DRAFT

LONNIE ATHENS’ PROCESS OF VIOLENTIZATION—THE CREATION OF VIOLENT DANGEROUS CRIMINALS

Researched and prepared by Wilbur L. Brower, Ph. D.

Dr. Lonnie Athens stated: “…I will outline a regime which could make anybody into a

violent criminal no matter what their biological makeup.” This short paper is a summary

of the key points in his books titled The Creation of Violent Dangerous Criminals and

Violent Criminal Acts and Actors, along with some background information that help to

put Athens’ findings into a supportive framework. I’ve also included some of my

personal observations and experiences from working with young adults who exhibit

many of the behaviors.

In Mind, Self and Society (1934), George Herbert Mead advanced the notion that

human beings attach meaning to objects, including other human beings, and act on the

basis of those meanings. It was his belief that the human society could not exist without

minds and selves. He asserted that individuals acquire a mind and a self. Culture derives

from an investment of bare nature with meaning. Mead pointed out that meanings are

basically arbitrary, devised through communication among minds and selves—your,

mine and others. Mind and self emerge through a social process. A child does not know

itself, but begins to discover itself through interactions with others, initially by way of

sounds, gestures and expressions. The child begins to learn the sounds, gestures and

expressions from the caregiver and the responses. Later, language acquisition, which

Mead proposed as an essential ingredient for the development of self, accelerates and

enlarges the process of discovering or developing self. The child learns the language of

attitude and value—vocabularies of behavior—for exchanges of gestural and verbal

conversation.

Mead calls the self-building process objectification. We learn to perceive

ourselves as objects by looking back through the eyes of others—by seeing ourselves as

others see us. Mead called this, “taking the attitude of the other.” We form our

objects/identities/personae primarily through social transactions with parents, siblings,

relatives and others close to us, or our “primary group.” They are descriptions filled with

the attitudes and values of our primary group with whom we negotiated them. We also

attach these objects/identities/personae to our bodily sensations and make them ours, or

simulations with attitudes, feelings and values. Mead assumed that within a given society,

the interpretations people make in particular circumstances of situations are based on a

shared set of meanings. Mead called that collective understanding the “generalized

other,” a concept that Athens had difficulty accepting. It was Mead’s belief that an

individual takes on the language of a community as a medium through which people get

their personality.

Selves are not given; they are constructed. They are built, altered, modified,

refurbished, reconstructed, etc., and even replaced over time. We acquire our selves

through our communications with ourselves and with others. The mind and the self are

products of participation in group life. Possessing a self makes it possible for human

beings to ascribe meaning to objects in her or his world, including other individuals. This

allows the individuals to read and interpret others and the world around them. Possessing

a self also allows human beings to construct a world of private inner experiences. Herbert

Blumer (1969) states: “This inner world is one of genuine social experience for him, in

which he may cultivate his impulses, develop his emotions and sentiments, form and

revise objects of others and himself, brood or exult over his memories, develop and

restrain his inclinations, cultivate his intentions and nurture and shape plans of conduct.”

Additionally, possessing a self makes it possible for human beings to interact with the

world around them rather than just react to it. It follows, then, that individuals can operate

out of an inner experience and by operating by direct response to stimuli. We also assign

meanings and interpretation to situations based on our personal interpretations of or

feelings about them.

Athens discovered that violent criminals interpreted the world quite differently

than the most law-abiding individuals. Therefore, their violence emerged from those

different interpretations. Their violent acts were deliberate decisions, not violent acts of

unconscious motivation, deep emotional needs, inner psychic conflicts or sudden

unconscious outbursts, as is often assumed or assigned.

2

It was Athens’ belief that unless violent criminals are bad seeds, genetic monsters

born that way, there had to be something in their childhood or a previous experience that

drove them to become violent adults. He argues and provides compelling evidence, from

extensive interviews with individuals who have committed violent criminal acts, that

violent dangerous criminals, in fact, are created through a four-stage process. Athens

wanted the individuals during the interview to construct objects of themselves at the point

where they remembered being violent or near-violent. He also wanted to know how they

thought of themselves during the time of the offense. Their self-concepts would

eventually emerge.

