After many years, I have come to understand that people who harm others, for any reason, are ill. Full stop.
Just because an attempted murder conviction would carry less time than the other 2 charges, that doesn’t mean they won’t or couldn’t go after him for all 3 in order to get 3 consecutive sentences. He (allegedly) committed 3 distinct heinous crimes after all.
Except it simply isn’t true, and that kind of misinformed attitude leads to the stigmatization of mental illness and the continued violence against and scapegoating of a segment of the population dealing with real classifiable studied illness. Which mental illness would it be categorized under?
Proportionately adjusted for population, normal, mentally normal, people commit far more violence against their fellow man then mentally ill people do. Mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes then perpetrators. This has been repeatedly studied and proven.
Humans are animals, and like many animals, our perfectly 100% normal biological and mental capacity for harm is just as intact as our biological and mental capacity for doing good. This is important to realize for a number of reasons, the primary being it is the only way to address violence in society properly. It is a choice most people have the capacity to make most of the time, but we don’t because of societial conditioning, not mental health.
Did you have a sibling growing up?
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Narcissistic psychopathy, with an empathic dissociative comorbidity.
People often confuse “Untreatable” with “Not real”.
Did they have a funeral with police mannequins from all over North America?
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Agreed. If all criminal behavior is the result of mental illness, then it’s immoral to prosecute them. Full Stop. But that’s not true - the question is whether the mental illness resulted in the person not understanding what they were doing. Currently reading “Mindhunter” for the second time - and the author raises the question of selecting victims. If the perpetrator passes on some victims (due to the likelihood of being caught, for example), and pursues others - the author argues that shows a level of rationale thought. So if this guy has a thing for bashing homeless people - the question is whether he showed some thought around selecting his victims (empty streets, dark alleys) or does he just bash without regard. The first shows that yes, this guy is f-ed up but doesn’t show that he is insane in a way that relieves him of intent to commit the crimes because he is able to avoid committing the crime if it is likely to lead to his arrest and prosecution. The latter - the maniac - if he can’t control himself for whatever reason - then perhaps we find that his actions are out of his control and that he is not personally culpable, but insane.
A perp who is fucked up but can still pick and choose his victims based on the risk to himself is, of course insane but still mentally culpable.
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OK internet… I’m done for this evening. Going to go watch funny animal videos.
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Yes and no.
Based on the psych research, psychopathy is fairly evenly spread across the intelligence spectrum. But whereas the dumb psychopaths end up in prison, the smart psychopaths end up as senior corporate executives and similar.
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Why can’t I like more than once?
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“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” - Henry David Thoreau
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