How to create a monster

Start by abusing your child. Occasionally slap him when he gets older make the beatings more violent. If he fights back hit him even harder. After a while he will become nervous and scared of you, when this happens it is a matter of time before he gets nervous and does something stupid. When this happens give him a break instead of hitting him again laugh at him and humiliate him a little bit. If he cries threaten to give him something to cry about. This is good since when ever he tries to think things through and discuss things you can hit him. This way he will learn to settle everything with violence. When he goes to school he may be very nervous so the other older abused children will sense this and they may take out their anger by bullying him. When this happens and he comes home beat up blame him not the bully. Tell him he should have stood up for himself and teach him to fight so you can have a tough kid you can be proud of. If he gets in trouble later in school and the teachers call you and ask you to discipline him you can downplay it then reluctantly agree to hold him accountable. When you punish him make sure he knows he is being punished for being caught not for causing trouble itself. This way he’ll learn to hide it and avoid getting caught next time. An occasional compliment for winning a fight would be a good idea. You might also want to cheer him on if you ever see him abusing animals. It would help if you gave him positive feedback for something and this is as good as any other thing. Feel free to demonstrate so that the kid could get the idea from you to begin with. It would also be a good idea to beat up your wife a little so that he learns that kind of behavior is acceptable. Teaching the kid to blame minorities for all the problems in the world will be a good idea too. It doesn’t matter whether the minorities deserve any blame or not in fact it may be better if they don’t as long as you keep repeating it often enough not only will you convince your kid that it’s true but you’ll reinforce your own belief that it is true. Teach him all kinds of superstitions and mix this up with mythology so he won’t be able to sort out right from wrong. Neglect him when you feel like drinking and when you punish him for something make sure it isn’t consistent and it is often over trivial things and done in an emotional way.

If you’re the mother of a child being raised like this you can do your part to by verbally abusing him to and telling the kid all this abuse is for his own good. You can also join in on the abuse especially when the kid is smaller so he still can’t stand up to you. In fact it would be much easier if you made sure you started beating him while he is still you otherwise he might realize he can fight back. Of course he may eventually be able to fight back any way when he gets bigger so you have to be ready to find more effective ways to keep him under your power. Otherwise you’ll just have to get rid of him which might not be to bad an idea since then someone else will have to deal with the monster you created. At that point you might want to think about places to put the blame because you certainly won’t want to take it yourself.

If the child is a girl be sure to treat her just as abusively after all with woman’s lib movement woman have just as much right to become monsters as men. This means they have just as much right to be abused as a child. If this isn’t new ignore it after all we don’t need to let inconvenient facts get in the way when trying to create a monster.

If there are discussions about stopping violence be sure to join in and dispute anything that might help address the situation in a rational manner. It would be a good idea to propose all kinds of ideas that are counterproductive and do much more harm than good. Ideas that are tough to implement and wait for the last minute will do the trick nicely. After all why should you settle for creating just one just one monster when you can help preserve a system that creates many.

Most important of all don’t let anybody know that you are trying to create a monster; the best way to do this is to avoid telling even yourself. Keep in mind if you let others know how to create a monster they might interpret this as things to avoid doing to prevent violence. If you can convince yourself of your own B.S. stories that would be ideal. If you don’t know how to this you may have missed your opportunity you should have gone through this same training as a child.

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Consistent punishment guidelines

In order for punishment to work as a deterrent as many people claim is the primary purpose there needs to be a consistent set of guidelines and the public has to know that it will be enforced fairly, this should include the jury pool. In the nineties there was a report prepared by a group of expert scholars to set up a recommended set of guidelines for punishment of certain crimes. This wasn’t a strict guideline with no flexibility; it gave judges the option to go outside the guidelines when he/she thinks it necessary. In this case the judge would be required to provide and explanation for why he went outside the guidelines. Ideally this would involve making the law as simple and easy to understand as possible. One problem is that there are so many different laws about so many different subjects that people don't even know what the law is. There is no guarantee that these guidelines are ideal but by putting it in writing and showing the work they can enable them to find and fix any mistakes that may be in there. Unfortunately these guidelines whether these guidelines are perfect or not were never implemented and the current system is highly inconsistent. There were politicians and commentators calling for tougher penalties and fewer excuses. These calls for tougher penalties also hampered research into the causes of crime and prevented people from understanding the most effective ways to prevent crime.

