There is nature & nurture involved. For example, psychopathy has a strong genetic component but the growing conditions may guide the behaviour towards better (or worse) choices.
Another example are variants of two genes (MAOA, CDH13) that combined with alcohol may make men aggressive and violent, especially when blood sugar levels are low. As long as these men do not drink alcohol, they are normal nice persons. When they get drunk, they can react with sudden violence to disagreements and conflicts. Here (Finland), it is estimated that this mechanism may be found behind 5-10% of the crimes including serious violence. A ‘classic’ case is that friends drink together alcohol and one suddenly stabbs his friend with knife because of a small quarrel.
These persons cannot do anything to their genes but they can decide whether they get drunk or not.
Police attitudes often favor a hybrid approach to justice, supporting punishment for violent, high-risk, or repeat offenders while acknowledging rehabilitation potential for others, specifically nonviolent individuals
. While rooted in retributive philosophies, many officers express that, under the right conditions, individuals can change, although they often support strict, punitive measures for serious crimes.
Attitudes on Punishment vs. Rehabilitation
Mixed Approach: Research suggests 77% of correctional officers (often aligned with police perspectives) believe both punishment and rehabilitation should be goals of incarceration, rather than one alone.
Focus on Risk: Rehabilitation is frequently seen as more appropriate for nonviolent offenders, while punishment is favored for violent crime.
The “Bad Apple” Mentality: Police culture can sometimes view crime through a “bad apple” lens, separating society into those who follow rules and those who do not.
Dilemmatic Beliefs: Police attitudes are not monolithic; they often hold contradictory views, combining a desire for strict punitive justice with an understanding of social causes for crime.
Views on “Truly Bad People”
Focus on Actions: Police often judge “badness” based on the severity of actions, specifically physical and sexual violence.
High-Risk Individuals: Offenders with deep-seated patterns of serious violence are often seen as high-risk, where strict incarceration is deemed necessary.
Lack of Rehabilitation Capability: There is a widespread belief among law enforcement that some offenders, due to lack of remorse or severe criminal patterns, cannot be rehabilitated and require long-term separation from society.
Contextual Factors
Systemic View: Individual officers may not view all offenders as inherently evil, but they work within a system designed to be punitive.
Recidivism Frustration: The recurring nature of crime often drives a desire for stricter punishment.
This is not a guideline of how we should treat such criminals. It is a teaching that uses a strong mental image to warn from behaviours we would call criminal.
Harming of children is the type of crime that may generate the strongest negative feelings. Even criminals want to punish such persons, which makes prisons dangerous places for those who harm children.
Yet, Jesus told us to forgive, not to revenge. We may hate the crimes but we should not hate the criminals.
Forgiving does not mean that these criminals are not punished according to law. In fact, I have heard of several criminals who confessed their crimes after becoming believers and suffered the legal consequences, even a life-time sentence for murder. That kind of confessions are a strong sign of repentance.
If we are able to forgive, instead of reacting with hatred, it sets us free. As long as we brood the hatred and revenge, we are captives of that feeling. Real forgiveness may not be easy and it may take time but that is the liberating model we were given by Jesus.
Somewhere it is written that revenge is mine, says the Lord. It is a scary statement if we think what it means.
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SkovandOfMitaze
(Intellectually Atheist Emotionally Christian )
46
Or if he would have simply remained in prison and unable to harm others.
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SkovandOfMitaze
(Intellectually Atheist Emotionally Christian )
47
I also think that it’s good to realize that love and hate is not the same as like and dislike or being close with. To me love and hate comes with actions. If you have a neighbor and you even sort of like your neighbor, but you never help them then that’s not loving them. If you have a neighbor and you dislike them, you think they are horrible people and so you are not friends with them, but if they come over and say they are hungry and they can’t get food and so you give them food that’s loving, even if you dislike them.