From these interviews with violent dangerous criminals, Athens found frightened,

angry children. He said that, “When people look at a dangerous violent criminal at the

very end of it, they will see, perhaps unexpectedly, that the dangerous violent criminal

began as a relatively benign human being for whom they would have more sympathy

than antipathy.” Athens was not concerned about the statistical distribution of

characteristics of violent offenders or their offenses. His primary concern was the social

psychological processes at work within the offender during the violent criminal acts.

Athens found that violent people consciously constructed violent plans of action

before they committed violent criminal acts. They do not “snap” but make decisions and

act on them. He found that the interpretations violent actors make of situations during

which they commit violent criminal acts evolve through a common series of steps. The

perpetrator:

Assesses the victim’s attitude and indicates to herself/himself what he

believes to be the meaning of that attitude

Engages in a dialogue with himself/herself, implicitly consulting the

significant figures out of her/his past whose attitudes he has internalized, to

decide whether or not the victim’s presumed attitude warrants violent action

Initiates violent action against the victim, if he concludes that the attitude

warrants a violent act.

During his interviews, Athens discovered four distinct types or kinds of interpretations.

3

1. Physically defensive—a violent actor forms physically-defensive interpretation in

two steps—1) interpreting the victim’s attitude to mean that physical a physical

attack is imminent or already is underway, and 2)—t hen telling himself/herself

that he/she should proceed to respond violently and forming a plan of action. It is

perceived that the victim is making or has made a gesture that the perpetrator

believes constitutes or foreshadows a physical attack, requiring acts of self-

defense. Athens found that criminals who form plans of action as a results of

physical defensive interpretations view themselves as non-violent. They fell

compelled to use violence in self-defense, and their primary emotion is fear.

2. Frustrative—the perpetrator forms a frustrative interpretation when he/she

interprets the victim’s attitude to mean that (1 the victim is resisting or will resist

what the perpetrator wants to do (such as rape, robbery, etc.), or (2 the victim

wants the perpetrator to behave in a way that the perpetrator rejects (such as

allowing him to be arrested). After an internal debate, the perpetrator concludes

that he/she should respond violently to this frustration and then determines a

violent plan of action. The perpetrator’s primary emotion in forming a frustrative

interpretation is anger at the thwarting of her/his intentions.

3. Malefic violence—from the Latin word maleficus, which means evil. There are

three steps that lead to the malefic interpretation: a) the perpetrator assesses the

attitude of the victim to be belittling, scornful or contemptuous of her/him; b) the

perpetrator concludes from the internal debate that the victim’s attitude means

he/she is an evil or malicious person; and c) the perpetrator, believing the victim

to be extremely evil and malicious decides to counter such evil or maliciousness

with violence and enacts a violent plan of action. The perpetrator’s primary

emotion in forming a malefic interpretation is hatred.

4. Frustrative-malefic—the victim’s frustrative resistance or insistence leads the

perpetrator to conclude that the victim is evil and malicious, which demands a

violent response.

4

Athens also found that there were three possible developments that determined whether

or not a violent actor would follow through to commit a violent criminal act: 1) the actor

has tunnel vision, a “fixed line of indication,” and carries out the act immediately or

nurtures the idea along until he/she carries out the plan of action; ) 2 “restraining

judgment” where the violent actor redefines the situation and judges that he/she should

act violently; and 3) “overriding judgment’ where a violent actor breaks out of a fixed

line of indication but returns to it later.

Athens concludes that violent actors consider, decide and choose when and where

to act violently and are responsible for their actions. They interpret situations very much

like the average individual—fearfully, angrily or hatefully. Unlike the average individual,

they decide to act violently as a result of that interpretation. Athens sought to understand

what was different about the violent actors’ decision-making process that leads them to

different conclusions. This led him to a fundamental discovery about the structure of

human personality.

