Andrew vachss, presently a lawyer representing abused children, has written extensively on sociopathy. Only a few sociopaths end up criminals. He believes they generally cannot be rehabilitated. He describes them like a deck of cards, missing a card that cannot be re-emplaced in adulthood. He believes the seeds are planted during childhood through abuse; emotional, physical, sexual, neglect. He also suggest what could be done.
Here is an excerpt of his article writtne for parade magazine:
Look deep into the background of the predatory serial criminal, and the odds are overwhelming that you will find a childhood of abuse. This is explanation, not justification. Not all abused children turn to such destructive paths, and those who do must answer for their acts. It's too late for too many. But if we can't "rehabilitate" monsters, it doesn't mean that we have to stand idly by at their creation.
We have learned something over the years: Criminals are made, not born—there is no biogenetic code that produces a violent rapist, a child molester or a serial killer. We also have learned that there are environmental factors that predispose any individual to violent criminality—volatile factors that can tip the scales.
The first environment is the family. And the family is the first line of defense against the production of dangerous criminals. Attributing the current climate of crime to the breakdown of the family may be partly correct, but there is no period in our recorded history during which the kind of evil, predatory crime that frightens us so today has not been present.
There is a larger environment, a larger family: our society. Yet when it comes to fighting crime, we don't act as a society. Some organizations use anti-crime rhetoric as a a means to advance their own agendas ... temperance organizations or gun-control groups, for example. True, alcohol and the availability of firearms both contribute to violent crime, especially when combined. But fighting crime is not the sole reason for the existence of such groups. Similarly, those who advocate castration for sex offenders know nothing of the true motivation of such creatures.
Prevention—true prevention—is what we need. If we act before the deadly flower reaches full bloom, we can forestall the terrible harvest. The hard truth is that most child abuse cannot be prevented. But what we do after we learn that a child has been abused will determine that child's future—and our own.
Let's put first things first.
We must reorder our priorities. Cliches won't save us. Knowledge, by itself, is not power. Knowing where we have to go is not the same as having the resources or the commitment to get there.
First, understand that this is not simply another call for more money. We can significantly attack crime at its taproot without disturbing the specific gravity of the existing budget. If we invested the precious resources we now waste on the futile goal of "rehabilitating" calcified serial offenders, the savings would finance a whole new offense.
The front line of that offensive is Child Protective Services (CPS). This is the agency that responds to the first outcry: A child confides in a teacher that she is the victim of incest; a police officer finds an infant abandoned in an airport bathroom; an emergency-room nurse examines a baby with broken bones and signs of brain damage. All call the same number: the Child Abuse Hotline. Those calls, and thousands like them, dispatch CPS caseworkers to the scene.
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9006_a.html
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches.html