Punishment does work as a deterrent if the individual cares about the future and he thinks there is a good chance of getting caught. However this isn’t always the case so it is important not to rely solely on punishment. Punishment should be combined with education programs and most important prevention programs. People are much more likely to respect the rights of others if they have a reasonable life and others respect their rights. This is why abuse victims and social outcasts are often more likely to commit crimes.

In order to understand what the most effective guidelines to prevent further crimes it would help to have an organized list of different guidelines from different states and countries for their punishment guidelines. This won’t be the only contributing factor but it will be a step in the right direction. Additional information about other contributing factors should be added in as soon as possible.

The most important set of guidelines for punishment may not be the ones in criminal law for adults but the guidelines for little children. The reason for this is that this is where the education system and justice truly starts. The precedent set here should be carried over into the adult justice system. If there is a good system in the early child hood education system it will be much easier to set up a system for adults. The earlier intervention and rehabilitation happens the more likely it is to succeed. There is often a belief that rehabilitation doesn’t work, in the most extreme cases this is probably true but the reason it is true is because they didn’t address the problem soon enough. There are few people if any who would argue that someone like Gary Ridgeway or Richard Ramirez can be rehabilitated adequately enough so they can be returned to society. According to Dr. Stanton E.  Samenow the most extreme felons are not susceptible to rehabilitation biggest they never had a sense of order to begin with. The biggest reason for this is that most serial killers suffered from a brutal upbringing that made them very angry and emotionally unstable. They are so far gone it is hard to imagine that they can ever be safely released. For those that believe that their rough childhood should be considered mitigating circumstances it is usually to avoid the death penalty and perhaps to obtain more privileges within prison. The fact that they are already so violent and that violent upbringing creates more predators is another reason to make sure they don’t have an opportunity to abuse members of the next generation. TV lawyers that try vigorously to get people like this off are for the most part done for propaganda purposes or drama I suspect.

This doesn’t mean that all felons are beyond rehabilitation but the ones that are treated the earliest and with the proper education programs are the ones that will be the most successful. There are often objections to providing educational opportunities to felons that aren’t provided to others. The most effective way to address this is to try to provide more educational opportunities for everyone. This can be done by making information more readily available to everyone in an organized fashion. The internet could be a very effective way of improving that. The more social injustices are reduced the less likely we are to have a big problem with crime.

Another important thing to make punishment more effective would be a more effective way to provide equal opportunities for legal defense.  The current system provides much more lenient punishment for the rich than for the poor. Looking at social justice before it gets to the courts is also very important to make punishment more effective. If a class of society doesn’t believe they’re going to get a fair shake they are much less likely to care about punishment. If they are often subject to unfair treatment whether they commit a crime or not they may not care about punishment. If they don’t care about their own future punishment won’t deter them, they’ll just be concerned about living for the moment. If they only care about living for the moment they’re not going to let the threat of long term punishment deter them.

My point isn’t that punishment shouldn’t be part of the system it is an important part of the system but it shouldn’t be the sole focus of the effort to prevent crime nor should it be considered the most important effort.

Do advertisers and political strategists choose the agenda for the public?