Athens wanted to understand the self-interaction of violent criminals, what they

thought about when they assaulted, killed and raped. While he understood aspects of

Mead’s “generalized other” theory, he had difficulty reconciling it with what he learned

first-hand by interviewing violent dangerous criminals. The theory constituted a person’s

character, principles and acknowledged attitudes of all members of that community. It

explained conformity, but it did not explain individualism. It explained agreement, but it

did not explain disagreement. Athens was studying individuals whose attitudes and

behaviors were totally out of sync with the acknowledged attitudes of their community

that had judged them violent and dangerous and sentenced them to prison. They were

extreme examples of barbaric individualism, which is antagonistic to the general society.

Athens’ conflict with Mead’s model led him to propose a more intimate

community that was more of a shadow or reflection of the “I” and the “me” of each

individual. Athens determined that, somewhere between the individual and the broad

collectivity of society, there were some significant others whose attitudes shape

individuals. The significant others could be parents and other members of the primary

group, the voices of past experiences the individual has had. He advanced the theory that

5

the internalized attitudes of significant other individuals are constants in a person’s life,

which make it possible for a person not to be unduly influenced by immediate, passing

experiences. Athens identified these incorporated attitudes as “phantom others,” and

proposed that these “phantom others” comprise a “phantom community.”

Athens also states that we talk to ourselves; in essence, talk with a go-between

when we are undergoing social changes. We also talk with phantom others, who are not

physically present, but whose impact upon us is as powerful as people who are present

when we are during our social experiences. Our phantom community is ever-present, but

we may be unaware or unconscious of their presence. Our phantom communities are

likely to emerge during times of personal crisis, and they are a hidden source of our

emotions, especially fear, anger, hate and love. It is his belief that we assign meanings to

situations when we talk to ourselves, and that our phantom community is a major

contributor to our emotions. Our phantom community tells us how an experience is going

to conclude before it actually does. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is from the phantom community that Athens’ subjects interpreted the attitudes

of their victims; and it was from the phantom community, not the “generalized other,”

that they found justification for responding violently. Unlike the typical individual,

violent dangerous criminals attached different, violent meaning to their social

experiences. Many people feel frustrated, become angry and hate, but only a small

number uses violence to overcome those conflicts. There will be more about this later.

It is from the phantom community that violent dangerous criminal construct self-

images. He discovered that the image the criminals had of themselves when they

committed a crime determined they types of violent acts they committed. He found three

types of self-images, and labeled them violent, incipiently violent and non-violent. Violent

self-image individuals see themselves and as seen by others as having 1) violent

dispositions, a readiness and willingness to attach other people physically with the

intention of seriously harming them; and 2) see themselves as having violence-related

attributes and characteristic, such as explosive, hot-headed, mean, ill-tempered and

coldhearted. They commit violent criminal acts in situations in which they formed

malefic, frustrative, frustrative-malefic or physically defensive interpretations.

6

Incipiently violent self-image individuals see themselves and are seen by others as

having violence-related attributes, but only a readiness or willingness to make serious

threats of violence toward others. They make menacing physical gestures and violent

ultimatums toward others. They commit violent criminal acts only in situations in which

they formed physically defensive interpretations or frustrative-malefic ones.

Non-violent self-image individuals do not see themselves and are not seen by

others as having a violent or incipiently violent disposition. They commit violent acts in

situations in which they form physically defensive interpretations of situations in which

they find themselves.

They referred to their phantom community to construct their self-images and their

interpretation of situations in which they found themselves. Those who have a violent

self-image have an unmitigated violent phantom community providing them with

expressed and unlimited moral support for acting violently toward others. Those who

have an incipiently violent self-images have a mitigated phantom community providing

them with expressed, but limited, moral support for acting violently toward others. Those

who have non-violent self-images do not have a non-violent phantom community that

provides them any expressed moral support for acting violently toward others.

