Prisoners are predominantly poor, ill-educated, often suffering mental ill health, have suffered abuse, have been drug abusers, alcoholics and so on. One other way of addressing much of the re-offending rates is to deal with these issues.

Drug-using criminals frequently go back to using drugs, because they return to social settings in which drug taking is common. Their circle of acquaintances inevitably lead them back into drug use. Social workers could potentially help them into new relationships & friendships, outside of drug abusing networks. Allied to other medical treatment, we could see a substantial reduction in drug-related crime. Decriminalisation of drug use (not drug manufacture & dealing), making drugs available through licensed channels, could also reduce drug-related crime.

In-prison educational services need to improve. Give prisoners a possible future in work, with recognised qualifications, you reduce the need for them to resort to crime. Note that illiteracy rates in prisons is far above the national average in the US & the UK. Addressing that sort of thing could help.

Considering the cost of continued imprisonment, and overall costs of recidivism, there is a case for job generation as a cheaper means of reducing crime & returning offenders back into a community they then have a stake in.

And addressing the mental ill-health is an obvious move.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Give people who are recently imprisoned on felony charges a test that measures for antisocial disorder, and if they have it, keep them imprisoned longer than people who don't. If a test is deemed insufficient, hire a trained psychologist to attempt to measure their level of mental functioning.

While that may sound unfair, if we actually care about lowering crime, I think it would be effective.

Well they do sort of do this for parole hearings, where the inmate is interviewed to assess the probability of their reoffending and this usually includes a psych analysis. If they are mentally unstable, or suffering from some serious mental disorder, then they'd advise the review council against letting them out (and/or referring them to a mental health facility, if necessary).

However, it's not fair to automatically extend their imprisonment during the sentencing based on this though, for a couple of reasons:

1) You're basically punishing them for thought-crime. People are to be punished for crimes they've committed, not possible future crimes they may or may not commit.

2) Your choice of mental disorders to punish are arbitrary. Why not people with depression (or post-natal depression)? Bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia? I think all are related to different forms of crime, and in your eyes these people should have an extended sentence.

3) As pointed out by Bill, it would make more sense to give them the help they need with mental disorders, rather than locking them up for longer and likely worsening their condition before they get out.

The problem of recidivism won't be fixed by extending sentences in this way, the only way to prevent recidivism is to completely scrap the penal system we currently have and implement one that is based on actually fixing the problem and rehabilitating people, instead of basing sentences on petty notions of justice/retaliation. We also need to stop assuming that people commit crime based on their own "free will", and expecting people released from jail who are put back in the exact same environment to behave any differently just because they "choose" to.

First, you have to justify that psychologists have got a fucking clue. Then, you have to explain why there are so many different perspectives within psychology, and explain why you favour the perspective which feeds the opinion of your OP. Then, you might have a point.

jamest wrote:First, you have to justify that psychologists have got a fucking clue.

There are numerous journals demonstrating that they have at least some "fucking clue". I'm assuming that by "psychology" you actually mean "clinical psychology", and whilst there are difficulties in measures, there's nothing exceptional about psychology compared to medicine so if we accept that medical doctors have some "fucking clue", then we can reasonably assume that clinical psychologists do too.

jamest wrote:Then, you have to explain why there are so many different perspectives within psychology,

I assume, again, that you're referring to clinical psychology and in which case there aren't "so many different perspectives within psychology". There are different kinds of treatments which are more or less effective for different symptoms or individuals, so some problems might be better dealt with using a family-based approach, others CBT, and others Rogerian therapy, but this is all irrelevant to the classification and identification of mental disorders - which all perspectives agree on.

If you were speaking more broadly about different approaches to psychology (like cognitive, behavioral, social, neuro, etc) then there is no conflict there. "Psychology" is a broad term that describes a myriad of different observations and it's impossible to analyse the subject from only one level. It's like saying if physics was a science then why are there so many different perspectives, like aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, etc. Even fields which are understood by laymen as being contradictory approaches like cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology, are perfectly compatible since cognitive science was an offshoot of the behaviorist work of Skinner and now cognitive psychology relies on the principles of behaviorism to conduct its work.

jamest wrote:and explain why you favour the perspective which feeds the opinion of your OP. Then, you might have a point.

