Does Anyone Else Worry About Psychopathy?

Post Reply New Topic

There are many innocent people in prison (and in the USA, some innocent people end up on the electric chair).

Let's take child abuse, for example. It is hard to believe that people might be innocently accused of such a crime, but it happens occasionally. I've recently read about the case of an Austrian man who spent 8 years in jail for the alleged repeated sexual abuse of his stepdaughter over the course of several years. His stepdaughter has now, at age 25, finally decided to tell the truth. Her accusations were completely made up, she just wanted to get rid of him. (The German news article can be found here).

There have also been false accusations of rape (the Duke lacrosse case, for example), and countless people have been wrongly convicted of murder. It is bad enough when innocent people spend years in jail before they are proven innocent. Society can never make this up to them, but at least they are still alive and physically unharmed when the truth comes out.

That's the main reason why killing or torturing of or experimenting on prison inmates is highly unethical and can't possibly be justified. Also, someone would have to perform this torture / medical experiments, and people who would do something like this are just as unfit to live in our society as a convicted criminal.

Plus the vast majority of people in prison are going to get out someday and it would be better to try to reform them rather than do things to them that will make them even worse when they get out. Being in prison doesn't always make you a bad person even if you are guilty. Sometimes people do stupid things and learn from their mistakes. When I was 18 I got arrested for a non violent felony and if I had tried to fight it and been convicted I could have gotten 1-3 years during which I probably would have been beaten up and raped and maybe killed.. Considering how horrible prison already is I don't think any extra punishment is required or maybe I've been watching too much Oz (one of my favorite tv shows ever).

I don't really have a problem with experimenting on prisoners as long as it's voluntary and the chance of fatal or really horrible side effects are small or nonexistent. They had a story line like that on Oz and one or two of the prisoners died.

Gee, I dunno. Where is the power in experimenting on a guy who isn't even considered to be human anyway? Every society has its 'undesirables" that we can mistreat. Now we use psychology to justify these things. At what point is a "scientific study" going to come out that clearly states that all humans are human?

criminals are criminals because they inherited bad genes and bad circumstances. there but for the grace of god, go i. who's to say if you or faced what they faced, we would not do the same. overwhelming scientific evedence is that we would do the same. how can you mistreat someone whose major crime is being as human as you are? lock them up to prevent further crimes, yes. mistreat them as vengeance, never.

This thread is somewhat disturbing.

I was suggesting this his argument that this could put serial killers onto a path where they're not destroying people is bogus. Serial killers like to trick and trap their prey. Look at Ted Bundy, he essentially killed his victims with the trust they put into him.

In the US, there is a clause in the constitution about "cruel and unusual" punishments. That is why we can't experiment on prisoners. So, you are asking the wrong question. You should be asking "Why does the constitution prevent us from experimenting on prisoners?".

[Moved from General Autism Discussion to Politics, Philosophy, and Religion]

I don't worry that I've got APD or psychopathy, but I do think there is something wrong with my emotional reaction to certain things.

I can't actually think of anything wrong with abortion. I seriously have no emotions on the topic. I feel the same way about eugenic abortions of babies with birth defects - i.e. I don't feel anything. Nada. Zilch. I'm not like 'Wooo yay! Go abortion!' just

Even if they actually developed a prenatal test for autism and decided to wipe it off the face of the planet through eugenic abortion, I'd be like . Whereas others are like, 'Noooooooo, I would never have been born!'

EDIT: and as for your example, I think it's worse than just having the death penalty, which I don't support. I still feel empathy for criminals even though they have none for me. Life imprisonment isn't ideal but it at least removes them from society. If society starts to give psychopathic criminals a taste of their own medicine, then society itself becomes psychopathic.

What do you mean 'didn't understand a thing?'

I worry a great deal about psychopathy, particularly when I am being pursued by a deranged homicidal lunatic.

ruveyn

I know Mengele didn't experiment on criminals, I used his name more in the way of suggesting that kind of experiment.

Sure some innocent people land in prison, but they are the minority. I'm not saying experiment on EVERY criminal, but those whose crimes destroy lives. I don't understand how we can value their life after they have shown that they don't value anyone else's lives. Why keep someone who has killed 15 people alive? Why do they deserve to live more than their victims?

Because we're not (complete) barbarians? Criminals have rights too.

This is why authoritarian societies tend to execute people and more horizontal ones do not ---- capital punishment, and torture are part of a system where all humans are NOT equal.

I think we should do things like drug trials, experemental procedures etc in prisons, but ONLY on a volunteer basis, and only on people that those drugs/procedures have the potential to help. I think that if a prisoner volunteers, they should get decent medical treatment and of course anesthesia and pain meds for any procedures and in some cases extra privelages in the prison for volunteering.

I also think that if a death row convict is healthy, they should have the option of donating their organs instead of the lethal injection type of execution. They could be given extra privelages for this as well.

Would you be OK with receiving a donated organ from a death row inmate?



What about Gitmo detainees?