Criminality, mental disorders & early development.

Soldato
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23275139

Finally some result on this kind of thing in the public eye - touching on a wider subject.

A bit touchy as half the population will jump on this as being "a criminal apologist" but is understanding the relationships between mental illness, developmental problems, social disorders & criminality really that much of a sore subject to accept?.

(A number of further studies showing the relationship between experiencing violence in early development & it's impact on later life/development) - ranging from the experience of violence, to childhood stress/sexual abuse all the way to the environmental factors involved in the development of the worst criminals we know today, death-row inn-mates.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2771618/
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/pdf/childhood_stress.pdf
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/CunninghamDeathRowReview.pdf

Should we start to shift the focus away from current offenders & make a significant effort in reducing the likely-hood of the next generation of would be offenders turning out that way? - regardless as to how we all may feel about revenge/justice - would the best end-game be simply having a lower crime rate in the first place?.

Is the public capable of having a frank & honest discussion about the next generation of criminals society is creating today at this very instant at home (via physical/emotional & sexual abuse & neglect), or is it simply too hard for many to abandon the Daily Mail style blame & hysteria on the matter?.
 
Caporegime
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Is the public capable of discussing in an open and honest manner? I'd like to think so. Is GD? Goodness, no.

e : aware of the irony of me not discussing it, given my post. I will :)
 
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Soldato
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Well fat chance since the services to prevent this are currently being slashed. For example, the West Midlands is getting rid of all of its in-patient beds for the younger paediatric age groups. Not reducing, not cutting back ... just stopping. Oh, and they just closed the outpatient service last year - leaving absolutely nothing.
 
Soldato
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^ Yeah, I recall reading about similar cases across the UK - provisions of care for the young are being slashed, squeezes in income for the poorest.

One known impact of this will be an increase of inter-family stress/home environment/harder times - this will statistically have an impact in 15 years when these kids grow up into little ******** & it's our (society's) fault for doing nothing about it today.

We already pay the price as a result of this behaviour (via mental health costs, policing, crime, murder & reduced social cohesion), so why must we wait for it to be too late before doing anything about it?.
 
Soldato
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Provision across regions will often be in the region of at best 5 beds. And people wonder why such issues are not tackled. And you of course need inpatient beds because to address the issues you have to remove the kids from the causative agent ie the family environment. Considering each stay will be in the region of say 3 months then you can see at best they'd had could see say 20 kids per year per region.

Of course any slack can be picked up by the Priory et al. Who are stuck 20 years behind the times in terms of evidence based practice in this regard.
 
Caporegime
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you know why there utter ***** right?

this guy used to be in my circle of friends.
http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/N...tory-12252809-detail/story.html#axzz2YpDjRCbB

you know at school how the troubled children didn't need to do much to get praise and rewards whilst the kids who are good every day get ignored ?

oh look it's the same in prison....

punch + bite a prison officer
In mitigation, Simon Eckersley said Madigan was not a man who ordinarily used violence.
Really? lol that's not the guy I know the guy I know punched a bus driver in the face when he was 11 years old......

Now in HMP Full Sutton, near York, Madigan, was segregated from other prisoners for two months as punishment for the attacks and had been "deprived" of seeing his family and friends because of the distance, said Mr Eckersley.

He added that, following the segregation, Madigan has gained "enhanced status" within the prison because he has been so well-behaved since.
also known as behaving the same as everyone else should be .... but getting special praise for it because he's a bad lad.

btw on the subject of "a man who ordinarily wouldn't use violence"
http://www.hucknalldispatch.co.uk/n...pect-cleared-after-police-dog-attack-1-672647
Now he has been cleared by the jury of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life -- and also of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, having a prohibted firerarm and possessing ammunition.

The court heard that Jet's handler, Pc Mark Johnson, followed Mr Madigan and three other men, who were in a Citroen Zara Picasso car, into a cul-de-sac.

The officer was investigating alleged threats to a family at their home on Irwin Drive, on Bulwell's Hempshill Vale Estate, earlier the same night. Mr Madigan was accused of making the threats, armed with a gun.

A gun, loaded with five rounds of live ammunition, adapted to cause devastating injuries, was later recovered from the scene.

BTW the only anxiety and stress we had was whenever we were running from the police... a few people were kinda mental and had no issue with fighting adults even though they were only 14-16 years old and they were the type that didn't know when enough was enough and looking back they would probably have been classed as psychopaths by a professional but most people just broke the law because that's just what our area was like and it's what everyone had grown up watching the older kids do.

there was nothing for us to do no schemes or anything to try and keep people off the streets and the area now some 11 years later is worse than ever.

I suppose you could consider it "learned behaviour" more than mental health issues for the majority of people
that end up violent career criminals.
 
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Soldato
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It's always amazed me how GD is full of so many hard line scientific reductionists until a criminal comes along and suddenly they believe in good and evil as outside forces.