There is no perspective to favour, all psychologists agree on the basic principles we use to classify mental disorders. There are squabbles over which symptoms should and should not be included in each category, but all the arguments put forward are backed by logical arguments and empirical evidence, which means that although it may not be "True" it does however mean that we have good reason to assume it is.

And please don't tell me that this is going down a Thomas Szasz route..

Mr.Samsa wrote:

jamest wrote:First, you have to justify that psychologists have got a fucking clue.

There are numerous journals demonstrating that they have at least some "fucking clue". I'm assuming that by "psychology" you actually mean "clinical psychology", and whilst there are difficulties in measures, there's nothing exceptional about psychology compared to medicine so if we accept that medical doctors have some "fucking clue", then we can reasonably assume that clinical psychologists do too.

Psychology is not like physics. And even the views of physicists are in doubt.

jamest wrote:Then, you have to explain why there are so many different perspectives within psychology,

I assume, again, that you're referring to clinical psychology and in which case there aren't "so many different perspectives within psychology".

There's numerous psychological explanations for why Ted is crazy and did what he did. And there's plenty of room for many more explanations. So, how does one go about curing Ted if one doesn't draw, specifically, upon one of these theories? Psychology is not strictly a science, since it draws upon qualitative judgement.

There are different kinds of treatments which are more or less effective for different symptoms or individuals, so some problems might be better dealt with using a family-based approach, others CBT, and others Rogerian therapy, but this is all irrelevant to the classification and identification of mental disorders - which all perspectives agree on.

Actually, we're not strictly talking about prognosis, here. Read the OP again - we're discussing diagnosis.

If you were speaking more broadly about different approaches to psychology (like cognitive, behavioral, social, neuro, etc)

Yes, that is what I was referring to. I am aware of how much variety there is in the diagnosis of a particular state-of-mind.

Psychology" is a broad term that describes a myriad of different observations and it's impossible to analyse the subject from only one level. It's like saying if physics was a science then why are there so many different perspectives, like aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, etc.

No, it's not like that at all. There is no room for qualitative judgement in physics, unless it flirts with metaphysics. There are many areas of expertise within physics, but this is not the same as saying that that there are many perspectives of any given area.

Even fields which are understood by laymen as being contradictory approaches like cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology, are perfectly compatible since cognitive science was an offshoot of the behaviorist work of Skinner and now cognitive psychology relies on the principles of behaviorism to conduct its work.

Actually, cognitivism is in conflict [to some extent] with behaviourism. My memory isn't serving me right now, but I can soon reference the experiment, if you wish, which shows that a rat does not simply/always behave as it did previously.

jamest wrote:and explain why you favour the perspective which feeds the opinion of your OP. Then, you might have a point.

There is no perspective to favour, all psychologists agree on the basic principles we use to classify mental disorders.

There may be universal agreement that there is a mental disorder, but there is no universal agreement as per how this disorder comes about.

And please don't tell me that this is going down a Thomas Szasz route..

I haven't studied psychology sufficient to take you there. So, no, it's not. Except by coincidence.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:@ jamest

There is already wide agreement about the prevalence and reality of antisocial personality disorder. Research is supposed to precede opining.

I'm not arguing against that judgement. I'm arguing against keeping people in prison simply because they fail an antisocial test. I'm arguing that there's many perspectives for why someone is antisocial. Which perspective are you drawing upon when calling for their prolongued imprisonment? Why?

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:I'm not surprised it is already being done. It makes a lot of sense. However, we still release quite a few psychopaths back into society without any reason to suspect that they will cease committing crimes.

Well if they've served their time then there's not much we can do. I don't think that categorising people into "at risk" groups is a particularly smart move, since it's always difficult to tell which way causation is working; i.e. did the mental disorder cause the crime, or the other way around? Or a bit of both? And then obviously we'd move towards more controversial areas like the fact that blacks and the poor are overrepresented in prison, so should we extend their prison sentences too? (My point being that the group may not be the cause of the crime, but may be indicative of some underlying/confounding issue).