He discovered that crimes are a product of social retardation because criminals are

guided by an undeveloped, primitive phantom community that impedes them from

cooperating with ongoing social activities and interactions of their corporal community or

the greater society in which they live.

It is Athens’ belief that a small group of people who have violent phantom

communities “are at the heart of our violent crimes.” He contends that there are three

types of violent criminals based on their phantom communities and their self-conceptions

and self-images: ultra-violent, violent and marginally violent. He states that ultra-violent

criminals “inhabit unmitigated violent phantom communities and paint violent portraits

of themselves.” Violent criminals “inhabit mitigated violent phantom communities and

paint incipiently violent self-portraits.” Marginally violent criminals “inhabit non-violent

phantom communities and paint only non-violent portraits of themselves.” Therefore, he

believed that in order to understand violent criminals, one had to understand the phantom

7

communities of violent actors. This led him to the investigation of the social process that

leads to the development of a violent phantom community.

Two of Athens’ assumptions were: 1) people are a result of social experiences that

they undergo; and 2) significant experiences that make people dangerous violent

criminals do not occur all at once, but gradually over a period of time. He proposed that

there are some social experiences that a person can undergo that are so consequential and

profound that they leave an indelible impression on the individual. Those experiences

could make a person a dangerous violent criminal. Those social experiences build on

each other and form a development process with discrete stages.

Athens’ interviews led him to conclude that violent dangerous individuals are

created by way of a socializing process that included a strong influence of a phantom

community. It was a four-stage experiential process that he termed violentization. The

progression of stages is: 1) brutalization, 2) belligerency, 3) violent performance and 4)

virulency, and individuals have to go through the attendant social experiences in one

stage before they can enter the next higher stage of violence development. The following

outline provides some of the factors and explanations associated with each stage in the

progression.

1. BRUTALIZATION:

a) Violent Subjugation—the subject’s primary group (characterized by

regular, face-to-face interaction and intimate familiarity between its

members, such as a clique, family, gang) threatening to use or using

extreme physical force to compel the subject’s obedience and respect.

There can also be coercion wherein the authority figure forces the

individual to comply with some command that the subject displays some

reluctance to obey or refuse outright to obey. The authority figure

continues the battering until the subject signals submission by obeying the

command or proclaiming intensions to. Then, the authority figure stops.

But, before that point in the subjugation, the subject reaches at state of

terror and panic, and subjection is the only way out. Submitting to and

stopping the battery provides a great sense of relief to the subject.

8

Immediately afterward, however, the subject feels humiliated from the

realization of having been battered into submission. The subject is

incensed by the humiliation and later is filled with rage that is transformed

into a desire to seek revenge. The subject’s desire for vengeance expresses

its in fantasies in which the subjugator is battered, maimed, tortured or

murdered. Coercive retaliation is intended for momentary submission for

compliance to a present command.

The authority figure can also exact retaliation to punish the subject

for previous disobedience or disrespect. Retaliatory subjugation involves

relentless battering because the authority figure refuses the subject’s offers

of submission. Once the subject realizes that the subjugator was not going

to relent, the subject becomes resigned and falls into an apathetic state,

becoming numb to the pain, absorbing the punishment and falling into a

stupor. The subject will harbor desires to batter, maim, torture or murder

the subjugator. Retaliatory subjugation seeks a permanent submission to

ensure future obedience and respect.

b) Personal Horrification—The subject witnesses (sees or hears) another

person undergoing violent subjugation. The other person must be a

member of the subject’s primary group. The subject feels helpless in

defending the group member. The wrath felt builds into fantasies about

battering, maiming, torturing or killing the subjugator. The intense

feelings eventually turn to personal shame and blame because the subject’s

inability to stop what was witnessed. The subject blames her/his own

impotence rather the subjugator’s wickedness.