If you really want a science based society then you need to start understanding the root causes of things. Environment and genetics are totally interlinked. We know for example that a mother pregnant in a stressful environment will directly affect the babies hormone levels and brain development to make it more "ready" to survive that environment.

We were designed for survival of the fittest and some people just haven’t quite adapted yet to the modern condition, they are just far more impulsive and unable to control it.
 
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Soldato
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It's always amazed me how GD is full of so many hard line scientific reductionists until a criminal comes along and suddenly they believe in good and evil as some kind of outside forces.

If you really want a science based society then you need to start understanding the root causes of things. Environment and genetics are totally interlinked. We know for example that a mother pregnant in a stressful environment will directly affect the babies hormone levels and brain development to make it more "ready" to survive that environment.

We were designed for survival of the fittest and some people just haven’t quite adapted yet to the modern condition, they are far more impulsive and unable to control it.
Indeed.

Gene expression/epigenetic's seems to be in part the link between environment & genetics - but even ignoring the genetic element the environmental factors play an incredibly significant role in human development.
 
Soldato
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It's always amazed me how GD is full of so many hard line scientific reductionists until a criminal comes along and suddenly they believe in good and evil as outside forces.

If you really want a science based society then you need to start understanding the root causes of things. Environment and genetics are totally interlinked. We know for example that a mother pregnant in a stressful environment will directly affect the babies hormone levels and brain development to make it more "ready" to survive that environment.

We were designed for survival of the fittest and some people just haven’t quite adapted yet to the modern condition, they are just far more impulsive and unable to control it.

Why are you amazed. Surely that is the essence of reductionism - breaking things down to their constituent parts whilst making the a priori assumption that any non-linear/linear relationships will be captured in the process. Which would arguably lead you into that very good and evil framework because you fail to see the connections and then fall into one of two rather wrong camps: the nature and nurture evangelists.

I would also state we are not designed for survival of the fittest but I guess you know that too. We are designed to be adaptable and the adaptability comes from a flexible array of options for the body to develop in response to the environment. In this case ie mental health disorder we see the influences from the family unit, through to viral infection, substance abuse, etc.
 
Soldato
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I would also state we are not designed for survival of the fittest but I guess you know that too. We are designed to be adaptable and the adaptability comes from a flexible array of options for the body to develop in response to the environment. In this case ie mental health disorder we see the influences from the family unit, through to viral infection, substance abuse, etc.
I was going to mention that, but thought I'd leave it for somebody else. :p.

Survival of the fittest was coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin - natural selection is survival of the most adaptable & able to produce.

Personally I've always thought we need to do the opposite, we need to make problems bigger (wider scope) as we are not talking about isolated phenomenon in a series of closed systems.

If anything natural selection/evolution, our place in the universe & even concepts seemingly unrelated (such as stellar evolution & the process of forming the heavier elements) is all part of a very long "universal evolution", to look at our place in the universe to should appreciate what we are, where we came from & what we will be.
 
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Soldato
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I believe that submitting a child to trauma is one of the worst thing that can happen to their development.

However, with sociopaths there's not much you can do with them, no amount of rehabilitation or therapy would cure them. I feel they would better completely removed from society.
 
Soldato
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I believe that submitting a child to trauma is one of the worst thing that can happen to their development.

However, with sociopaths there's not much you can do with them, no amount of rehabilitation or therapy would cure them. I feel they would better completely removed from society.
But surely most socio-paths simply have the propensity to become socio-paths & given the right conditions could be averted from that path in a more intelligent society (by identifying the causes & triggers).

If anything I'd view them as being just mentally ill broken people & put into permanently care (for the protection of them & everybody else if they can't be cured/fixed) but I don't see why we would punish them for being the victim of their own poor genetics.

But I do agree, putting any child through trauma is a terrible thing to do - as it's essentially potentially creating another screwed up person who in 15 years could end up repeating the process ad infinitum.

On a side note, Louis CK mentioned this is one of his shows - how-come in modern society we deem hitting children as mostly acceptable still, you can't hit a dog, or an adult - but you can hit a child - the people most screwed up by experienced violence during development & least able to defend themselves.

It's actually pretty crazy.
 
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Soldato
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However, with sociopaths there's not much you can do with them, no amount of rehabilitation or therapy would cure them. I feel they would better completely removed from society.

You can effectively control it though through good care if you capture it early enough and deal with it early enough. But when schools assess on educational ability as the only identifier for special provision and then the actual services are removed (as I indicated earlier) then there is little hope.

Whilst one can't actually necessarily teach such people to socially interact in the manner you and I might we can teach them what is appropriate so they can learn the behaviour in relation to the context it is exhibited in. But you need to actually have the capacity to do that. And that capacity has never really been there and what is there is getting slashed.
 
Soldato
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but you can hit a child - the people most screwed up by experienced violence during development & least able to defend themselves.

It's actually pretty crazy.