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
1) You're basically punishing them for thought-crime. People are to be punished for crimes they've committed, not possible future crimes they may or may not commit.

I agree that people should not be punished for crimes they have not yet committed. However, these people have committed crimes. Handing them a different sentence because of their different circumstances would be more efficient in lowering crime.

It's unfair to generalise like that though. Not all people with antisocial personality disorder reoffend. They might have higher rates, but you're basically discriminating against them based on their mental condition.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
2) Your choice of mental disorders to punish are arbitrary. Why not people with depression (or post-natal depression)? Bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia? I think all are related to different forms of crime, and in your eyes these people should have an extended sentence.

No. Absolutely not. Less than 3% of the population is psychopathic, but over 20% of prisoners are. Find me statistics that suggest that depression statistics are anywhere near that rate. If you can, I would just go on to support incarcerating them longer as well. If you can't (which, by the way, you can't), then I do not support that. Either way, your point fails to make an impact.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/re ... 1301ef0e7b

Rates of schizophrenia and other affective disorders (like depression) are 2-3 times that of the general population - since depression occurs at around 9-10% of people, this means that it is presented in at least 18-20% of prisoners (and arguably up to 30%).

Pick any mental disorder you like and you'll find significant increases in the prison population.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
3) As pointed out by Bill, it would make more sense to give them the help they need with mental disorders, rather than locking them up for longer and likely worsening their condition before they get out.

Sigh, this is the typical. Antisocial personality disorder cannot be treated. The only thing that works is the the process of aging. For these individuals, attitudes do not change over time, but behaviors do.

No it can be treated, it just can't be "cured" and the treatment isn't always effective (the treatment is usually contingency management programs). But the point is that not all people with antisocial personality disorder commit crimes, and of those that do, not all of them reoffend.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
The problem of recidivism won't be fixed by extending sentences in this way, the only way to prevent recidivism is to completely scrap the penal system we currently have and implement one that is based on actually fixing the problem and rehabilitating people, instead of basing sentences on petty notions of justice/retaliation.

Some people can be rehabilitated, others cannot be. We shouldn't waste resources trying to rehabilitate people who can't be.

If someone cannot be rehabilitated then I agree that they should be locked up. But I would prefer that we made this judgement based on evidence of their past actions, not a generalisation. It should apply to all people, there's no reason to single out people with mental disorders.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:I am not sure if you are suggesting that I am basing my stance on "petty notions of justice/retaliation," but I am clearly not. I don't give a rats ass about justice, fairness, or retaliation. I think our prison system should not be any more undesirable than it needs to be in order to deter crime, and I believe our penal system should serve to only perform that function (as well as provide a slight increase in happiness to associates of victims).

Those were just my general comments on the problems with the current system, they weren't based on anything you'd said but instead were my thoughts on the area we should be reviewing in order to fix the problem of recidivism. And from what I've read, prison isn't a very good deterrent anyway.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:You are the one worrying about justice/retaliation, because you claim it would be thought crime to keep people in prison longer because it is likely they will commit more crimes. Might I ask, would you keep someone in prison if they knew they would commit a violent crime when released? What if there was a 90% chance? What if there was an 80% chance? It is merely a matter of probability, and using someone's thoughts to measure their prison sentence can help reduce overall crime.

I agree that if someone is likely to reoffend, especially at rates as high as 90% then they should not be released earlier than their sentence. If someone keeps reoffending, then judges obviously need to consider lifelong sentences. Making broad generalisations that aren't based on evidence from an individual's past history is problematic at best.

We have to look at it as a cost/benefit analysis; yes we could reduce crime by unfairly punishing the minority that wouldn't reoffend, but why stop there? There are groups with far higher recidivism rates than people with antisocial personality disorder.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:We also need to stop assuming that people commit crime based on their own "free will", and expecting people released from jail who are put back in the exact same environment to behave any differently just because they "choose" to.

I'm sorry, but WTF are you talking about? Who ever said anything about free will?