 

They certainly try to, if they don’t then all the marketing research and polling that they do is a total waste. However if you ask most people whether their decisions are influenced by advertising I suspect a large percentage will say no. Most of these people probably don’t understand advertising and manipulation tactics therefore I suspect they are actually the ones most likely to be influenced by the Mass Media. The ones who are the least likely to be influenced by the Mass Media are those that are more accustomed to search for information on their own. This isn’t a guarantee since some people may be predisposed to search for information that supports their own beliefs. The best way to avoid this is to review how you developed your own beliefs and recognize whether they start with the right basics or not. It also helps if you understand the tactics often used by the Mass Media to manipulate the public.

Politicians often have agendas that they want to accomplish and it isn’t always what they tell the public. The reason for this is that they are often more concerned with there own agenda than what the public wants to accomplish. When this happens they try to figure out the most effective way to convince the public they are looking out for the best interest of the public without interfering with their true agenda. This often involves telling the public what they want to hear and manipulating their emotions. That is what political research is all about. If the public wants the politicians to look out for their best interest they have to do a better job understanding how they have been manipulated in the past and avoid it. The most effective way to do this is to learn the basics of any given subject and make sure that they are never forgotten. Many complicated political plans often contradict the most obvious basics. Political advertisers often repeat catch phrases over and over again to get their point across and when the public hears it often enough they start to believe it even though they may contradict the basics.

 

Advertisers do the same thing when they want to sell stuff. Justice shows get their financing from advertiser and they are based on ratings. The most effective way to get high ratings is to use demagoguery. This also attracts a segment of the public that is less savvy about recognizing manipulation tactics. Advertisers like this kind of customer since the demagoguery that Nancy Grace uses attracts the same type of people that are most receptive to advertising.

When it comes to violence the public often acts based on emotions. Demagogues have recognized this for thousands of years and used this to manipulate the public.

"A group is extraordinarily credulous," wrote Sigmund Freud, "and open to influences, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. The feelings of a group are always very simple and very exaggerated, so that it knows neither doubt nor uncertainty."

The orator who wishes to sway a crowd "must exaggerate, and he must repeat the same thing again and again."

Freud pointed out that the mass was "intolerant but obedient to authority...What it demands of its heroes is strength or even violence. It wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters."

He wrote this more than 80 years ago when the public was less educated and they still hadn't learned from WWII. Similar quotes have coming from demagogues like Hitler and Lenin and this one from Charles Manson: "You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100%, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from."

Information like this could be used for at least 2 purposes.

First if the demagogue wants to use an understanding of manipulation tactics they can do so to manipulate the public. This is often done by many people including Hitler, Lenin and many more moderate demagogues. Right now the more moderate demagogues are causing a bigger problem because the public doesn't recognize them as demagogues. However some of them aren't quite so moderate if you look at them closely. Including Nancy Grace, Jean Valez Mitchel, Geraldo Rivera etc. Demagogues generally pray on the emotions of the public and the easiest emotions to pray on is anger and hate. This is important when it comes to preventing school violence or any other type of violence. This explains why so many people are quick to seek vengeance but very slow to try to find out what the real cause of problems are. Some researchers have made an exception and have investigated the true causes of violence and it is clear that early abuse is one of the biggest contributing causes if not the biggest. However when they try to point this out to the public it often sounds like they are trying to excuse the Behavior of violent predators. Demagogues often start screaming loud and clear and more qualified researchers often back off and do more research. The advantage is that more research is being done but it isn't getting through to the public and it isn’t achieving the desired goal. James Garbarino has argued that we need to get away from the idea that researching the cause of violence means excusing it. Vincent Bugliosi has also made a similar argument if you look closely at his book Helter Skelter. He has stated that "both (Hitler and Manson) suffered deep wounds in their youth, the psychological scars at least contributing to if not causing, their deep hatred for society." He has not attempted to say this is justification quite the opposite he continued arguing for the death penalty in Mansons case anyway. This doesn't mean he didn't recognize Manson’s abusive childhood as a contributing cause. He has also appeared in at least one commercial promoting help for troubled youths that were not what he considered beyond salvation. In Helter Skelter he cited several of the Manson family members that he thought were capable of rehabilitation and advocated that they received the help they need.