Except a child at the age where smacking would have an effect are not necessarily capable of responding to reason, persuasion, etc. There is a big difference between the odd smack at an early age as a severe consequence for, eg, dangerous behaviour and systematic violent abuse. The evidence if you were to look it up indicates that children who are infrequently smacked for exceptional events between the ages of 2 and 6 perform better than children who were not smacked at all and both naturally better than frequent smacking and smacking in later years. The problem being this research has only been done in the past few years because they could never find parents who actually had never smacked.
 
Soldato
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But surely most socio-paths simply have the propensity to become socio-paths & given the right conditions could be averted from that path in a more intelligent society (by identifying the causes & triggers).

If anything I'd view them as being just mentally ill broken people & put into permanently care (for the protection of them & everybody else if they can't be cured/fixed) but I don't see why we would punish them for being the victim of their own poor genetics.
Even in calm and peaceful environments they can still turn out bad they just hide their acts better.

Frankly, they scare the crap out of me!

Do you have any information on their genetics and what has gone wrong? As I understand it's certainly not exclusive to any race or gender.

You may find this interesting :)
 
Soldato
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Except a child at the age where smacking would have an effect are not necessarily capable of responding to reason, persuasion, etc. There is a big difference between the odd smack at an early age as a severe consequence for, eg, dangerous behaviour and systematic violent abuse. The evidence if you were to look it up indicates that children who are infrequently smacked for exceptional events between the ages of 2 and 6 perform better than children who were not smacked at all and both naturally better than frequent smacking and smacking in later years. The problem being this research has only been done in the past few years because they could never find parents who actually had never smacked.
I'm not saying it doesn't have it's uses in certain very specific situations.

But violence against children (when not severe beating/child abuse) I doubt is restricted to those very specific circumstances.

I also recall reading about problems related to when a child is hit in specific places (erogenous zones, buttocks for examples) or beyond the age reason is a tool (as they learn to use violence as a tool themselves).

Obviously a huge scale exists for violence ranging from the potentially beneficial minor tap, to hard slaps/spanks for relatively minor behaviour problems.

Do you have any information on their genetics and what has gone wrong? As I understand it's certainly not exclusive to any race or gender.
From what I've read they suspect it's related to dysfunction of the amygdala.

That part of the brain shows decreased activity when viewing images of people in distress in people diagnosed with sociopathy.

They have also found a link between the volume of the amygdala & sociopathy resulted in diminished ability at empathy.

I'm sure there are many more elements, but it seems to have a strong genetic element but as with most disorders I'm sure with enough early intervention they could break out of it.

Regarding the peaceful environments aspect, some people may need stronger parents to develop correctly - what's a great parent for one child may be too soft for another, or too stern for a totally different child.

This in part helps explain the differences in how children act within small family units (when they are too young to gain influence from friends outside of the home) in behaviour.
 
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Soldato
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You can effectively control it though through good care if you capture it early enough and deal with it early enough. But when schools assess on educational ability as the only identifier for special provision and then the actual services are removed (as I indicated earlier) then there is little hope.

Whilst one can't actually necessarily teach such people to socially interact in the manner you and I might we can teach them what is appropriate so they can learn the behaviour in relation to the context it is exhibited in. But you need to actually have the capacity to do that. And that capacity has never really been there and what is there is getting slashed.

You can control it if you catch it early enough? Do you know of any studies which you could point me to? I find the subject interesting. :)

I understand what you are saying about teaching them how to act but it sort of feels like programming a robot to love.
 
Soldato
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You can control it if you catch it early enough? Do you know of any studies which you could point me to? I find the subject interesting. :)

I understand what you are saying about teaching them how to act but it sort of feels like programming a robot to love.
Cruelty to animals, fire-starting, callousness, inability to recognise grief in faces (easy to test for), poor cognitive/effective empathy skills.

Some of these may prop up in early childhood (if I recall correctly).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Causes_and_pathophysiology
 
Man of Honour
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It's always amazed me how GD is full of so many hard line scientific reductionists until a criminal comes along and suddenly they believe in good and evil as outside forces.

Who needs effective policies, as long as we have revenge everyone's happy, even if it doesn't lower reoffending rates or offences in the first place.as long as the small minded can see blood they are happy :mad:

I wish we move to a scientific based society. Our democratic system has stalled and has achieved as much as possible under such a system. Time to move to evidence directly translates to policy, without stupid public opinion.
 
Soldato
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Who needs effective policies, as long as we have revenge everyone's happy, even if it doesn't lower reoffending rates or offences in the first place.as long as the small minded can see blood they are happy :mad:

I wish we move to a scientific based society. Our democratic system has stalled and has achieved as much as possible under such a system. Time to move to evidence directly translates to policy, without stupid public opinion.
Amen, I couldn't agree more.

Why don't we let evidence & facts decide policy instead of public opinion or left/right ideology? - ideology is for picking goals, the facts determine the policy best suited to achieving them.

As both the left & right both want to reduce the crime rate, ideology should play no part in our criminal justice system.
 
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