Can People change?

[missjef]

following on from my last question.. do you believe that people can change after they have committed a serious crime? eg. murder, rape..
i personally do not believe people can change, because i think that people who have it in them to do stuff like that will have it in them for a lifetime and once the switch has gone on in them then they cant turn it off again, no matter how much therapy they have.
My friends have different opinions and believe that people should be given a second chance but i do not believe this is right in cases of serious crimes.

after reading about quite a few serial killers, it seems that any that got released from the institution they were put in then went straight on to kill their next victim - some didnt even manage to leave the gates before they killed someone!

what are your opinions?

[missjef]

dilf like people say its not all black and white, of course it depends on the situation. i would not class that 19 yr old as being a peaodophile though of course, if the girl did not agree to it then it would of course be rape.

carakeel that is exactly what i think. i do not think it is right that the victims have to live in fear that one day the perpertraiter (excuse spelling) may well be back on the streets. i believe that life should mean life and not just a 25 yr sentence!

[Pippa68]

nox always manages to find a way to change my views...;o)

[noxlumos]

To address slightly some of the issues that Carakeel raised, it's very often true that some offenders are offenders because they were victims. This is very true of violent and sexual crime in particularly. In my own instance my father was very physically abusive, which caused me to a. view extreme violence as somewhat normal
b. become resentful, hurt , angry and agressive
c. rely on drink and drugs to make myself feel better
d.because of a, b, and c, have no normal sense of empathy with other people.

I do think that although offenders clearly do in some instances give their victims a life sentence as it was put, they are also often living silently with one themselves.Certainly a huge amount of people I encountered in prison had been victims of someone else themselves, so I do believe that whenever possible we should also recognise the victim within them and address their problems as well. What we need to strive for is a more emotionally empathic and functional society where perhaps less value is put on the material and more is placed on the wellbeing of children and other vulnerable groups. Certainly if my wife had not helped me deal with my own isues I seriously doubt that I would still be here or indeed be happy and stable as I am now. I would hate to think that say, a four year old boy's fate is sealed to rot in prison because when adult he's unable to deal with the rage inside him, when his father first beats him unconscious. That is a thought too terrible to accept and I think we have to work far harder, not so much on the punishing of offenders but on making sure they don't come into existance in the first place. Happy people do not hate, harm and kill, it takes a very special sort of self loathing to do that.If we take away child abuse, alcohol and drug addiction fuelled by poverty and lack of education then we will go a long way in securing ourselves a far better, less crime ridden, future.

[dilf]

i have asked you missjef what you think and i think its only fair to ask noxy

noxy do you think you could sentance ,say - ian huntley to death cos im anti death penalty on the whole but id agree to kill him

i dont know

is a man who kills two children worse than a man who bombs100 children from 10,000 feet merely cos his reasons are different

[noxlumos]

I'll be honest, if it was my child he'd killed I couldn't harm him enough to be honest and I'd want to do it with my bare hands. Nothing would be too vile a thing to do to him, but judicially I think we do have to take a step back and behave in as civilised a manner as is physically possible even with the most heinous criminals. When we kill murderers judicially, we create a whole new batch of victims in their families which surely can't be acceptable can it? In trying to be deadly fair and honest here I'm finding myself something of a hypocrite because I know how i feel on a presonal level about Ian Huntley etc etc etc and I know that my ideaologies are differnt to my personal feeling of hate and loathing for him, so I really don;t know .

[Carakeel]

noxlumos, I do take on board what you said so eloquently. I agree with where you say we need to start, but it isn't so simple is it? After all, this is a vicious circle. You speak form the heart and I really do appreciate that. It takes courage and it would seem that you are an example of someone who has fought to change and find a better way. I can only congratulate you. Victims do fight an internal battle to change the effects of what has happened to them. Sadly though, I have never met one who has managed to do this fully. The scars are too deep, far deeper than the perpetrators can ever imagine. I still feel we should be punishing the worst violent offenders far more harshly, as they are what they are and will never change. And even if they did change, is it right to then act as if they were a new person, had nothing to do with their own past, and simply let the public take their chances by releasing them? I still am not for the death penalty, as for people like Huntley, this is too quick and too easy. I still feel that people like him should lose their human rights and be left, without any chance of committing suicide, in a barren cell with just the most basic of food for the rest of their lives. As for you, you give me hope that maybe ther are more people coming out of prison who have truly changed than I had expected. I wish you well.