If we can ever identify the genetic and psychological traits that make people criminals?especially killers?we may be able to lock them away BEFORE they kill. This theme was explored several years ago in the film Minority Report. Now it’s becoming reality.
In the West, courts have always incarcerated people according to the severity of the crimes they have committed, rather than on their likelihood of committing future offences, even though every policeman and judge will say that they can spot an offender who will commit more crimes in the future. The parole system uses a series of judgements based on judicial experience in order to decide who should be let out of prison early. In states with the death penalty, this type of assessment can spell the difference between a death sentence and life spent in prison.
In the August issue of the UK magazine Prospect, David Rose traces the history of psychologists and researchers who have explored catching criminals BEFORE they strike. In the 1960s, Rose writes, psychiatrist Hans J. Eysenck believed that “personalities could be rigidly categorized and that most of their behavior was inherited.” Then the pendulum swung the other way, and sociological elements, such as a bad upbringing involving poverty and child abuse, were blamed for criminal tendencies.
But even those who blame ghetto conditions for creating criminals have faced the fact that most crimes are committed by a very small percentage of the population and that not everyone with a bad childhood grows up to become a criminal. Rose writes that in the UK, researcher David Farrington discovered that “of every male born in Britain in 1956?as many as one third had been convicted of at least one non-traffic offense by the age of 30. But he and his colleagues also discovered that as few as 5% were responsible for at least half of all known crime committed by the 1956 [group]. Other research suggests a group this small commits more than 70% of all recorded offences, and more than 70% of violent ones.”
Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
Can we find a way to identify them and lock them away now?in more humane conditions than they?ll find themselves in AFTER they commit a serious crime? This will be the central moral question of the 21st century. To read this important article, click here.
There was a time when the world seemed engulfed in evil?or was this really a contest between clashing supernatural beliefs? True evil can sometimes be as simple as just letting things happen?or setting them in motion. Explore the dark side on Dreamland regularly with our conspiracy experts Peter Levenda and Jim Marrs. Is time travel sinister?or just strange? Find out on this week’s Dreamland! Subscribers get to listen to a SPECIAL interview between Anne and Whitley and Starfire and Brandon, so subscribe today!
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