Criminal Psychopathy and Juvenile Psychopathy - Term Paper Example

Criminal Psychopathy and Juvenile Psychopathy Criminal Psychopathy and Juvenile Psychopathy Study of the criminal behavior and mind; criminal psychopathy and juvenile psychopathy are very important aspects in today’s society. Socialists have figured out that the criminal behaviors assessed can be significant for the safety of the people from severe criminals. Their behavior can be judged and predicted once it has been studied (Edens et al , 2001). This is a way to the betterment of the people as it provides the society with the prohibition of criminal activities to the highest extent. The development of the criminal psychopathy and the effects of the juvenile psychopathy on ethical dilemmas is what will be assessed in this paper. The term psychopathy refers to the disorder which can be described through many characteristics such as having shallow emotions, tolerance of stress, lacking empathy, bold-heartedness, irresponsibility, criminality, reduced fear, antisocial behavior, lacking guilt and many others. This is a personality disorder and there is debated and studies going on to find out the core root of the problem and the possible treatments. Moreover there are no symptoms or causes that have been analyzed yet. But the use of psychopathy occurs widely when it is about criminal justice settings and to read the behaviors of the criminals which greatly relate to the characteristics discussed above (Jones and Cauffman, 2008). The term cannot be confused with the psychotic mind or any violence because it is considered as a different study than psychology. Despite the similar terms, they both can be rarely connected and provide a shoulder to the study of minds. Psychopathy was formed from a very general concept of chronic conditions that eventually came down to only psychopathy. Sociopathy is another name which was introduced and which referred to the belief that the causes of psychopathy was because of social factors. Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) was introduced and was very influential in dealing with criminals and is the most commonly used measure in psychopathy (Turvey, 2011). The development of criminal psychopathy had relations with many of the neurologists who studies the criminal mind and with the collaboration, there were many facts about the criminal mind that were unfolded. The research over the time of psychopaths presented the evidence that the brains and the behaviors of criminals are usually different than those of the layman. These findings have largely helped the justice system to understand the criminal behavior, to understand the criminal minds and to help the society in making a joint effort to fight crime through reducing criminals. The development of criminal psychopathy included many stages that will be discussed further down. One of the early studies on the criminal psychopathy showed 21 people that had been characterized with the problem and they said to have antisocial personality disorder. These were the people who had convicted crimes and thus, criminals. The criminal psychopathy was established through this research and it was further analyzed that these people who had the ‘antisocial personality disorder’ were said to have no understanding of the right or wrong. They had no regard for the rights of others which they often violated and they had no respect for the state laws. This is how their brain performed and gave them signals to behave. With the help of the socialists, the behaviors of the criminals were judged and later the term used for them was criminal psychopaths. These were those criminals who possessed this personality disorder and were said to have been going through psychopathy i.e. changing behaviors according to the criminal acts they perform and differing from other criminals and the general population. Further study showed the development of the understanding of these criminal psychopaths, their distinguishing features and their statistics. The most basic study on psychopaths showed that it is not easy to understand their behaviors and they can be big trouble for those who are around them and moreover, it has become very important to find out ways in which they can be treated. Psychopaths were found out to have comprised of about 1 percent of the total general populace and about 25 percent of the prison population. According to one explanation, the criminal psychopaths were likely to commit violence up to three times more than the other offenders and up to two and a half times more likely to have committed an antisocial act such as sexual harassment or lying. All the psychopaths, as mentioned earlier, may not behave violently. The kind of behavior that is observed is usually very socially destructive and it hurts the trust of others around them. These psychopaths may be treated sympathetically amongst the other prisoners, but they may often be troublesome for the people as they find it difficult to distinguish between the other prisoners from the true psychopaths. This makes it difficult to give the psychopaths the true treatment that they deserve. There is also a long history that goes back to psychopathy being a disorder of fear and criminal psychopaths have cold-heartedness with fear. Fear is termed as the emotion which keeps many of us in line and helps us to learn the values of the society to keep us out of trouble. But the idea with the criminal psychopaths is that they do not fear about the wrongs that they are doing and this makes their behavior fearless of what the society will think of them or the actions that they will take against him. Another factor affecting their careless behavior is that these psychopaths have their orbital frontal cortex damaged which makes their decision making extremely week. This