c) Violent Coaching—The subject is prompted to violent conduct by

someone in the subject’s primary group who is older and more

experienced than the subject, or a credible authority figure. Subjects are

taught that they have a personal responsibility to physically attack any

9

protagonist. Through the following techniques, violence coaches instruct

novices what they should do when people provoke them:

Vainglorification—glorifies violence through storytelling. The violence

coach tells personal anecdotes about violent acts-her or his own or those of

relatives or close friends

Ridicule—promotes violence through belittling and derision via

comparisons between the coach and the novice

Coercion—coaching through coercive, violent subjugation, where the

coach threatens to physically attack the novice unless the novice attacks a

protagonist

Haranguing—repeated and raves about hurting other people, from which

the novice learns over time the lesson conveyed by the coach

Besiegement—The coach mixes a combination of penalties and rewards to

overcome any reluctance the subject has to engage in violence

All three components involve the individual being subjected to cruel and coarse treatment

at the hands of another individual in a way that dramatically impacts the individual’s

subsequent life in some traumatic way. All three brutalization experiences, violent

subjugation, personal horrification and violent coaching, are necessary to complete

brutalization.

It is Athens’ belief that most people who complete the process, especially males,

do so by early adolescent, and are left in a confused, turbulent condition. This confused,

turbulent condition prepares them for the next stages of the violentization process. The

violent subjugation generates emotionally-charged thoughts in the subject with a

repressed sense of rage and vague notions about physically attacking other people.

The personal horrification adds a sense of powerlessness, turning the subject’s

feeling inward. The subject was unable to protect her/his intimates and concludes that

she/he is worthless. The violent coaching adds humiliation to the feelings of worthless-

ness. Athens writes: “The question which has been in the back of the subject’s mind for

10

some time and which only now moves to the forefront is: Why have I not done anything

to stop my own and my intimates’ violent subjugation?”

2. BELLIGERENCY

Belligerency—The subject re-directs the question from “Why have I not?” to “What can I

do?”, and clearly understands, for the first time, the importance of the coaching received.

The subject concludes: Resorting to violence is sometimes necessary in this world. The

subject then resolves to use serious violence only if there’s serious provocation and only

if there’s a good probability of prevailing. This mitigated violent resolution represents the

completion of the belligerency stage.

3. VIOLENT PERFORMANCES

If there is defeat in a violent act, the subject is likely to either avoid physical

confrontation or resort to more lethal violence more quickly. If there is a draw, the

subject is left in limbo. If the subject prevails in a violent confrontation or performance,

primary group members and secondary group members (school officials, police,

prosecutors, judges, etc.) reinforce the opinion or notion that the subject is an

authentically violent person, and needs to be approached and treated with apprehension.

The subject engenders social trepidation, wherein the subject’s violent notoriety is better

than not being known for anything at all. Being known as a dangerous person creates and

gives the subject a greater power over her or his immediate social environment. The

subject draws the conclusion that he or she is invincible, and is determined not to tolerate

any provocation from others and, in fact, is likely to provoke others. The subject has

come full circle from a hapless victim of brutalization to a ruthless aggressor—the same

kind of “brutalizer” the subject once despised. This completes the fourth stage of

violentization, which is virulency.

4. VIRULENCY

11

The subject resolves to unmitigated violence, and will attack others physically with the

serious intention of inflicting severe harm or killing them minimal or less than minimal

provocation of their part. The subject is ready to become an ultra-violent criminal.

Athens contends that unless an individual has undergone an authentically violentization

developmental process, he or she will not become a dangerous violent criminal.

Violentization is transmitted experientially across generations, and the process can take

several years or a few months. Violentization is a social process that requires inter-

personal interactions and the process changes over time. For example, subjects suffer

from low self-esteem during the early stages of violentization, and then suffer from

unrealistically high self-esteem to the point of arrogance should they reach the final stage

—virulency.

