Ginger and Richard Rhodes
Allspice,
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StumbleUponWhen 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
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: This week's "Breakfast Table"-ers did a terrific job of summarizing the Fray entries, taking up their points and answering them in the column--Fray industry workers could have taken the week off. As new star Mangar put it: "Richard Rhodes was very gracious in his willingness to directly address comments from the Fray. It's a brave thing to do, and I wish more authors had the guts. Thanks to Richard, and I'll try to reply with that respect in mind." Though Mr Rhodes' claim that Fraymanians "blow off while hiding behind the anonymity of your nicknames" did not go down well. Several posters gently and politely defended their right to Fraynames, for example here.
An interesting discussion on Mr Rhodes theories, and of his comments on The Fray (Fraymers didn't like the bit about "can't read very well" either), started here, with the splendid title "An attempted ex post facto clarity?"--if there's one thing Fraysters are going to catch you out on, it is that. Some of the Fray's finest pitched in. A brave and honest (and not anonymous) post about brutalization in schools came from Roy Jaruk, here.
Violence was the overwhelming topic of choice, but there are a few posts on verity, fawns ("fauns are those things that have afternoons, unless your woods are much more interesting than mine"), lekking, and other matters. Use the Fray Editor's Picks button, or just look for the checkmarks and stars. And Claude Scales took up the question of what we should call Fraypersons here.]
What sociologists and psychologists try to do is find a reason for a behavior or pattern of behavior. They don't use these reasons as "excuses" to pardon criminals, just as a way to understand the root of criminal action. These reasons have been badly skewed in courts as they have become excuses for heinous crimes--true to history, people have used science irresponsibly for ridiculous and damaging profit. (By the way I am a biologist and no, this has nothing to do with cloning). So take it to heart and realize behavioral scientists are simply trying to find explanation for such actions to end this pattern in the future.
--Mel
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You don't have to delve very deeply into the human psyche to find out why some people are violent. It's not some strange perversion or disease that needs an explanation from genetics or childhood trauma or sociological circumstance. Put quite simply, it works. It's an efficient and effective way of acquiring immediate power over people, and of gaining their enduring fear, if not their respect. Someone who stands to gain more than he loses from using violence is going to be quite tempted to use it. So in order to combat violence, we need have an ongoing legal, social, and moral campaign against it, to make sure most people who commit violent acts lose more (in terms of money, respect, and social approval) than they gain.
--Jane Grey
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My personal belief (and so it is only opinion based on observation) is that we are not teaching children (males in particular) how to channel aggressiveness positively or when certain levels of violence are a reasonable response (and which are not). We are simply condemning aggressiveness and violence but the children in learning that things are not that simple are making up their own rules.
--Michael Murray
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[People] talk about "violence" as if it were a simple and agreed upon quality, like the flavor vanilla, and could be discussed as a single unified thing. In point of fact, though, soldiers jumping out of trenches into machine-gun fire, cold-blooded poisoners, domestic batterers, schoolyard bullies, and generals who order airstrikes, although they are all engaging in "violence" of one sort or another, have nothing else in common, and it's disingenuous (at best) to discuss them as if their actions were interchangeable.
The "problem of violence" is an illusion. It is not tuberculosis. It is not vanilla. And it does not have a "cure".
--Thrasymachus
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