Another glaring example is cows. Many people when they drive by the illusionary farm where you see a bunch of mother cows in the grassy field and their little babies walking around and playing they smile. They like those cows. They think it’s cute. But they definitely don’t love them because they are ok with the system they pay into almost daily that keeps them locked up 10 months out of the year for the mothers in tiny pins and with how that same system then takes about 98% of the male babies within weeks and leave them in a pin to kill for their corpses. They don’t care that the mothers and their kids are separated and that the mothers and kids go through horrible physical and mental abuse for their entire lives which is often 1/100th to 1/10th their normal lifespans. But those people say they like animals and they smile when they see any cows at the pasture.
I didn’t talk about hating, I talked about punishing. They have to be punished and the punishment in their case has to take precedence over their rehabilitation, that was my concept. I’m not saying that rehabilitation should be “forbidden”, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus there, especially when we aren’t talking about people who simply had some images of children (obviously the minor the crime the better chance of rehabilitation there is), but people who actively want to make them suffer and rejoice in their suffering, as the examples i have shown in this topic.
It may not be a “guideline”, but in that case, contrary to other cases where Jesus condemns the sin but shows mercy for the sinner, Jesus’ words are very harsh and certainly not projected towards rehabilitation.
The Hurt2thecore rats were hated even by other pedophiles, which is saying something. Not all pedophiles actively want to make children suffer; many of them, in their own twisted and depraved minds, convince themselves that they are giving children what they want. Deliberately making sure that children suffer as much as possible and rejoicing in their suffering and anguish is a level of depravity so extreme that even the majority of pedophiles find it disgusting.
Late to the discussion, but enjoyed the comments. While Jesus said we are to forgive, to my knowledge, he never said that the justice system of the day had no right to punish, even in his own death. In fact, if you look at Paul’s writing, he reinforces the right of Rome to dispense justice, which often was death. Still, in lesser crimes, I think we should try to rehabilitate. Punishment has been shown as I recall to make little difference in preventing crime.
It does make me wonder, however, as I suspect “white collar” crime would skyrocket without the fear of being punished. I look at some the shady financial dealings that have taken place, and wonder how much that plays into it.
I think there are survival reasons for a psychopathic switch easier to flip depending on genetics (including race and sex). It is like a choice between survival strategies depending on conditions - whether socializing or violence works best. Childhood abuse is likely to favor the choice of violence over socializing. Still I don’t think it is black and white or that there are no choices involved no matter how much society tends to make it black and white. There are always choices of ones targets and what pleasures one chooses to explore.
Christians should remember they really are not in a position to judge regardless. Only God can see the the whole picture.
Personally, as a white male, I think this switch has been within easy reach for me. But I am well aware of the choices that were involved. I think it is likely involved in attitudes towards things like capital punishment – your own choosing to target some people with a lack of empathy. How else can human males have endured a long history of warfare – where fighting has quite often not been a choice where you can survive refusal?
Good questions. I answer on the basis of personal experience – 5 years volunteering in a state prison and 10 years working in the juvenile justice system.
First, our entire system needs to be overhauled. The US accounts for 25% of the prison population in the entire world.
Second, juvenile justice is focused on rehabilitation. Rather than being locked up, most are sent to substance abuse programs, anger-management programs, sexual abuse programs, etc. Only in the worst cases (or for repeat offenders) is the program “residential” (locked up).
The adult system is more punitive; it would benefit from operating more like the juvenile system, focusing on rehab for non-violent offenses and expunging the records of those who complete a program and don’t re-offend. (Violent crimes require a hybrid approach, not so much punitive as protecting society from a dangerous person.) This would also drastically reduce the prison population, and it would offer a second chance for young people to start life without having to report a felony on every job application. Most crimes are committed by young men, and most of them “age out” of it by the time they’re 30. The answer can’t be to lock em up for a decade.
As I’ve often said, monsters exist, and they walk among us. I’ve met them, and they’re the only people who truly scared me.
Psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists – all of them lack empathy or a conscience, which makes them dangerous. They are all personality disorders that can’t be “cured” or managed with drugs or therapy. (They’re not demon possessed.) The problem is, society can’t lock them up just because they’re likely to harm other people. We have to sit around and wait for it to happen, which is what scared me about the psychopathic kids I met in juvenile detention. They’d already committed sexual assaults or violent crimes, but I knew the worst was yet to come, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Retribution should never take precedence for the simple reason that it accomplishes nothing. Safety is another matter: recognizing that we may be wrong, it is legitimate to lock away those whom whose liberty we cannot see as ever being safe for others in society, for the protection of others.