Athens’ research brought him to the conclusion that people who have never had any prior

violence-related experiences whatsoever do not suddenly commit heinous, violent

crimes! His research shows emphatically that violentization is the cause of criminal

violence, not poverty, genetic inheritance, psychopathology and other factors often

contribute to dangerous criminal behaviors. He found that dangerous criminal behaviors

cut across class, race, cultures, economic and social status and gender. However, Athens

did find some differences, primarily because of different interpersonal interactions and

socializing techniques, in criminal behaviors between men and women.

In his efforts to further explain his theories about creating violent dangerous

criminals, Athens also examined and explained various kinds of communities historically

and present-day. He asserts that dominance is a social universal because human beings

compete for dominance, which he defines as “swaying the development of social acts in

accordance to one’s preferences.” He states that social acts are collective co-ordinations

of the separate of individuals, and people dominate “when they impose their view of a

developing act social act on others.” He also states that in all communities, a dominance

hierarchy invariably emerges, and that people who occupy higher positions often make

their identification of emergent social acts prevail over people in lower positions. This

usually initiates a dominance struggle. Athens identified three distinct kinds of

communities within the United States and how they differ from each other. He also states

12

that in spite of their differences, they all are the same regarding the dominance hierarchy,

and the norms that people use for settling dominance disputes. However, “the individual

type that predominate

The three kinds of communities that Athens identified are civil, turbulent and

malignant. Each community has its own “unique phantom communities, self portraits,

patterns of actions and insignia of dominance,” characteristics I’ve attempted to show in a

table format:

COMMUNITY WHO DOMINATES

SELF PORTRAIT

NORMS FOR SETTLING DISPUTES

CIVIL Pacifists—will not commit even physically, even under life-threatening circumstances.

Marginally violent person—will only commit physically violent acts.

Anti-violent

Non-violent

Gossiping about, ridiculing, snubbing, deluding or temporarily avoiding rivals. In more extreme disputes, rivals may be permanently purged from the group by firing, disowning, divorcing, ostracizing or shunning. Violent crimes are a rarity.

TURBULENT No individual predominates—a turbulent mix of all four types: pacifist, marginally violent, violent and ultra-violent

In transition toward either civility or malignancy

No prevailing norm for resolving dominance disputes. Violent crime is smaller than in malignant communities, but still a much bigger one than in civil ones.

MALIGNANT Ultra-violent person—prepared to commit the full range of violent acts and has unmitigated violent communities

Violent person—has mitigated violent phantom

Violent

Incipiently violent

A willingness and readiness to attack other people physically with the intention of seriously harming or killing them for any dominative provocation.

Prepared to commit physically defensive and frustrative-malefic

13

communities violent acts under extreme dominative provocation.

Physical violence is the most effective means of settling dominance disputes, and one must be prepared to use and receive deadly force. Violent criminal acts of all kinds occur with great frequency, and produce an unsurprising callousness toward violence among its members.

From his interviews with violent dangerous criminals and his understanding of Herbert

Mead’s work on the “I,” “me,” and phantom communities, Athens developed thirteen

principles to delineate the “other,” as outlined below:

1. People talk to themselves as if they were talking to someone else, except that they

talk to themselves in shorthand.

2. When people talk to each other, they tell themselves at the same time what they’re

saying; otherwise they would not know. Athens states that a corollary of this

principle is that people may talk to themselves silently while also echoing what

they are saying to someone else, so that what they tell someone or what someone

tells them is not necessarily what the speaker is thinking.

3. While people at talking to us, we have to tell ourselves what they are saying.

Unless we do, we do not know what they are telling us.

4. “Soliloquizing transforms our raw, bodily sensations into emotions.”

5. We always talk with an interlocutor when we soliloquize. “Everything that is said

to us, including what we say to ourselves, some interlocutor tells us.”

14

6. The phantom other is the one and the many. “It is a multiple because more than

one phantom companion is ready at hand. We need a council of phantom others

for social flexibility, since different phantom others offer different expertise.

