Vol. 2, No. 1 , 1996, Page 3 
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Vol. 2, No. 1 , 1996, Page 3 |
"There is a sense out there [not] that the criminal justice system
is in trouble but that it has failed."
Lynne Abraham,
Philadelphia district attorney
"Psychopaths are often passed through a variety of treatment programs without success. In one study, for example, they were almost four times more likely to commit a violent crime after release from an intensive therapeutic community program than were other patients. In fact, treated psychopaths were more likely to commit a crime after release than untreated psychopaths who were otherwise similar. They had learned enough psychiatric and psychological jargon to convince therapists, counselors, and parole boards that they were making remarkable progress, but they used that knowledge only to develop new rationalizations for their behavior and better ways to manipulate and deceive...
The trouble with all these cognitive or insight-oriented treatments is that they are
designed for people who recognize that they have a problem and want to change.
Psychopaths enter therapy only because of a court order or to gain early release from
prison. They see no reason to change their attitudes and behavior to conform to social
standards that they regard as irrelevant."
Robert D. Hare, in
the Harvard Mental Health Letter, September 1995
"The key development, which may eventually result from research into [predisposition
to antisocial behavior], is that at some point it may be possible to prospectively
categorize individuals at risk for antisocial behavior.... It is not unreasonable to expect
that individually tailored interventions could be developed, applied with due concern
for rights of the individuals, based on medical models."
Elliot S. Gershon, M.D., in Archives of General Psychiatry,
November 1995
"The genetic contribution to extreme problem behaviors in young people, such as those
we see in schizophrenia, autism and Tourette's syndrome, has been confirmed. And it's
a basic tenet in biology that where extremes of any condition exist, it's a sure bet a
variety of milder forms are responsible for a wide range of related problems."
geneticist Gerald Young,
in Science Digest, January 1983