Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2016 1:35:03 GMT 7
I thought this was a good read -
I recently spoke to some reformed gangsters about how and why they left crime behind. In most cases, it was because they knew that being in and out of jail for the rest of their lives would suck. That a life behind bars is really no kind of life when you could be outside, eating decent food, enjoying swimming classes, or getting really into needlework blogs.
One slightly confusing revelation, however, came from former biker gang member John Lawson, who told me that a major factor in his decision to go straight was reading a story about himself in the paper and realizing that perhaps he wasn't the nicest of guys.
I couldn't help but think: Did it really take a damning article for a gangland debt collector to notice he wasn't leading a particularly ethical life? And, if so, how is it that criminals who carry out immoral acts day after day manage to convince themselves that they're actually upstanding people?
The only explanation I could come up with is that, to be a career criminal, you either have to be a master of self-deception, or genuinely just not give a <duck>.
According to criminal psychology expert Shadd Maruna, studies indicate that the majority of criminals either make excuses for, or attempt to justify, their actions. There's little evidence that these justifications are made prior to committing the crimes, so it's possible—and somewhat likely—that they're thought up afterwards as a way to mitigate the guilt.
"Criminologists have interviewed every imaginable sample of individuals who break laws, and found remarkable consistency in the use of what we call 'techniques of neutralization,'" Maruna explained. "There have been studies of deer poachers, terrorists, rapists, shoplifters, cyber hackers, murderers—you name it. And yet the individuals involved tend to use a very consistent and discernible number of post-hoc rationalizations to account for what they did."
These "techniques of neutralization" form the basis of a concept known as "neutralization theory," which was posited by sociologists David Matza and Gresham Sykes in the 1950s. The theory holds that criminals are able to neutralize values that would otherwise prohibit them from carrying out certain acts by using one or up to five methods of justification: "denial of responsibility," "denial of injury," "denial of the victim," "condemnation of the condemners," and "appealing to higher loyalties."
"Denial of responsibility" is when an offender proposes that he or she was forced by the circumstances they were in to commit a crime; "denial of injury" means insisting that the crime was harmless; "denial of the victim" involves the belief that the person on the receiving end was asking for it; and "condemnation of the condemners" is when the criminal claims that those criticizing or dishing out punishment are doing so out of spite or to shift the blame from themselves. The final method, "appealing to higher loyalties," involves the perpetrator believing that the law needs to be broken for the good of a smaller section of society—for example, a gang or a group of friends.
I was curious to see how these theories worked outside of textbooks, so I got in touch with five reformed criminals and asked how they used to justify their actions to themselves.
www.vice.com/en_ca/read/how-criminals-justify-crimes-psychology-gangsters-uk?utm_content=32988152&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
I recently spoke to some reformed gangsters about how and why they left crime behind. In most cases, it was because they knew that being in and out of jail for the rest of their lives would suck. That a life behind bars is really no kind of life when you could be outside, eating decent food, enjoying swimming classes, or getting really into needlework blogs.
One slightly confusing revelation, however, came from former biker gang member John Lawson, who told me that a major factor in his decision to go straight was reading a story about himself in the paper and realizing that perhaps he wasn't the nicest of guys.
I couldn't help but think: Did it really take a damning article for a gangland debt collector to notice he wasn't leading a particularly ethical life? And, if so, how is it that criminals who carry out immoral acts day after day manage to convince themselves that they're actually upstanding people?
The only explanation I could come up with is that, to be a career criminal, you either have to be a master of self-deception, or genuinely just not give a <duck>.
According to criminal psychology expert Shadd Maruna, studies indicate that the majority of criminals either make excuses for, or attempt to justify, their actions. There's little evidence that these justifications are made prior to committing the crimes, so it's possible—and somewhat likely—that they're thought up afterwards as a way to mitigate the guilt.
"Criminologists have interviewed every imaginable sample of individuals who break laws, and found remarkable consistency in the use of what we call 'techniques of neutralization,'" Maruna explained. "There have been studies of deer poachers, terrorists, rapists, shoplifters, cyber hackers, murderers—you name it. And yet the individuals involved tend to use a very consistent and discernible number of post-hoc rationalizations to account for what they did."
These "techniques of neutralization" form the basis of a concept known as "neutralization theory," which was posited by sociologists David Matza and Gresham Sykes in the 1950s. The theory holds that criminals are able to neutralize values that would otherwise prohibit them from carrying out certain acts by using one or up to five methods of justification: "denial of responsibility," "denial of injury," "denial of the victim," "condemnation of the condemners," and "appealing to higher loyalties."
"Denial of responsibility" is when an offender proposes that he or she was forced by the circumstances they were in to commit a crime; "denial of injury" means insisting that the crime was harmless; "denial of the victim" involves the belief that the person on the receiving end was asking for it; and "condemnation of the condemners" is when the criminal claims that those criticizing or dishing out punishment are doing so out of spite or to shift the blame from themselves. The final method, "appealing to higher loyalties," involves the perpetrator believing that the law needs to be broken for the good of a smaller section of society—for example, a gang or a group of friends.
I was curious to see how these theories worked outside of textbooks, so I got in touch with five reformed criminals and asked how they used to justify their actions to themselves.
www.vice.com/en_ca/read/how-criminals-justify-crimes-psychology-gangsters-uk?utm_content=32988152&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