 

Second it can be taught to the public so that they can understand when they are being manipulated. They can teach the public how to get a rational education and avoid being manipulated by demagogues. Unfortunately this is rarely done although it may have been what Freud intended. Freud was neither the first or the last to understand these principles many people including Hitler, Lenin, Twain, Machiavelli etc., have demonstrated that they understand this but unfortunately there has been little if any effort to educate the public about this.

For table of context of other blog entries see:

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The real victim rights advocates

 

In order to understand who the real victim rights advocates are it is important to understand that the most important right for victims should be not to become victims in the first place. The fact that they did become victims leads to the second best way of addressing the situation which would be to avoid further victimization of both them and other potential victims. Once you consider this then it may be clear that the real victim rights advocates are the ones that do the best job trying to figure out what causes crime and how to prevent it in the first place. This involves careful unbiased research into criminal behavior. Several researchers have done this and they have gone through peer review. Some of these researchers include James Garbarino, Ellen deLara, Alice Miller, Joanne Scaglione, Dorothy Otnow Lewis and many more. They have concluded that most of the most violent people became violent after suffering from violent upbringing. This has been confirmed through corroborating sources and isn’t dependent solely on the testimony of felons trying to get a lighter sentence. In fact felons rarely admit to the abuse they suffered as a child unless urged to do so in some cases they still refuse to admit to being abused as children.

The problem with the system is that it focuses on either punishing the suspect or proving his innocence and getting him off. There is little effort to study what causes violence and even less to inform the public so that they can act on this. The real victim rights activists are the ones that do this.

Research has also shown that many of these felons also suffered from bullying and ridicule as a child. This may not seem important to some but to those that suffer from it for extended periods of time it makes a big difference and leads to a lot of anger. Once you understand this then it becomes clear that the real victim rights advocate are those that help develop programs that minimize or prevent the abuse and bullying that children endure when they grow up. James Garbarino, Alice Miller and Dorothy Otnow Lewis have all done research that clearly indicates that violent felons have routinely suffered from violent past and James Garbarino, Ellen deLara, and  Joanne Scaglione have all written books about how to reform schools, minimize bullying and help parents understand better how to raise their children. They have also written about some social programs like head start and the home visiting program that helps social workers contact at risk parents and work with them to avoid abuse. In many cases if they begin early enough they manage to do this with a minimum amount of conflict that often comes up when addressing abuse. Parents become defensive if they aren’t approached in the most effective way possible, the home visiting program offers advice before children are born sot there is no need to imply any abuse.

Many of the high profile people that portray themselves as victim rights advocates don’t do these things. They often do more harm that good although in most cases I trust it isn’t intentional. One exception to this would be someone like Nancy Grace who is far more concerned about drama than about victim rights. People like this often use demagoguery to manipulate the emotions of the public. Nancy Grace routinely incites anger at the person suspected of the crime often even before they have nearly enough evidence to know for certain that they have the right person. Once a demagogue like this finds a villain they often try to make them seem as evil as possible often overlooking anything that might indicate either innocence or mitigating circumstances that could help explain the crime. Demagogues generally seek what they call justice which often seems like vengeance. What they don’t seem to understand or don’t care about is that many of these violent felons often went through abuse and they are often angry in some cases they also seek what they consider justice or vengeance. This doesn’t mean they act in a fair way quite the contrary they rarely do. What they seek is a sort of vigilantly justice. This isn’t what most of us would consider fair justice but when they are raised in a violent environment they often grow up with a distorted sense of justice. When they grew up no one stood up for their rights as victims so they learned to do it themselves anyway they can. In other cases they are just angry at everyone and don’t even understand it themselves. The problem is that most victim rights advocates only address the victims that they know about. Many children are routinely abused and there are no victim rights advocates trying to help them.