We should be joyous and jubilant that he was stopped, while mourning the man and the fact that it took death to stop him.
In a concealed carry class it was emphasized that one never shoots to kill, only to stop the threat. If you shoot to kill, you are a murderer; if you shoot to stop the threat, you are a defender.
This would hold only if we assumed that retribution has no value, and that assumption is mistaken. Whether it “accomplishes” anything (concretely speaking) is neither here nor there, since we are not consequentialists; the relevant question is whether retribution is a good thing in certain cases
My blood would boil to the point of evaporating if people imprisoned for torturing children were given comforts like books, TV, PlayStations, and the like. They have to be locked away but they also have to have a very hard time while they are locked away.
Satisfying the demands of justice in response to crimes that cry out to Heaven is not a matter of “accomplishing” something; it’is a matter of doing justice. In my view, that has immense value, especially when I think of the victims. Too often victims are the most neglected, while many are eager to show mercy to criminals without seeming to consider that, in doing so, they may be failing to show mercy to the victims
I’ve been seeing lately more and more inclination by police to immediately classify the homeless as “bad apples”. I even heard an officer say it was his job to arrest the homeless as often as possible to build up a record showing “who they really are”.
They also work within a system that rewards making arrests over keeping things peaceful.
Then once someone has been arrested, they are more likely to be arrested for things that those who have never been arrested would merely be warned about.
But in many cases, stopping the threat means using lethal force. You certainly ain’t gonna pull an Arthur Morgan and try to disarm him. At least I hope so.
Sure, the killing is an unintended consequence of the need to stop the threat, but you get what I mean.
I really like this answer. This kinda brings together the two competing ideologies on this thread into a very agreeable manner. Thank you for the insight!
There is a positive example of the strategy to not try to kill anyone, not even the worst cases: the Finnish system. Finnish police never try to kill. That includes avoiding shooting to such parts of humans where a hit has a high risk to be lethal.
You are correct in that the use of potentially lethal force can sometimes cause an unintended death. That does not happen often here. During the years 2000-2021, only 10 people died because of the use of force by Finnish police. That number includes one accidental shot and one death due to the use of tazer (Finnish police carry both guns and tazers and prefer the use of the tazer because the risk of death is lower when using a tazer than a gun, and because the administrative burden (including the investigation) of shooting with a gun is heavier than when using a tazer.
The local criminals seem to respect the strategy and do not usually try to kill officers: during the years 2000-2021, only two police were killed in the line of duty.
An example: a wanna-be terrorist was trying to kill as many people as possible on a nearby market place. The Finnish-style approach to the problem was that the police shot one shot to the leg (thigh) of the man and then tried to keep the bleeding terrorist alive until the ambulance arrived. That solution was more expensive than killing the terrorist but it had advantages:
First, you cannot ask questions from a dead body. A living criminal is likely to reveal something, sooner or later.
Second, there are terrorist organizations that try to claim responsibility even for acts they did not do. If the terrorist is captured alive, these organizations do not claim responsibility because it would be shameful if the terrorist would tell that their claim is false. It also helps the investigation.
Third, handling the case through the judicial system takes away all the imagined ‘glory’ of the terrorist act. In this case, what became publicly known about the person and his acts was such that no self-respecting terrorist organization wanted to be associated with the person. For this reason, the case did not provoke additional attempts of terrorism.
Trying to keep law and order using non-lethal methods is more demanding and expensive than killing the criminals but I think it is worth the extra demands and costs. The non-lethal approaches may be more difficult in societies that have a historical tradition of lethal violence, like the areas infested with Cosa Nostra, Camorra or ‘Ndrangheta. Yet, even these areas could experience a slow cultural change when ordinary people see the contrast between the acts of the law and the criminals.