Originally posted by steerpikeI guess you would like more lenient sentences being that you are locked up. But I guess we should get a convicts perspective.😀
Always a simple answer to a complex question.
In the US ( an easy place to get stats for) there were 16 000 murders and 71 executions. Sure you can blame some of this on the liberal states but your average murderer's chances are less than 1 in 200 of being executed. You have to be very unlucky - and usually you will be of a minority race, poor and lac ...[text shortened]... good. It is just too close to the reason why our man from Kansas likes killing woman.
Originally posted by buckkySerious question. Are there places which create or encourage serial killers? Is this a statistical blip or something about a place or society which creates nutters?
I live in the Kansas City area, and it seems like we have more serial killers than anywhere on earth. Just last week a new guy was finally caught after killing 12 women, and they think he has killed more than that. Tonight on the news I h ...[text shortened]... f the Kansas City area too.. There must be something in the water?
My first reaction was typically xenophobic - yep, they are all nuts over there. Reading the case, (murder of prostitutes) I realised it was similar to a local case. Living in a smaller community, the killer was soon caught - but I could not just regard it as a Kansas problem.
Others applied their favourite solution - the death penalty, perhaps without knowing the death penalty apples in Kansas and there are several inmates already on death row. So we can not blame the do-gooders for this one - the death penalty did not deter him.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the case is the killer was male. Could have guessed that as nearly all serial killers are - so what is it about being male which creates serial killers?
My theory is serial killers have extreme examples of attitudes held by many men. These include the use of physical violence against woman and a contempt for woman who do not follow the same moral code. The further men move towards these beliefs, the more frequent the violence against woman - including those who regard some woman as so unimportant they can be killed for pleasure.
So - do morally conservative or liberal societies create serial killers?
There are direct links between poverty and violence and between fear and violence.
Like it was stated in Bowling for Colombine, the big difference between say Canada and the US is not that there are more guns in the US (Canada has more per head of the population), but that the people who live in the US are far more frightened than the people who live in Canada.
The US government and media are constantly fanning the flames of fear. First it was the blacks, then it was the communists and now it's the terrorists.
Take Britian for example now. Violent crime is on the increase...and so is the fear level within society.
Why? Because fear makes people behave irrationally. For instance, someone who has extreme vertigo will venture down the steepest of impossible slopes, just to escape the height. Not rational. Self destructive.
The more scared people are, the more destructive they become.
Poverty leads to all sorts of social problems. Drinking, drugs and abuse. Generaly poverty also leads to an education deficiency and with the current urbanisation of poverty (gathering them together and sticking them in coucil estates, trailer parks, neighbourhoods, etc.) it becomes a vicious circle.
There's nothing like slogging 8 hours a day to make someone else rich, always being frightened (fear again!) of losing your job, your house, your car) to drive people to extremes. This coupled with the lack of education (education as in being taught to rationalise and make your own decisions based on facts) leads to whole groups of the population falling into the poverty trap. This also contributes to a violent society.
The punishment has nothing to do with removing fear or poverty. Since these two items are generally what causes violence, removing them would be far more effective than executing someone.
Look at it this way: Does executing someone lead to less or more fear? Commit a crime and go to prison or commit and crime and hang? Which increases the fear of that individual?
Am I right? Does it make a difference? No. The point I'm getting at is that you have to find the causes for violence (whether they are the causes I name or not) and remove the causes. This will lead to less violence, not the hanging of criminals which only removes individuals who are a result of the cause in the first place.
Serial killers are sometimes placed in a seperate catagory. But, as far as I've been able to find out, they are more common within violent societies.
The more real violence seems lead to a greater breakdown of values.
A serial killer or psychopath is someone who's id is far greater than his super-ego (to place it in Freudian terms). Basically this means that the 'animal' within him is far stronger than the moral values he was taught as a child at home and at school.
Wars tend to bring out the animal in people. Just look at the amount of crimes committed during wars. Violence again. And fear.
There is, if you ask me, such a strong correlation between violence and psychopathy that it shouldn't be ignored.
Less fear and less poverty = less violence = less serial killers.
Want to bet?
I also think that societies which are competitive, individualistic, and consumeristic are prone to spawn serial killers. In such societies, there are greater numbers of alienated single men chronically divorced from their communities who have the freedom to nurture their unhealthy violent and sexual obsessions. The US, of course, is probably the most competitive, individualistic, and consumeristic nation in the world, so they get most of the serial killers.
Aiden
Originally posted by PawnokeyholeGreat to welcome a contribution on the topic from the UK, telling us it is an American problem.
I also think that societies which are competitive, individualistic, and consumeristic are prone to spawn serial killers. In such societies, there are greater numbers of alienated single men chronically divorced from their communities who have the freedom to nurture their unhealthy violent and sexual obsessions. The US, of course, is probably the most co ...[text shortened]... alistic, and consumeristic nation in the world, so they get most of the serial killers.
Aiden
Tell me -were Fred and Rosemary West, Denis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe, Jack the Ripper, and Harold Shipman illegal immigrants from across the Atlantic or did they just watch too many films from Hollywood ?
Originally posted by slimjimGot to have the courage of my convictions Slim! 😀:
I guess you would like more lenient sentences being that you are locked up. But I guess we should get a convicts perspective.😀
Here is what I really think:
The person really affected by a murder is the victim. So - let the victim decide the punishment. Everyone has to prepare a sealed envelope, to be opened only after someone has been convicted of your murder. Inside will be your choice of punishment.
Slim, your envelope might say "Drag him out to the nearest lamp-post and string him up!"
And the liberal version might be slightly longer:
"I realise the social deprivation and poverty which has lead you to this desperate act. I understand how my hard earned posessions have been a temptation to you. I forgive you - a couple of months in the jail (with weekends off) seems pretty fair to me. Unless of course you are truly sorry and promise not to do it again - in which case, an afternoon attending an empowerment workshop is more than enough."
Just think - you coud reduce your chance of a road rage death by replacing your "Save the whales" bumper sticker with "Keep honking, I'm still loading". That is, of course if the Greenpeace members turn out to be as liberal about their own murderer as they are about other people killers...
Originally posted by geniusMaybe they should put his lawyers in the mental hospital.
there was once a serial killer in scotland. he plead insanity, and he ended up in a mental hospital. HOWEVER, he was deemed "incurable", and his laweyers found a loophole in the law (about being incurable) that allowed this phycopahic murderer go free...
the loop hole's been closed up....thankfully...
Originally posted by steerpikeThat's possible, but not necessarily the reason. For a start, sexism is not confined to men (though it may be more prevalent).
My theory is serial killers have extreme examples of attitudes held by many men. These include the use of physical violence against woman and a contempt for woman who do not follow the same moral code. The further men move towards these beliefs, the more frequent the violence against woman - including those who regard some woman as so unimportant they can ...[text shortened]... lled for pleasure.
So - do morally conservative or liberal societies create serial killers?
As an example of how extremes don't always reflect the general population, far more men than women have some form colour blindness, but if you exclude this small minority, men and women have pretty similar levels of colour perception as far as I know.
buckky, it's not uncommon to have some type of weirdo in one area. for example: in this town i am living in now it is actually a fashion to shoot you pets or carelessly shoot someone elses. in louisville, ky it's quite common to, well, there are just a mixture of all those people who ou try to avoid in life.