Entry 13:

Allspice,

When did you start having ulcers? You're a rock, as all pilots should be. Anyway, the rate cut should help our wee portfolio, no? I'm waiting for Ballard to start shipping fuel cells to Ford, Toyota, and Daimler-Benz. ...

Fraygrants (as I'm told they're called) picked up on your comments on literacy in prison. I should mention that your master's thesis, which involved working with incarcerated felons, statistically corroborated the work of the criminologist Lonnie Athens that I reported in my book, Why They Kill. Athens studied several hundred violent felons and extracted from their backgrounds the pattern of violent socialization that they all had in common that was not common to criminals without violent records: 1) Brutalization, usually in childhood (being forced by violence or the threat of violence to submit to a violent authority figure; witnessing the violent subjugation of intimates; being coached that they had a personal responsibility to use violence to settle their disputes). 2) Belligerency (dispirited, determined to prevent their further violent subjugation, they heed their violent coach and resolve to use serious violence when seriously threatened). 3) Violent performances (they try violence defensively and succeed in dominating their challengers). 4) As a result of 3, other people begin showing them fear and fearful respect, which is enormously empowering; thus empowered, their problem solved, they decide to use serious violence offensively as well as defensively to dominate others. Athens found this four-stage process to be universal in violent criminals and thus the cause of violent criminality. Not psychopathology or brain damage or low self-esteem or genetic inheritance: violent socialization. Which is an exciting discovery because it means that criminal violence is preventable and probably reversible--the possibility you're interested in exploring.

Note that we're not talking here about the abuse excuse. Brutalization is only the first part of the process, and many, maybe most, people who experience violent subjugation find other ways to cope. But for those who are also coached and come to heed their coaching, try violence, and get empowering feedback as a result, violent criminality is the outcome. After brutalization, the process is voluntary, just as the violent acts that follow completion of the process are voluntary: People don't just "go off"; they choose when and where to use violence.

Which loops back to your insight about the next generation: Violent socialization is transmitted through social experiences from one generation to the next (which is why it can look genetic), and one of the motivations for giving up violence that you found among men in prison was wanting to make life better for their kids.

Anyway, about prevention: Obviously, preventing the brutalization of children (which may take the form of severe physical discipline rather than what we call "abuse"; depends on the cultural context) is the ideal approach since children who aren't brutalized don't have to make the later choices that lead to criminal violence. But even interventions at later stages of the process can help: discouraging bullying (minor violent performances by kids undergoing violent socialization), teaching nonviolent conflict resolution--provided the brutalizing isn't still ongoing.

That's the background. We can explore it tomorrow. Maybe I can say something about the amazing parent-child centers in Vermont that have cut child abuse, teen-age pregnancy, and even infant mortality at very little cost to the state or the citizens. Maybe we can talk about our friend "George," who knee-capped his burglary partner at the age of 14 with a zip gun and now doesn't use violence anymore. (Although sometimes he'd like to. ...)

See you at 8:30. In consolation for your absence, for dinner, I'm having pie. (Remember the truck we followed across the desert Southwest with the banner on its back, "Follow me to Pieland"? That's probably the first thing the deceased see, if they're lucky, when they emerge from the famous final tunnel of light.)

sox,
Rhodeman