MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Obviously, but my point was that we don't know whether the factors that cause people with ASPD to torture animals (or commit crimes in general) is what produces their ASPD, or whether it's the ASPD that does it. Remember that mental disorders are defined by the behaviors exhibited by the person, so if we define ASPD as "torturing animals as children" then obviously we're going to find high rates of animal torture in people with ASPD because that's how we've defined ASPD. It doesn't mean that ASPD is necessarily the cause of the behavior because the label is just a shorthand description for these behaviors.

Except that torturing animals as a child is not required to be diagnosed for ASPD. It is one potential symptom.

I was being overly simplistic there to try to get the point across, but "torturing animals" is actually a symptom of ASPD - or rather, it's a real world example of what's described in the symptoms of ASPD. If you want a more specific example then my point is best summarised by this symptom:

failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

So why are people with ASPD more likely to reoffend? Because we've defined the disorder that way. If they didn't reoffend, then they wouldn't have ASPD...

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
A lot of racists would disagree - I personally don't think their arguments hold water, but I don't think yours are much better. Consider, for example, that most managers or higher level businessmen like CEOs meet the requirements for being classified as ASPD. So ASPD alone clearly isn't enough to cause someone to commit crimes, instead there must be some other factor.

Care to elaborate on why my arguments aren't better than those of racists?

Because they make the same confused generalisations and flawed logic that racist arguments do. Just to be clear, I'm not calling you racist here (and everything I know about you indicates that you certainly aren't, so that's not my point) but rather it's just the knee-jerk condemnation of an entire group of people based on tenuous correlative links mixed with the emotional appeal to what could possibly happen if we don't lock up some innocent (i.e. reformed/done their time) people.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Also, I highly doubt that "most" managers and CEOs have ASPD. In fact, I just tried to look it up and couldn't find anything suggesting that what you said was true. If you have an article or something about it, please share!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/apr ... eandhealth

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Lastly, ASPD is enough for some people to commit some crimes. That is why some children born into the most nurturing and productive environments wreck havoc upon them.

We can't make claims like that. No family is perfect, and no family can provide a perfectly nurturing or productive environment for children, which means that there will always be negative events that children experience, to varying degrees, but depending on the timing of the event, other circumstances, the way it's perceived by the child, etc, a seemingly trivial and unimportant event could have significant effects. There's also the fact that overprotection from parents can result in severe personality disorders, so in theory, the perfect nurturing and productive environment would probably have significant negative effects on the psychology of the child.

Since we know that a lot of people with ASPD don't commit crimes, we know that there is obviously some other factor that causes it - perhaps in conjunction with the ASPD, or perhaps it's a completely independent confound.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
But you're simply asserting they're high risk based on an arbitrary criterion. I imagine most people who reoffend are drug users (at rates much higher than ASPD), so should we extend the sentences of everyone who uses drugs or is an alcoholic for fear that some of they may potentially kill or attack someone in the future? If we're so worried about the unfairness of crime, then why not slip into the slightly more absurd world of figuring out that criminals have an incredibly high rate of recidivism and giving anyone who commits a crime an extended sentence?

It isn't arbitrary, and they are high risk based on the disorder. To answer your question about drugs and alcohol, the answer is yes. A comprehensive examination should be given to people prior to exiting prison, and those exhibiting qualities that suggest it is highly probable that they will commit more crimes should be retained for longer periods of time.

Why not just do a comprehensive examination on everybody? There's no need to single out people with mental disorders.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Also, I agree with your last point in general, but I also think we should prepare them better for leaving prison, and we should also not arrest people for victimless crimes. Assuming my whole plan was implemented, I suspect the overall numbers of prisoners would decline, as would crime.

What do you mean by victimless crimes? It's a difficult thing to judge, depending on what unit of analysis you're using. I'd be more inclined to not arrest people for crimes that were clearly a one-off event, like some cases of manslaughter.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
That's fine if you want to group all of these mental disorders together and essentially punish them for having mental issues (at least this would be a consistent position), however, there are also other non-medical issues we need to consider; for example, a significant percentage of inmates (more than what is covered by people with mental illnesses) are those who are homeless and those without jobs. Do we punish these people too, since they're more likely to reoffend than people with mental illnesses? Surely yes, but by the time we've taken all these factors into account we have literally reached the absurd point I described above where we extend the prison sentences of those who are criminals.

First of all, it would not be consistent to do that. Different mental disorders are represented differently among criminals, and I would not recommend treating them all the same. Second, perhaps a better position I could posit is to put them in a mental institution following their departure, that is, if the conditions are better. I am not interested in punishing them, just keeping them away from the general population.

1) Surely it would be consistent, since some mental disorders like depression (which have a much stronger causal link to crime than ASPD) are linked to reoffenders, and you want to limit recidivism, then it makes sense to just lump them all together.

2) Perhaps, I'd argue that it would be better to just put them in the mental institute in the first place. Why put them in jail?

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Then I guess we reach the same impasse that people reach when discussing capital punishment where, in the analogy, you'd be supporting execution to reduce crime rates and I'm saying that punishing innocent people for negligible advantages is not a system I want to support.

No. Capital punishment does not deter crime. Keeping antisocials off the streets clearly would prevent some crime.