7. We soliloquize both superficially and profoundly. Superficially we self-talk

ourselves through out daily experience with people we are aware of and

recognize. But ordinarily we are not aware of our phantom companions.

8. Our phantom others are the hidden source of our emotions. If we devise emotions

by soliloquizing about bodily sensations, and if our phantom others play a critical

role in our soliloquies, then our phantom others must largely shape the emotions

we devise. Our phantom others “tell us how an experience that we are undergoing

will unfold before it actually ends, which can create in us a powerful self-

fulfilling prophecy.” That prediction in turn can stir us so deeply that we will be

moved to carry it out when without its powerful influence we might not have done

so. Since our phantom others stand in shadow, we may well be unaware of their

authority over us.

9. Talking to ourselves allows us to compose self-portraits, f we could not

soliloquize, and we could not describe ourselves to ourselves.

10. The phantom community rules. It occupies center stage whether we are alone or

not.

11. Since soliloquies are necessarily “multi-party dialogues,” conflicts of opinion are

always possible.

12. Absolute conformists or absolute individualists are rare. Whether we act like one

or the other in the course of a specific social experience depends on what our

phantom community tells us. When our “us” (our phantom community) disagrees

with “them” (our “generalized other”), we act like individualists, confounding

15

“their” expectation; when “us” and “them” agree, we act like conformists,

meeting “their” expectation.

13. Significant social experiences shape our phantom community.

Personal Thought, Questions and Observations

We are what we say and believe we are.

How do we change young adults’ self-conceptions and self-images toward violent

behaviors to self-conceptions and self-images toward personal mastery and value and

academic success?

Who we think we are has a profound influence on our actions and behaviors. Our

thoughts become our blueprints and roadmaps for what we are likely to do.

Our phantom communities can be extremely dangerous for us if we listen exclusively to

those communities for moral guidance.

How has the growing hip-hop culture influenced the attitudes and behaviors of today’s

young adults? Does this culture constitute a phantom community that has more influence

than society at-large?

Phantom communities are inevitable. How can we develop phantom communities that are

non-violent? What are some of the components or elements of an effective of non-violent

phantom communities?

How can we thwart or eliminate violent phantom communities? How do we extinguish

students’ need to act violently toward each other?

What social pressures can be brought to bear on schools that will not deal effectively with

belligerent students? Can these students be directed to rehabilitative and therapeutic

settings for help before their offenses go beyond the point of rehabilitation?

Some things that can be done:

Reduce violence in families

16

Reduce school violence

Offer non-violent coaching such as training in negotiation, anger management and

conflict resolution

Discourage bullying

Offer mentoring to children at-risk of violent coaching

Counsel belligerent student

Dissolve or pacify street gangs

Separate violent dangers students from the remainder of the students so that their

presence will not have any legitimacy with others

What roles have economic and social oppression had on creating phantom communities

that work in opposition to the functioning of general society? How might this contribute

to the present prison population?

Upon reflection on the violentization process, it seems that prisoners are exposed to a

phantom community in which violentization is re-enforced and solidified. If this is true, it

might explain the high recidivism rate.

One of the primary reasons for being in business is to move inventory or provide a

service. The more inventory one moves or the move service one provides, the more

money one expects to make. In the prison “business,” however, the more inventory one

has the more money he or she will make. There is no incentive to get rid of inventory.

This would suggest that there is little or no incentive to “rehabilitate” the inventory.

Could this be a major factor contributing to the growing prison population?

If prison businesses were penalized for not rehabilitating their inventory, what affect

might that have on the results of their rehabilitation efforts?

17

Sources

Athens, Lonnie, 1997. Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited. Urbana: University of

Illinois Press.

_____________, 1992. The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press.

“The Self and the Violent Criminal” Lonnie Athens

Blumer, Herbert, 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkley:

University of California Press.

Rhodes, Richard, 1999. Why They Kills—The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist.

New York: Vantage Books.

18