shows that their behaviors cannot just be judges by their cold emotions, but also with other factors such as decision making and lack of concentration etc (Raine, 1997). After years of research on criminal psychopathy, it is held that these are behaviors that exist in the criminals and they differ from those of the other criminals. Psychopaths hold different behaviors than the criminals. These antisocial behaviors are the main reason they are different from the normal people and other criminals. The development of the criminal psychopathy has helped many of the socialists to save the society from such antisocial activities and to help reduce crime. It is also significant as it helps the judicial system greatly to understand the criminal behavior and the likely behavior in the future and thus they can impose reasonable sentences that may differ from criminal to criminal on the grounds of their psychopathy. Juvenile psychopathy is the name given to those hyper-criminals who are young and yet they are committing such acts of violence and brutality that has given the world a new shape to deal with these young criminals. This is also considered as the most dangerous of all the crimes and the toughest challenge that is being faced by the society. Sometimes, it is said that these groups of super criminals have exceeded the limits of psychopathic behaviors as they are not in the breed of the psychopaths. The society has been seeing psychopaths since long, but this is a breed of young, violent and cold criminals that make it difficult to be dealt with. These criminals are completely fearless about the laws and the research made on these is rare. The fact that the term juvenile psychopaths involve criminals who are young and often called ‘children’ who have entered into the world of violence itself gives a very unethical sort of impression. Research shows the impacts of such violent and brutal activities to the society, and also shows the reasons of why a child would enter into this field. According to the researches, these young children are from mentally and emotionally damaged backgrounds. They may be from broken homes or dysfunctional families and thus often commit murder, rape, kidnapping and other brutal acts. The most common crimes are sexual harassment and physical abuse which they commit often to gratify their desires that urges them to commit the acts. Their life is an aimless present; they have no concern for the past and no hope for their future (Jones and Cauffman, 2008). The study suggests that these children are raised in moral poverty which is a term used to describe the absence of a father in the family. Most of the children recorded to have committed brutal crimes were those who belonged to fatherless homes. Such homes exist in large numbers in the western society and thus, most of the young boys committing crimes were from such families. The absence of fathers make the children feel insecure and morally weak. This is because the father’s attention to boys gives them a lot for the development of their social and emotional strength. The presence of a father prevents psychopathy in young boys (Edens et al , 2001). Moral poverty, in a broad meaning, talks about the severe moral bankruptcy of growing up in a surrounding which is fatherless, abusive, and full of criminal adults and jobless situations. Every new generation will see the worst sides of the juvenile psychopaths because as the time passes, the children are growing up in severe conditions of moral poverty. This makes every generation more dangerous than the one before it. They have no ethical understanding and no feelings of joy or pain at the joy or pain of others. They are merely self-regarded and present oriented. Absence of ethical values and surroundings has contributed greatly to their acts and fearless attitudes. Ethical dilemmas also exist when it is about the acts that they commit. These acts are severely dangerous for the society and give the people a sense of fear. The term used for these criminals is hyper-criminals which has made it clear that they are more active than the adult criminals. They tend to finish the sense of ethical values in the people as they continue to commit crimes that involve violence and brutality. These criminals spread an unethical and negative vibe throughout the society and do not even realize. It also becomes unethical for the law system to punish such criminals as they are regarded as minors in the law. But the concept of juvenile psychopathy has given rise to many unethical acts that these criminals have to go through as decided by the laws. This also gives the society an issue to highly worry about (Edens et al , 2001). In regard of the rapid development of the concept of juvenile psychopathy, there are fair treatments that are analyzed for the juvenile psychopaths. These offenses are fought with the ethical practices. The ethical issues that are brought forward through these psychopaths are treated and dealt with cognitive-behavioral treatments that establish the principles of sound patterns in the minds of the juvenile psychopaths. It is very important to make sure that the society is safe from all sorts of psychopaths and are ethically safe to protect their surrounding people and conditions. References Edens, JF, Skeem, JL, Cruise, KR, Cauffman, E. ( 2001). Assessment of "juvenile psychopathy" and its association with violence: a critical review. NY: John Wiley & Sons Jones, S, Cauffman, E (2008). Juvenile psychopathy and judicial decision making: an empirical analysis of an ethical dilemma. NY: John Wiley & Sons Raine, A. (1997). The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical Disorder. London: Gulf Professional Publishing Turvey, B. (2011). Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis. UK: Academic Press. Read More