You're missing the point of the analogy. People who support capital punishment say that these people need to be kept out of society permanently, and people who argue against them are saying that it is not right to punish the odd innocent person in this way. You are arguing that people with ASPD need to be kept out of society permanently/as long as possible (i.e. they should be treated differently to everyone else), and I'm saying that it is not right to punish the odd innocent person in this way (where "innocent" again refers to those who have reformed/served their time).

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

That chart doesn't demonstrate that leaving people in prison longer will make it less likely that they will commit crimes when they are released, or that older people are less likely to commit crimes. To get evidence for that claim, you'd have to get prison population stats for those age groups proportional to the population levels of those age groups. In other words, you'll find that trend in almost any variable you look at, this is because as age groups increase, there are less people in those groups. Collect data on "people who eat food" across those age groups and you'll find that as people get older, they are less likely to eat food.

Older people are clearly less likely to commit crimes. 55+ is the largest segment of the American population that is displayed on the graph.

Well I don't know the American demographic distribution so I didn't know this. Since you have a bottom heavy distribution I would imagine that if the 55+ is the largest group, then it wouldn't be by a large margin, and the results would still be mostly explained by decreasing population sizes (and perhaps combined with physical hindrances like heart problems, mobility issues, being detained in an old folks home, etc). So the graph still doesn't suggest that older people are less likely to commit crimes, and nobody who has had a science education would think that we could possibly reach that conclusion from that graph.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
I'm not a legal expert so I couldn't say since I don't know what variables would be relevant to such a decision. My point being that this judgement needs to be based on the behavior of the individual, not the behavior of some group they are associated with.

I understand where you are coming from. Let us not forget that the individual has, in my scenario, already committed a violent crime of some kind, though. I have not advocated simply going around diagnosing people and then locking them up.

I get that, but once a person has served their time then they are innocent again.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:I phrased what I was asking very poorly. I really just meant to ask if there is a better option than prison, in general? Not would it be better than prison at deterring crime, but would there be something that is just, overall, superior to prison as a means of dealing with guilty criminals?

Well I was more focused on reducing crime in general, and then helping criminals change their behavior. If those options fail though, then prison is a good place to lock people up who refuse to live by the rules of society, I have no problem with that.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
I've already pointed out that there are some therapies that show some effectiveness for ASPD, and it's only a matter of time until science comes up with something. 50 years ago people probably thought that autism cannot be "healed" through therapy/rehabilitation, and most of these arguments took the same line you do by claiming it's a genetic or inherited thing which can't be changed, but we can now laugh at ourselves and our naivety for thinking that back then.

Not necessarily. Because ASPD cannot be treated now, we should deal with it with the means we currently possess, and not take a different option because in the future we will have different means.

But ASPD can be treated to some extent, that's what I've been telling you. It's not currently at a level of success comparable to the treatments for autism, but we still have some tools at our disposal.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Second, you really haven't demonstrated that there is anything that can be done to get rid of ASPD. Do you have any statistics on how much of a decline in violent behavior we see in people who have received the treatment you proposed? Why is it not being used more widely, if it is so effective? What is its cost?

I'd have to try to dig up some specific papers to get details like that, I'll see if I can find any. Part of the problem though is that it's hard to do research in this area due to the narcissistic component of ASPD and the fact that it has numerous comorbidities like substance abuse, so even if you can decrease the violence that is related to the ASPD, you can't control the violence caused by the substance abuse. And I didn't say it was "so effective", I said they have some effectiveness, and the behavioral therapies are currently the only treatments used for ASPD. As for costs, it depends on what issues you're trying to fix, if it's just mild ASPD then it would only cost the time of a therapist for a few sessions or so, but if it's more extreme then they need a care facility that can monitor them 24/7 which is obviously more pricey.

But price shouldn't be an issue here when we're considering extending the prison time of innocent people.

gleniedee wrote:I've seen no evidence that the majority of convicted criminals suffer from an antisocial personality disorder or that the disorder is predictive of criminal behaviour. There is also considerable controversy about the definition.IE whether it should be included within the psychotic range of disorders.Neither are most psychotic disorders predictive of criminal behaviour, even sociopathy. Part of the problem is that psychology is a soft science with models not based on evidence. That includes Freud's famous model of Ego,Id,Superego.

I missed this earlier, but yes there is some debate over whether psychopathy/sociopathy should be put together under ASPD as even though they share some significant similarities, some researchers think that they are distinct enough to deserve separate categories. Is this a problem? No, they'll treat them as separate disorders and do research into the causes and treatments for each, and if they diverge enough then they will require separate approaches and be classified as separate disorders in the next DSM - if not, then they won't. This is how science works.

And again, I must stress that there is a difference between experimental psychology and clinical psychology - the former is a hard science, and the latter is not a science at all. The research behind clinical psychology, however, is a "soft" science in the same way medical research is "soft" science. This doesn't mean it's wrong or flawed, it just means it's dealing with a very complicated area of study - but all of the models used in clinical psychology are based on evidence. Clinical psychology is an evidence-based practice, if somebody tries to use a treatment that has no evidential support, then they will get struck off like a medical doctor would.

And of course Freud's ideas lack empirical support, that's because they were invented in the 1800s. Attacking psychology because of Freud is like attacking chemistry because of alchemy.