Again, this was my complaint with the system and the issue I think we should be trying to tackle.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:I am the one saying that people have personality disorders that drive them to behave a certain way. Over 80% of people with antisocial personality disorder abuse alcohol and/or drugs. Clearly, something genetic is pushing them towards this, as something genetic makes them susceptible to a life of crime. Some individuals commit crimes primarily because of their environments, others primarily because of their genetics. I am saying, very clearly, that we should find out who in our prison population belongs to whichever category, and treat them differently. It is called pragmatism.

All groups of mental disorders have high rates of substance abuse, one of the main causes of this demonstrated by research in the area is the stigmatism attached to having a mental disorder and the difficulties they face fitting into society - so they turn to drugs and alcohol to escape this.

Perhaps in the future when we have the tools to make more definitive claims about disorders being "mostly genetic" or "mostly environmental" we can look at whether we need to change policies - but if we do, then the key would be to implement early intervention to help people, since obviously the fact that a mental disorder is genetic does not mean that it is untreatable or incurable. (And whilst this treatment can be in the form of medication or other medical interventions, it's not necessary as we know that predominantly genetic disorders can be improved a great deal, and even "cured", by simple forms of therapy).

jamest wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:There are numerous journals demonstrating that they have at least some "fucking clue". I'm assuming that by "psychology" you actually mean "clinical psychology", and whilst there are difficulties in measures, there's nothing exceptional about psychology compared to medicine so if we accept that medical doctors have some "fucking clue", then we can reasonably assume that clinical psychologists do too.

Psychology is not like physics. And even the views of physicists are in doubt.

Areas of experimental psychology are like physics since they are natural sciences, but obviously clinical psychology isn't which is why I compared it to medicine. If you accept the efficacy of medicine, then you have to accept the efficacy of clinical psychology - unless you have other motives for rejecting it besides evidence.

jamest wrote:

I assume, again, that you're referring to clinical psychology and in which case there aren't "so many different perspectives within psychology".

There's numerous psychological explanations for why Ted is crazy and did what he did. And there's plenty of room for many more explanations. So, how does one go about curing Ted if one doesn't draw, specifically, upon one of these theories? Psychology is not strictly a science, since it draws upon qualitative judgement.

There are numerous medical explanations for why Ted has a pain in his stomach, it doesn't mean medicine is wrong because a number of different specialties try to figure out what it could be. Once the evidence is assessed then we can come to an evidence-based conclusion about what the problem might be, and then we look at the research to see which approach is the most effective. Sometimes clinical psychologists get it wrong, and they have to go back to look at the data to see what they missed. This isn't a criticism of the field though, it's a reminder of the fact that the field of health is not a science, it is simply evidence-based.

And psychology is a science since it relies on objective, repeatable data. Clinical psychology is not a science because it is an application of science. As a comparison, physics is a science, engineering is an application of the science.

jamest wrote:

There are different kinds of treatments which are more or less effective for different symptoms or individuals, so some problems might be better dealt with using a family-based approach, others CBT, and others Rogerian therapy, but this is all irrelevant to the classification and identification of mental disorders - which all perspectives agree on.

Actually, we're not strictly talking about prognosis, here. Read the OP again - we're discussing diagnosis.

I know that, but I was being generous and trying to interpret your comments so they made sense in the context of the thread as there is no debate over diagnosis. There are no different "perspectives". Everyone agrees on how diagnosis should be done.

jamest wrote:

If you were speaking more broadly about different approaches to psychology (like cognitive, behavioral, social, neuro, etc)

Yes, that is what I was referring to. I am aware of how much variety there is in the diagnosis of a particular state-of-mind.

Well those fields don't impact how diagnosis is done, since they're areas of experimental psychology and we're discussing clinical psychology. Particular aspects of each approach may inform clinical psychology, but it's not like a cognitive psychologist will come up with a treatment for depression and a social psychologist will come along and suggest something completely different.

jamest wrote:

Psychology" is a broad term that describes a myriad of different observations and it's impossible to analyse the subject from only one level. It's like saying if physics was a science then why are there so many different perspectives, like aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, etc.

No, it's not like that at all. There is no room for qualitative judgement in physics, unless it flirts with metaphysics. There are many areas of expertise within physics, but this is not the same as saying that that there are many perspectives of any given area.

