born.

However, it was a conflict in philosophies and views of man’s nature that would eventually lead to “conservative” criminology. While the Enlightenment was driven by praise for man’s use of reason and his free will, the Classical School held a more mechanistic view, particularly in the utilitarianism of Bentham.

The deterrence theory of the Classical School

In the Classical School, there is no fundamental difference between the natures of criminal or law abiding behavior. Criminals, like others, are “rational” beings who pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Humans are universally vulnerable to these pleasures and pains. Bentham outlined 14 types of “simple pleasures” and 12 types of “simple pains”. The pleasures included example such as, “pleasures of the senses”, “pleasures of benevolence”, and even “pleasures of power” and “pleasures of malevolence”. Some pleasures have complementary pains, such as “pains of the senses” and, curiously, “pains of benevolence”.

If the pleasures of an action outweigh the pains, the result is the action. Criminals are those who judge the pleasures of crime to be greater than their pains. The problem for society, then, is how to weigh the system in favor of law abiding behavior. This is done primarily through punishment, deterring criminal behavior by stacking the painful consequences against it. Both the severity of punishment and certainty of punishment are variables adding to the calculation. Beccaria believed that punishment was most effective soon after commission of the crime; this creates a close mental association between the crime and the punishment, deterring future offenses. The certainty of punishment and the timing of punishment, then, are more important to the theory than severity.

“Rational” as used in the Classical School, merely refers to this calculation of pleasures and pains. It is in this respect deterministic. A person can make a mistake in the calculation, or can be ignorant of the possible consequences of their behavior, but knowledge of pleasures or pains has a direct effect on decision making. The appeal by Beccaria to associate unwanted behavior with pains actually calls to mind animal training, as opposed to human cognition.

Determinism in conservative criminology

The notion that crime can be reduced and prevented by manipulating pleasure and pain inputs is at the foundation of conservative criminology. There is a variety of theories and policies, but they each attack the same problem on different fronts. For example, laws have been adjusted either with respect to the severity of punishment (think 3 strike laws and mandatory minimum sentencing) or to the certainty of punishment (as in “zero tolerance” enforcement).

There are also theories on the effect social influences have on behavior. Social control theories suppose that strong bonds to family or community encourage law abiding behavior, because deviance will lead the offender to be ostracized from loved ones. This pain becomes a deterrent complementing the deterrent of institutional punishment. As Travis Hirschi, author of the most popular social control theory put it,

To violate a norm is…to act contrary to the wishes and expectations of other people. If a person does not care about the wishes and expectations of other people—that is, if he is insensitive to the opinion of others—then he is to that extent not bound by the norms. He is free to deviate.

To reduce crime, then, parents and authority figures form bonds with children. Notice the intent of this strategy: children do not behave themselves because they have formed a rational conviction, but because they do not want to upset others. They have become “socialized”.

The focus on control of criminality echoes an earlier point from the Classical School, that criminals are not different from the rest of us. Criminality results from the failure to suppress it, sounding very much like Hobbes. From Hirschi:

The question, “Why do they do it?” is simply not the question the theory is designed to answer. The question is, “Why don’t we do it?” There is much evidence that we would if we dared.

Conclusion

Conservatives are known for their advocacy of “retributive justice”. Because individuals have free will, and because they should know better, criminals deserve to be punished for their actions. And punishment should be fair, meaning it should be proportionate to the evil of the crime committed. However in practice, sentencing bears little relationship to this principle. According to the United States Sentencing Commission in FY 2008, the national average length of imprisonment for drug trafficking was 83.2 months. For manslaughter, it was 48.5 months. The discrepancy is due to the alleged deterrent value of the sentence, and the elimination of drugs is a high priority in the justice system. The utter failure of the “war on drugs” serves as good evidence of the error of this approach.

Of course the main problem with this school of thinking is that humans are not robots. There is no universal list of what constitutes pleasure or pain for each man, and they do not always seek the first and avoid the second. Criminals, and in fact many law abiding people, can often be downright self-destructive.

Theories of socialization face similar difficulties, despite their popular appeal. In Inside the Criminal Mind, Stanton Samenow notes that parents of delinquent children are often caring and have tried exhaustively to create an environment of discipline and encouragement. Yet their child’s misbehavior is perceived as reflective of poor parenting skills:

The counselor sees that the youngster is behaving outrageously and seems to be getting away with it. But the counselor may not realize that for years the child has thwarted nearly all parental attempts at disciplining him.

