Call for lethal injection boycott

soulsinging wrote:

somewhat. i'm saying it doesn't make a difference. that can't be fixed. wouldn't determinism say that? psychopaths/sociopaths are already mythically good at mimicking "normal" humane reactions to status. they are often described as very charismatic and sympathetic people. they already know what is acceptable and not. there is no amount of therapy that can convince them they should obey.

Not as of yet. Although, empathy is possible by mirror neurons. Something that psychopaths might not have. I believe these mirror neurons are found in the prefrontal cortex or other frontal regions. If these neurons are destroyed by trauma, such as child abuse, then we may find ways of reinstating them. Hyperstimulation is an option being explored. In either case, executing the subjects will make them impossible to study. Through study we can learn how these incidents occur. If it turns out that child abuse is a determining factor, which it clearly is. Then people should stop abusing their children.

I had a conversation with a coworker yesterday who states "The best way to get a kid to do what you want is to smack them upside the head." That is what I would call physical child abuse. Of course, I've studied Developmental Psychology, so I already know it's a bad idea. Unfortunately, not everyone, barely anyone, takes the time to study such subjects.

soulsinging wrote:

your example about the two women reveals nothing about analyzing criminal motives. it reveals a lot about the susceptibility of the justice system to abuse, especially by the wealthy. i would say 1) the rich woman deserves more jailtime. 2) i don't think your outcome would be the case in reality. mitigating factors are already considered in most cases and treatment for mental illness is included when deciding sentences. the problem is not that such factors are not recognized and considered. the problem is that it is VERY expensive to do this and the system has limited resources. sure, in an ideal world, every criminal would receive a full psychiatric evaluation and be given a chance for a full-scale therapy program to avert incarceration. however, that's not the world we live in. in such an ideal world, nobody would go hungry and no one would grow up in an environment that would push someone to such behaviors.

Look. We've been down this road before, and I know you aspire to be a crown attorney which is already indicative on your view of criminals. It's relatively easy to infer from an attorney's role, whether they are crown, defense or corporate, what type of personality they have, or their views of criminals and the justice system. I'm also aware of your ideology, which is contrary to the evidence I've provided. So discussing this with you is actually quite futile.

soulsinging wrote:

what's a crown attorney? i actually aspire to be a transactional lawyer... fancy word for helping people make business details. i'm a big picture kind of guy.

my ideology? im curious what you think it is. my ideology is simply that concern for criminal rehabilitation needs to be balanced against other important considerations like social safety.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_attorney

soulsinging wrote:

so you don't think the people in charge of interpreting laws should be trained in the law? putting criminologists in the appeals process would change nothing. you still have an isolated elite making decisions on people's lives. i think you mean you want the input of criminologists in writing the laws governing sentencing guidelines and mitigating factors.

as to the jails, i can somewhat get on board with that. though i don't know how effective it would be. jails already have plenty of remedial programs. they offer counseling and education. people don't take advantage of it though.

Well, the law, is only the law. It's a set of precedents. It evolves and is not set in stone. Law should be adaptive depending on the particular case and it's antecedents. But, all-in-all, changing our perspective of "crime" should be beneficial. Crime should not be stigmatized as it is.

The jails themselves, the environments are sufficient to cause mental illness. So that needs to change as well. If the prisons are willing to work with the inmates, instead of work against them, then the inmates should be more willing to cooperate. There should be input from psychologists on the restructuring of the jails.

Kel Varnsen wrote:

That's probably one of the more ridiculous things I have heard on the entire internet. To suggest that people can't debate important issues because they are not experts in them is crazy. I guess since I am not a criminologist I shouldn't be discussing this. In turn I am not an economist so I shouldn't ever discuss the economy. I am not an MD so I should never debate health care issues. I am not a general so I probably shouldn't discuss any wars or military missions. If people only talked about subjects they were complete experts on, how would anyone hear new opinions or learn new things?

Good one. My words should have been "set policy" not debate. But since this is an issue often voted on, e.g. people vote for political candidates with shared goals, and the political candidates also lack sufficient knowledge. My point was that issues like this should be "set policy" by those with sophisticated knowledge, and formal debates should happen within those circles. You are welcome to debate any issue you like.

catefrances wrote:

and exactly how sophisticated does one have to be in order to know that murder, even state sanctioned murder, is wrong?

People can come to that conclusion without being sophisticated. Certainly being sophisticated will help, as I've suggested and I was specifically referring to capital punishment. But in terms of murder in general, it may not be a matter of sophistication. As I've argued, many, if not most murders are the result of biological and sociological antecedents that have nothing to do with sophistication.

The frontal cortex and the criminal justice system

Robert M. Sapolsky
Department of Biological Sciences, and Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School
of Medicine, Gilbert Laboratory,MC5020, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA (<!-- e --><a href="mailto:sapolsky@stanford.edu">sapolsky@stanford.edu</a><!-- e -->)

In recent decades, the general trend in the criminal justice system in the USA has been to narrow the range of
insanity defences available, with an increasing dependence solely on the M’Naghten rule. This states that
innocence by reason of insanity requires that the perpetrator could not understand the nature of their criminal
act, or did not know that the act was wrong, by reason of a mental illness. In this essay, I question the
appropriateness of this, in light of contemporary neuroscience. Specifically, I focus on the role of the prefrontal
cortex (PFC) in cognition, emotional regulation, control of impulsive behaviour and moral reasoning.
I review the consequences of PFC damage on these endpoints, the capacity for factors such as alcohol
and stress to transiently impair PFC function, and the remarkably late development of the PFC (in which
full myelination may not occur until early adulthood). I also consider how individual variation in PFC
function and anatomy, within the normative range, covaries with some of these endpoints. This literature
is reviewed because of its relevance to issues of criminal insanity; specifically, damage can produce an
individual capable of differentiating right from wrong but who, nonetheless, is organically incapable of
appropriately regulating their behaviour.

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/sapolsky.pdf