Again, you're confusing experimental psychology with clinical psychology. There is no room for qualitative judgement in experimental psychology either since it's a science.

jamest wrote:

Even fields which are understood by laymen as being contradictory approaches like cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology, are perfectly compatible since cognitive science was an offshoot of the behaviorist work of Skinner and now cognitive psychology relies on the principles of behaviorism to conduct its work.

Actually, cognitivism is in conflict [to some extent] with behaviourism. My memory isn't serving me right now, but I can soon reference the experiment, if you wish, which shows that a rat does not simply/always behave as it did previously.

Why would we expect the rat to always behave as it did previously? That's not a prediction made by either cognitive or behavioral psych.

jamest wrote:

jamest wrote:and explain why you favour the perspective which feeds the opinion of your OP. Then, you might have a point.

There is no perspective to favour, all psychologists agree on the basic principles we use to classify mental disorders.

There may be universal agreement that there is a mental disorder, but there is no universal agreement as per how this disorder comes about.

That's because:

a) mental disorders are normally multi-faceted so it's rarely ever just "one" cause, and
b) getting data on people's lives is dependent on their recall and other imperfect factors (like statements from family or loved ones, incidence reports from work or police, etc).

Once the evidence comes in though, there is usually universal agreement across the perspectives on what causes certain disorders. For example, even though social psychologists focus on how society shapes and influences a person's sense of self and mental health, they don't question the idea that schizophrenia is largely a product of genetics.

jamest wrote:I haven't studied psychology sufficient to take you there. So, no, it's not. Except by coincidence.

Well I recommend that you read up a lot more on psychology before trying to make the strong claims you're making here. At the very least, learn the distinction between experimental and clinical psychology.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Well if they've served their time then there's not much we can do. I don't think that categorising people into "at risk" groups is a particularly smart move, since it's always difficult to tell which way causation is working; i.e. did the mental disorder cause the crime, or the other way around? Or a bit of both? And then obviously we'd move towards more controversial areas like the fact that blacks and the poor are overrepresented in prison, so should we extend their prison sentences too? (My point being that the group may not be the cause of the crime, but may be indicative of some underlying/confounding issue).

Well, there is something we can do - make them serve more time. By the way, no crime can "cause" antisocial personality disorder. One prerequisite is getting into trouble as a child, and no crime committed as an adult could cause you to suddenly go back in time and commit a crime as a child.

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.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Your next point about blacks and poor is weak. There is no evidence that black people lack empathy, torture animals as children, have more violent tendencies, or share any other characteristic that antisocials possess at an above average rate. It is clear that being black can't cause you to commit crimes, but it is also clear that being psychopathic can.

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.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:It's unfair to generalise like that though. Not all people with antisocial personality disorder reoffend. They might have higher rates, but you're basically discriminating against them based on their mental condition.

True, but I disagree with the assertion that it is "unfair." It is "unfair" to the people who are murdered, raped, or robbed that we put such a high risk person back out on the streets.

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?

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/re ... 1301ef0e7b

Rates of schizophrenia and other affective disorders (like depression) are 2-3 times that of the general population - since depression occurs at around 9-10% of people, this means that it is presented in at least 18-20% of prisoners (and arguably up to 30%).

Pick any mental disorder you like and you'll find significant increases in the prison population.

I'm not going to read that study, so I'll just assume your assessment of it is accurate. Well, antisocial personality disorder had a sixfold increase in prison, while the number of people depressed merely doubled. So, were we to find that depressed prisoners, when released, were twice as likely to commit another crime, I would say that those individuals should be treated differently.

Again, that's because we define ASPD as including behaviors that are usually illegal, so it makes sense that they have higher increases in prison rates because we've defined it as such - if they didn't, then they wouldn't be classified as having ASPD.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:However, I'm inclined to think that prison causes depression, and that people who are not depressed in prison are the really frightening ones.