Which brings me to my last point. Conservative theories have a “nothing to see here” approach when it comes to criminal behavior, and this inhibits development. There is little to no interest in what the criminal thinks, because such interest would first require ditching the assumption that everyone thinks the same way. Perhaps also because these theories are widely (and falsely) recognized to be based on the premise of free will, the authors believe it themselves. As a result, by focusing exclusively on the punishment and socialization of offenders, they cripple their ability to understand why neither strategy works as planned.

Hostage situations and the Discovery building attack

Sources: FoxNews, The Huffington Post, and the FBI’s Crime Classification Manual

On Wednesday, a man entered the Discovery building in Silver Spring, MD threatening employees with a gun and explosives. Although most people were evacuated, he managed to keep three hostages for the stand-off with police, demanding changes to Discovery Channel and TLC television programming.

Hostage situations never end well for the hostage takers. Their actions assure them either prison time or death. In this case the gunman, identified as James Jay Lee, was shot and killed while pointing his gun at one of the hostages. So what could such criminals possibly be thinking? Do they really think their demands will be met under those conditions, or that they have a chance of remaining free men?

Background

Lee had a history of confrontation with the Discovery Channel. In 2008 he was arrested for disorderly conduct, when he paid homeless to help protest with him in front of the building, throwing money in the air. He complained that the channel was not serious about airing programming to help save the planet, and that it was merely using the environmental movement for commercial purposes. His suggestions, and later demands, consisted largely of programming to portray humans as a "parasitic" and "filthy" "breeding culture", pushing for population reduction through sterilization and immigration control. According to Lee,

Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that.

In addition, they must

Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on [their] channels and on TLC.

In his demands list, Lee referred to humans, babies and human activity as "filth" or "filthy" 7 times. This provides some insight into his obsessive mindset. Lee had been estranged from his family since 2008, and posted on his blog that "I can't seem to stop myself from this venture" and refused to read "anything that is not directly related to the overpopulation problem and global warming." On the blog he labeled himself "World Guardian".

When interviewed, Lee's brother-in-law said he had been prone to "emotional outbursts", "erratic behavior" and had "a lack of respect for any kind of authority". He also said that since the deaths of several family members, Lee had become more unstable.

Discussion

Given that his activism and public disruption had not succeeded in persuading Discovery to alter its programming, why would Lee choose to resort to violence? Two possibilities come to mind. Either he sincerely believed that open threats would have a chance of convincing executives to champion his cause (in other words, he was insane), or he simply did not care whether they did or not.

In fact, hostage situations are not primarily about the demands of the hostage taker. This is not to suggest that his demands are irrelevant to motivation. However, they are secondary in the same way that a child's denied requests are secondary to the reason for a temper tantrum. The offender is expressing his frustration that prior attempts to get his way failed. The demands are a lost cause, but what remains is the anger at the unwillingness of others to behave by his rules.

Take hostage situations the FBI calls “homicides-to-be” and "pseudohostage situations". In a homicide-to-be, the offender makes clear threats against victims with whom he has a personal grudge, but issues no demands to third parties. In a pseudo-hostage situation, a person is held, but there are no direct threats made to the hostage and no real demands are given. For example, a husband pulls a gun on his wife during an argument. She leaves to get the police, and they learn that the son is still in the house. The husband tells police he is angry at his wife and to leave them alone. In both cases, there is an individual being held, but not for the purposes of collateral.

The existence of demands does not necessarily complicate the motivation. Lee had a demonstrable contempt for “stupid people’s brains”, as well as for their right to make decisions for themselves (whether concerning procreation or TV programming). What decisions he wanted them to make was less important to his anger than the fact that they disagreed with him. Thanks to police it is difficult to say whether he would have carried out his threats, however there have been recent cases in the DC area of individuals attacking strangers without even the pretense of demands. See the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, or the Pentagon. The offender who takes hostages is not more “reasonable”, but he may be less certain of his actions, may simply want the recognition, or may need the rationalization of giving his opponents a chance to save themselves before taking his revenge.

Robbery targets

Source: Where Offenders Choose to Attack: A Discrete Choice Model of Robberies in Chicago, Wim Bernasco, Richard Block, American Society of Criminology, Criminology Volume 47, Number 1 2009

In "Where Offenders Choose to Attack", Bernasco and Block studied robberies committed in Chicago over a three year period in order to understand how robbery targets are selected. They confirmed the importance of several variables:

1) Distance from the robber’s residence: The odds of a site being chosen for robbery decreases exponentially with distance from the offender's home.

2) Race of the offender vs. the neighborhood he hunts in: Offenders are more likely to rob in communities of the same race.

3) The presence of certain “attractive” targets increases chance of robbery. Those targets measured in the article are drug dealers and their customers, prostitutes and their customers, high school students, and retail establishments.

