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Title: Why They Kill : The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist by Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0-375-70248-2 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.47 (32 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Evil 101
Comment: There's an inherent fascination about the "bad guys" among us - people who rape, murder, mutilate and batter other people. Who does these kind of acts, and why? Popular sociology has trotted out all kinds of explanations: broken homes, TV violence, lack of old-fashioned values, permissiveness, bad neighborhoods, etc.; but whatever the supposed cause, it's been widely assumed that violent crimes are impulsive, unconsciously motivated, and predetermined. In a well-researched study on the work of the criminologist Lonnie Athens, who grew up in a violent home and could just as easily have become one of his subjects, Richard Rhodes explores Athens' theory that violent behavior is learned, conditioned, and rather than being impulsive, is the result of prior planning. Athens is firmly convinced that violent people know exactly what they are about and need to take full responsibility for their actions. But how did they get that way? Athens argues that severe violent behavior is the end-stage of a four-stage process beginning in childhood that he calls "violentization". At any stage, the process may be interrupted and a person turned away from a life of violence; but once the fourth stage has been completed and violentization has been internalized, the pattern is set and the damage is done. Rhodes shows that this process can begin in very early childhood, as it probably did with Perry Smith, Alex Kelly (the preppie rapist) and Mike Tyson; or it can begin relatively late, as was the case with young grunts who were de-socialized in Vietnam and learned to rape and kill defenseless civilians with gusto; Rhodes speculates that up to a third of Vietnam vets suffer long-term emotional damage directly resulting from their service in Vietnam that may remain with them for the rest of their lives. The problem I have with Rhodes' otherwise excellent book is that he and Athens appear to assume that without exception violent people have suffered from the same process of violentization; and if the subject denies having gone through this process, he or she is either consciously lying or unconsciously in denial. Ted Bundy, one of the most pathological personalities of the late 20th century, who seems to have enjoyed stalking his victims (all young women) almost as much as killing them, may have been a significant exception. The question of what makes some people incorporate violence as a lifestyle while others turn away from it has still not been unraveled in all its complexity, but Athens' work with violent offenders has helped us understand it to a significant extent.
Rating: 5
Summary: A deeply penetrating analysis of the causes of violence
Comment: Richard Rhodes recounts, in a personal narrative, his search for the roots of violence in America. He recounts in moving terms his own upbringing in a violent family, and uses that experience as a bridge to the work of criminologist Lonnie Athens. Athens was also raised in a violent family, and sought to study criminology as a way to understand his own upbringing. Although Athens excelled in statistical methods in his master's work, he eschewed these descriptive methods for an ethnographic approach: detailed interviews with 50 ultraviolent criminals in the California prison system.
The accounts that Rhodes relates of the interviews are raw, harrowing, and disturbing: in all cases, violence was not something that somehow "went off" -like the steam valve on a pressure cooker- in the criminal's head, but instead were the consequences of deliberate and reasoned acts. Rhodes argues that ultraviolent criminals cannot, therefore, escape culpability for their actions, and suggests that various attempts to portrary ultraviolent criminals as vicitms are not only naive, but also dangerous to society. During these interviews, Athens was himself assaulted, but he won the trust of the prisoners by refusing to be a "snitch." The synthesis of the interviews that Rhodes zeros in on is the astonishing realization that 100% of the 50 ultraviolent criminals interviewed went through four key stages in their progression towards violence as a way of life: as children or youths they were brutalized, horrified, coached in violence by a mentor, and then successfully committed a violent act which accrued them prestige, or other psychic values. Rhodes realizes that this synthesis is revolutionary as there is something here to overturn all sacred cows: liberals will be outraged because he suggests that ultraviolent criminals cannot be rehabilitated and frankly pose an ongoing threat to society. But conservatives will be disturbed by his suggestion that successful intervention in the development of ultraviolent criminals must occur at the childhood stage, by protecting children from brutalization and offering positive alternatives, including after school programs, to the violent coaching that they might otherwise receive. Rhodes, as always, is unafraid to wade into deep waters in his search for truth, and although I imagine this book will cause a revolt among criminology professors, his book as always is a tremendous statement and a very good read. The only quibble I have is Rhodes'argument that violence in media does not play any role in the development of criminals: is it not possible that butalization, horrification, and violent coaching can occur via distance education on the local television program? Certainly advertizers believe they can influence behavior of viewers; why should not "Natural Born Killers" have a lesser result in those few troubled souls who have yet to complete the four stages of violence?
Richard Rhodes is a treasure. I think he missed his calling in life- he should have been a scientist, perhaps as a professor at a university, but all of us are very lucky indeed that he chooses to write. This is a tremendously important book, of equal significance to his previous books on nuclear weapon development. I strongly urge you to buy and read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Criminology with Psychology
Comment: I've met more than a few criminologists at the University where I learned and taught psychology (and where, interestingly, Athens spent a good chunk of his early career), and I was always struck by how little psychology I found in the writings and the lectures of most criminologists. I don't mean complex theories of motivation or conversion or what have you; I mean simple notions of learning that we teach freshman students.
Criminologists seem to be able to generate complex hypothesis at the drop of a hat, but precious few of them are willing to step back and say, as Athens did, that brutal criminals act that way because they've been taught to be brutal. And astoundingly enough, when Athens did bring some simple psychology into criminology, he was thought a dangerous radical.
Reading of Rhodes' ideas I was put in mind of the books of the John Douglas, who built up FBI's Criminal Profiling division- another man who caused a revolution in crimonology by applying simple, well-known principles of learning.
Rhodes' biography of Lonnie Athens is interesting for a number of reasons; first the story of the man himself, second, the revolution he brought to the study of criminal behavior- a revolution that still hasn't quite taken hold everywhere- and last as a picture of a how change comes (or doesn't come) in well-established areas of academic study. Strongly recommended.
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Title: The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals by Lonnie H. Athens ISBN: 0252062620 Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr (Pro Ref) Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited by Lonnie H. Athens, Herbert Blumer ISBN: 0252066081 Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr (Pro Ref) Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Masters of Death : The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by RICHARD RHODES ISBN: 0375708227 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: DEADLY FEASTS: Tracking The Secrets Of A Terrifying New Plague by Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0684844257 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 22 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare ISBN: 1572304510 Publisher: Guilford Press Pub. Date: 08 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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