The real victim rights advocates are the ones who try to change the system so that they can prevent as much child abuse and bullying as possible. If anyone feels the need to distort the truth in order to protect the rights of victims they wind up doing more harm than good this means that decisions will be based on a false set of facts and this will inevitably lead to problems.

Demagogues are often too quick to tell victims what they want to hear and comfort them in the short run. This often leads to more damage in the long run. After a victim suffers from crime they are often angry just like the perpetrator was when they suffered from abuse as a child and they want what they consider justice. In most cases this is often what society tells them over and over again which is that they must be punished. Society doesn’t repeat that we should learn what causes these crimes nearly as often and most people overlook the importance of research into the subject. This also may lead to a rush to judgment in many cases. When there is a serious crime there is often a lot of pressure to solve the crime as quick as possible. This doesn’t mean that there is sufficient evidence to solve the crime though. Under these circumstances prosecutors and police often jump to conclusions too quickly. In many cases they are extremely reluctant to admit if they made a mistake. There are many cases where the courts have dug in their heals when defense lawyers have found overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the prosecutors. One of the justifications for this is that victims want closure and they don’t want to further traumatize them. If this is the case then it indicates that they are more concerned with punishing someone for the crime even if they don’t have the right guy.  When this happens something that is often over looked is that the real criminal is still out there and may commit another crime.

The rush to judgment has at least two major potential drawbacks, they could punish the wrong person and they could pass up an opportunity to learn about the cause of the crime and how to prevent it. True justice should involve learning from what causes these crimes and how to prevent it and it should start much earlier. If there was more concern about justice in grade schools when it is much easier to deal with problems while they are still small problems then there will be much fewer problems in court. Also if there were more concern with social justice before it results in court action it would be much easier to deal with.

For table of context of other blog entries see:

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How the system restricts education

 

By the system I mean mainly the political system, the justice system, the media system, the education system and any other major institution that influences the public as well as the public themselves. Society as a whole tends to be more interested in finding someone to blame than to find out what the cause of violence is and how to prevent it. Most people spend too much time looking for quick answers and fail to look deeper. This leads to efforts to try to prevent violence just barely before it happens.

 

Whether it is the prosecutors, victim rights advocates, media demagogues or anyone else many people often try to avoid any consideration of what could be considered mitigating circumstances. This usually involves any thing that could elicit sympathy for the defendant like a rough upbringing. In many cases all this involves is simply failing to investigate the background but in some cases it involves disputing it even when abuse is exposed. This could involve someone who wants a quick answer and wants to put all the blame on one the person who committed the most recent act of violence. If a researcher discovers testimony of abuse opponents might say they are just trying to excuse the crime and the abuse didn’t happen. Then in some cases if there is corroborating evidence they might recognize the abuse but then they may later put the emphasis on the testimony and forget the corroborating evidence. Unfortunately this leads to overlooking the long term causes to violence and prevents people from understanding how to find the most effective way to prevent violence in the long run. The emotional desire to meet certain preconceived ideas may cause some people to overlook any thing that disagrees with these preconceived ideas even after there is evidence to prove otherwise. In some cases they may acknowledge the evidence only as long and it is right in front of them then later forgets it and reinforces their preconceived ideas.

 

The Mass Media is in a position to educate the public but instead it routinely prays on their emotions and tries to use them to boost their ratings. Shows like Nancy Grace and Jean Valez Mitchell are among the worst. So called victim rights advocates often act with self righteous indignation and condemn and demonize a particular perpetrator. They constantly look for more reasons to make the villain look bad and ridicule anything that refutes this. Whenever someone tries to bring up abuse as a child as mitigating circumstances they act as if this is intended as an excuse. They may deny the abuse or they may claim that others have gone through rough childhood without killing, which is true but the rough childhoods of killers are usually much worse than what others go through. This also passes up on the opportunity to recognize how serious child abuse is when it comes to contributing to crime. By overlooking this they fail to point out how programs that prevent child abuse could prevent much more crime as well. They incite more anger which often leads to even more violence. By putting so much emphasis on punishment as a deterrent they convince a large percentage of the public that punishment actually works as a deterrent which is not true, or it least it isn’t true if we rely solely on punishment as a deterrent. If there is some reliance on punishment backed up by counseling and education this will work much better. In the long run it is important to prevent the abuse that leads to the crime in the first place. If this is done than there won’t be any need for the rehabilitation since they would have been raised right in the first place.