Also of note: Although a large percent of robberies are committed by two or more offenders (48% according to this article), the selection criteria appear the same as those of single offenders.

Discussion

I will focus here on two points drawn from the article.

First, offenders tend to hunt in areas where they will blend in.

One armed robber was quoted as saying,

[I] can go in a black neighborhood, [an] all-black neighborhood, and I don’t stand out, as opposed to me going out there to a [shopping center in the country] where I might stand out.

Marxist criminology argues that crime is a symptom of the “injustice” of capitalist society, a result of the power struggle of economic classes. Others have suggested that the disproportionate number of arrests in poor, black communities is nothing but unjust police prejudice and harrassment. Residents who become delinquent, then, are merely lashing out at an oppressive system. However the target of these crimes is the neighborhood of the offender himself; to be more specific, the robber targets his neighbor, who is suffering from the same social and economic obstacles. Furthermore, the victims usually share the same race as their attacker. This seriously discredits motives of racial vigilantism or class conflict.

One might argue that if the offender was motivated by anger at the injustice done to him, he might still irrationally lash out at innocents around him, since the real targets are not within reach. However there is no evidence the typical robber is motivated by a concern for civil rights, and the pattern of evidence suggests his choice of targets is intentional, not accidental. White robbers follow a similar pattern as black robbers, committing crimes in white or mixed neighborhoods, but not for example in all-Hispanic or all-black neighborhoods. That white, Hispanic and black robbers make similar choices suggests in itself that criminal thinking crosses issues of race.

Secondly, preferred targets are not those which maximize rewards, but those which minimize effort and risk.

While some criminals do pursue high profile targets, such as banks, most robberies are far less ambitious and involve smaller sums of money. The article describes a good robbery target as “concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, and disposable”. Cash is the most valued target, and as the authors observe "[r]obbery is more common in deprived areas, which are often cash economies". Ironically, this makes them more attractive targets than wealthier neighborhoods. An abundance of check-cashing outlets, ATMs, pawn shops and bars makes an area vulnerable to robbery. Criminal enterprises, such as the drug trade and prostitution, are also particularly susceptible to robbery since the victims are unlikely to report the crime.

This second point is interesting given the conventional wisdom on poverty and crime. We often hear that poverty leads to crime, because individuals become desperate and pursue illegitimate means for their livelihood. This is a puzzling explanation, since the standard of living in the United States – even in the slums – is so much higher than in most of the world. Few Americans are at risk of actually dying from poverty, nowhere near the number that would explain observed crime rates. (A much larger threat, in fact, is heart disease and diabetes from obesity.) Yet crime is indeed more common in poorer communities. The article may shed some light on this, as it suggests ghetto conditions offer the criminal distinct protections and opportunities: racially homogenous communities to hide in, a variety of quickly accessible cash targets and easy pickins such as the local “vice criminals”.

Intro

The problem with criminology today is dead-end research. This should be evident from two persistent mythologies of crime, which have needlessly consumed so much time and money: the conservative "war on drugs" and the liberal "war on poverty". 

Drugs, conservatives have argued for decades, cause crime by affecting the consciousness of their user. The drug user loses his moral restraint and commits crimes to support his addiction. In order to reduce crime, conservatives sought to eliminate the supply of drugs. After many years of drug enforcement, supply has exploded, drugs are cheaper, and drug-related crime and violence remains as big a problem as ever.

Advocates of the "war on poverty" argue that without disparities of wealth, crime would decrease. The premise is that criminals are not unlike the law abiding in their life goals, but due to economic disadvantages they are compelled to pursue these goals by criminal means. For example a youth, failing to see bright career opportunities due to his poverty, joins a gang. In response, many social programs have attempted to transform poor communities to reduce the attractiveness of crime. Following the policies of President Johnson intended to address this disparity, crime skyrocketed.

Today, conservatives still fight the drug trade in the name of reducing crime, and liberals continue to fight for social welfare programs. The political struggle remains largely immune to consequences. To evaluate the results of a policy risks questioning its validity, something neither side appears willing to do.

Both of these perspectives share a common trait: in neither literature is there an attempt to study the criminal's actual thinking and motivation. Both sides assume a deterministic, "a priori" stance, by projecting a mockup of a human being and speculating on the inputs required to produce criminal behavior. The resulting policies expose a difficult truth: to understand crime you have to study the criminal.

My purpose with this blog is to share an alternative: to present research I find in my studies that addresses, even in part, criminal thinking and motivation. Crime is a choice. Any worthwhile theory of crime has to identify the reasons for that choice in the field, not the researchers own head.