The data were taken before they went to prison. And whilst prisons aren't nice places and might have some impact on a person's mental health, I doubt many at all would develop depression from being in there. They might get depressed, but few will develop depression.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Prison cannot cause antisocial personality disorder, but instead can only cause a mere hardening and callousing of one's attitudes. Also, the known symptoms of depression aren't commonly associated with things like crime, while psychopathy absolutely is. There is no personality disorder that has such a clear and strong association as psychopathy. If there are many other associations, I'm happy to subject them to the same initial idea.

Again, of course ASPDs symptoms are commonly associated with crime because that's how we've defined it. Regardless, people with depression can be demonstrated to commit crimes as a direct result of their depression, and not simply because it has been defined that way. For example, depression can cause (or be caused by) illegal drug use, it can also lead to aggression, stealing, arson, etc.

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.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
No it can be treated, it just can't be "cured" and the treatment isn't always effective (the treatment is usually contingency management programs). But the point is that not all people with antisocial personality disorder commit crimes, and of those that do, not all of them reoffend.

Yes, but I never said either of the above. I know that some psychopaths will be released and not harm anyone, but my point is that, in my opinion, the harm of releasing all of them and having them wreck havoc outweighs the harm of keeping them all in prison longer and lowering the probability that they commit more crimes.

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.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:Here is an interesting chart:


It makes me think that just leaving them in there longer will make it less likely that they will commit crimes when they are released, if only as a function of age. However, if you have evidence that time spent in prison correlates with recidivism upon release, I would reevaluate my opinion. Although there could be numerous factors for why (more heinous crimes merited longer sentences, and worse criminals are more likely to commit new crimes upon release).

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.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
If someone cannot be rehabilitated then I agree that they should be locked up. But I would prefer that we made this judgement based on evidence of their past actions, not a generalisation. It should apply to all people, there's no reason to single out people with mental disorders.

So, how many violent crimes would it take for you to declare someone to be a hopeless cause?

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.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Those were just my general comments on the problems with the current system, they weren't based on anything you'd said but instead were my thoughts on the area we should be reviewing in order to fix the problem of recidivism. And from what I've read, prison isn't a very good deterrent anyway.

The question is, are there better forms of deterrents? I sure as hell can't think of any, but I'm open to new ideas.

Oh definitely, since prison isn't set up to be a deterrent it fails quite badly. The problem is that the more effective deterrents would require a more comprehensive system, and it would also require us to violate our inherent notions of "fairness" and "justice". For example, we know from research on the effect of punishment on behavioral change that a sliding scale of punishments will not change behavior and can even increase it (or maintain it at higher levels), and instead the only effective way of using punishment to permanently eliminate a behavior is to implement it immediately and at a severe level. So if we wanted to stop speeding on the roads, this could be done very easily: the first time you're caught speeding, you have your vehicle repossessed and crushed into box. This would completely eliminate speeding.

However, as I was discussing above, society as a whole would probably be against this due to issues of fairness and justice. So the prison system is less concerned about actually changing behavior and reducing crime, and is instead focused on retaliation.

MillsianUtilitarian wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
I agree that if someone is likely to reoffend, especially at rates as high as 90% then they should not be released earlier than their sentence. If someone keeps reoffending, then judges obviously need to consider lifelong sentences. Making broad generalisations that aren't based on evidence from an individual's past history is problematic at best.

We have to look at it as a cost/benefit analysis; yes we could reduce crime by unfairly punishing the minority that wouldn't reoffend, but why stop there? There are groups with far higher recidivism rates than people with antisocial personality disorder.

Yes, but those people can be healed through rehabilitation. People with antisocial personality disorder cannot be.

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.

Anti-social personality disorder is something of a spectrum condition. Depending on where we choose to draw the line, we could end up incarcerating a good number of businessmen. The difference is largely about levels of education, the sense of having a stake in society, and the development of coping mechanisms. Yes, there are those who will always pose a risk to the wider community, but equally, there are criminals who have some degree of anti-social personality disorder who could be & are rehabilitated. They might not make the perfect neighbour, but they don't have to always fall back into criminality. Having been in the police service, and then having had a number of years working in the NHS with mentally disordered offenders, I am well aware of the depths that some humans can sink to. I'm also aware of how much some are victims of circumstance.