 

When it comes to emotional or controversial subjects many people might be more inclined to choose their beliefs based on their belief system and their biases which are often shaped by the system. In order to change this what may be necessary is a massive public campaign to encourage rational thought and teach the public about potential ways that their beliefs could be distorted by demagoguery or other manipulation tactics. The public needs to understand the difference between information that is based on research and information that is based on political manipulations.

 

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Keith Hunter Jesperson

Keith Hunter Jesperson aka the happy face killer is a typical case of how child abuse can lead to extremely violent behavior and later lead to denial of the abuse. Keith Hunter Jesperson told his story in “I: the creation of a serial killer” 2002 by Jack Olsen.  He described how he was raised in a strict household by a father who had a drinking problem and often abused his children. He suffered from bullying and humiliation from the other children as well. When he was caught getting into trouble it often seemed as if his father was more concerned about how he damaged his reputation than the trouble he got into. At times ridicule was used to discipline him and his father was fond of practical jokes that many people would consider cruel. His father was often cruel to animals and he taught it to his children especially Keith. Keith wound up torturing and killing animals and committing arson before becoming a serial killer. There is a long list of abuses that he suffered as a child. As usual there are also denials of these abuses in some cases Jack Olsen was able to confirm some aspects of them through independent sources and it is clear that even though some of the details  may not be conclusive the general environment of abuse was there. Jesperson has demonstrated a history of lying he confessed to 166 murders at one point. This didn't help his case and it indicated that fact checks are important but this doesn't mean that all of his claims are false. It appears that he may have become more serious and credible after the trial and the media spotlight was no longer on him. Other details almost certainly were false but in most cases this was about parts of the murders not the abuse that lead up to the murders.

Shortly after reading this book I saw the tail end of an episode of American Justice about this case. They showed his father on TV saying that he couldn’t understand how Keith became a serial killer. This went unchallenged. His father has down played the abuse Keith suffered as a child but in some cases the version that Keith presents seems more credible and was backed up by additional corroborating evidence. His father seems to be in denial and this gives the people that want to minimize mitigating circumstances something to latch onto and use to refute Keith’s claims. A close look seems to indicate that his father may have blocked out the memories and he also suffered from an abusive childhood. There was apparently a history of violence in the family dating back generations. They may have mentioned the abuse earlier in the show but I doubt if they spent much time on it. This is typical of the way they downplay any thing that could be considered mitigating circumstances. They closed the show giving the viewer the impression that this was a total mystery. The book was written years before this show was taped they could have easily have found out that information if they wanted to.  By constantly repeating stories that exaggerate the brutality of the crime and ignore the abuse to the defendant that led up to the crime it prevents the public from understanding that there is a way that crime can be dramatically reduced.

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Child care programs

 

Programs that address social problems at a young age are the most effective ways of preventing violence. There has been some talk about warning signs weeks or months before the school shooters committed their crimes. These shouldn’t be ignored of course but the most effective solutions should come months or years before the warning signs happen.

 

This means addressing problems from early childhood before they get as bad. Programs like Head Start, daycare, PTA etc. are the most effective ways to address these problems. The best time to teach conflict resolution is at an early age with simple things that many adults may consider trivial or childish. Of course it’s trivial or childish they’re children! The important thing is that the example set at an early age is what they learn throughout life. In many cases if the parents comes from a troubled home they may not know how to raise their children themselves since what they know about childhood is what they learned when they were young. If they were abused when they were young then that may be the only way they know how to raise their children. This is why programs like the Home Visiting Program for at risk mothers can be so helpful. This program which originated in Hawaii offers assistance to at risk mothers. They send a home visitor to provide some help with chores and advise on how to raise children. The children who benefit from this program are much less likely to get in trouble later in life than at risk children who don’t receive this assistance.

 

Other programs like AmeriCorps can help later in life. If children do get into trouble the sooner it is addressed them more likely it is that they will be successfully rehabilitated. The most successful progrmams to prevent crimes are not the ones that wait for the last minute they are the ones that address the problems as soon as possible. The solutions that the public often spend the most time discussing are the ones that stop problems just barely before they happen if at all. More often than not they don’t work so they wind up punishing people after the fact instead of preventing crime. This often results in massive security that hampers everyone guilty or not and a massive prison system. Many of the people who balk at programs that help children don’t hesitate to advocate massive prison expansion. This is pennywise and poundfoolish. Child care programs are much cheaper and more effective than prison programs. The problem is instead of thinking this through many people rush to judgement with their emotions especialy if it right after a disaster like Columbine. This is made worse by demagogues and politicians that are constantly praying on peoples emotions. The media gives much more air time to these demagogues and no more than a token amount to people like James Garbarino. What we need is also media reform where there is some accountability for those that control the media.

 

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Preventing Violence

 

The Media often portrays violence as something that has mysterious causes that can’t be prevented and the only thing we can do is to punish people after the fact. They imply that the solution is to rely primarily on punishment as a deterrent. They rarely if ever try to find out what the causes of violence are and often indicate that this is a mystery that can never be solved. This isn’t true, there are many researchers who have studied the subject and discovered what some of the contributing causes to violence are and how to prevent them. Several authors have written books that describe effective ways to prevent violence. These mostly involve improved child care, preventing child abuse, bullying and improving social justice.

Many of the most violent felons have all come from abusive homes and suffered from trauma at an early age. This is often unnoticed when it happens since much of the abuse happens behind closed doors. In many cases if it is exposed after the victim becomes the abuser it is often portrayed as an excuse and disputed. This often happens at criminal trials where the objective of the defense is to get the defendant off as easy as possible, and the objective of the prosecutors is to get as harsh a punishment as possible. This is especially common in high profile cases where there is a lot of political pressure. For example In the Manson trial at one point the defendants were portrayed as coming from nice middle class homes. There was some acknowledgement that Charles Manson had a criminal past but it mostly focused on the crimes that he committed not on the abuse and neglect that happened to him before he committed these crimes. If more attention was paid to the abuse that he suffered before he became a cult leader who inspired mass murder then more could be done to prevent it in the future.

There are similar contributing causes to the School shootings that escalated in the late 90’s. Many of these school shootings were preceded by a lot of bullying and neglect from the administrators as well as the parents of the perpetrators. In some cases there was also a lot of abuse from the parents as well.

Whether it is school shootings or mass murder or less serious crimes they are almost always preceded by abuse to the perpetrator that could have been prevented. If we can increase public awareness of this problem instead of seeking to cover up the causes then violence can be dramatically reduced.

Several authors including Philip Greven, James Garbarino, Ellen deLara, Alice Miller, Joanne Scaglione, Arrica Rose Scaglione, Gavin de Becker and more have written about how violence can be reduced in a rational manner. Unfortunately the mass media isn’t making much if any effort to present these ideas to the public. The mass media seems to be much more concerned about getting higher ratings and catering to the emotions of the public. They generally do this by presenting it as a great drama and demonizing the murderers. There is no need to make this more dramatic than it already is and this shouldn’t mean overlooking the deeper causes to violence. Downplaying, denying or ignoring the abuse that precedes these murders makes it much more difficult if not impossible to recognize and prevent the causes of violence and eliminate them.

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