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Jeffrey dahmer research essay
Jeffrey dahmer research essay
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Flawed It has been posited for many years that people can be born evil and some criminals especially have further proven this idea. But while some may be born evil, justice should always come when due to those who do horrible things. My ideal form of justice is that in which the crimes one commits are faced with equal retribution, but that is not always possible. For many, justice is when the bad guy goes to prison to rot, but it is hard not to wonder whether or not this is really a suitable punishment. Is it really enough to let a heinous criminal sit pretty with free food, healthcare, and protection in prison for 40 years? When Dante wrote Inferno, he certainly did not seem to think that earthly punishments were enough. There are simply people who commit acts so foul that the human ideal of justice can not churn out a punishment severe enough. One such person was Jeffrey Dahmer. …show more content…
Between 1978 and 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer kidnapped, raped, murdered, cannibalized, and desecrated the bodies of 17 men and boys in Wisconsin. His trial was highly publicized because of the brutality of his crimes, the high death count, and the calm sociopathic tendencies he displayed while under arrest and on trial. "He knew [what he did] was evil." This was what prosecutor Michael McCann had to say against Dahmer’s claim to insanity during his trial. The jury also agreed as Dahmer was given 15 terms of life imprisonment without chance of parole when the jury deemed him legally sane. “The euphemistic-sounding words reflected everyone's overwhelming need to deny their revulsion at Dahmer's atrocities and the issues arising from them.” This is a quote from one of the jurors after hearing Dahmer’s defense of
Dahmer was a pretty normal, but very lonely kid. His loneliness followed him throughout the course of his life. Never having an intimate friendship or relationship, along with being consumed with confusion over his own sexuality eventually led him to become the household name he is today. From 1978 to 1991, Dahmer murdered 17 boys and men. Not only is he considered a murderer, but he committed (on several occasions) rape and dismemberment. After his later murders, he was found guilty of necrophilia, cannibalism, and permanent preservation of body parts. He is arguably the most well known, gruesome, and intriguing criminal in American history.
With murder charges of fifteen people, cannibalism, and necrophilia hanging over his head, Jeffery Dahmer plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Since Dahmer was a child he had shown withdraws and avoidance of society. He had a habit of collecting dead animals, and he would dissect, dissolve them in many different ways. When Dahmers plea of insanity was rejected by the court, he was then charged with fifteen counts of murder (Yoong). Many believe that when Jeffrey Dahmer 's plea was rejected that it was the end of anyone using, but that isn’t the case. It is used quite rarely, but it is still in use. In all reality, the insanity plea should always be rejected. The only way it should be allowed is if the criminal is fully innocent. “The insanity
Jeffrey Lincoln Dahmer also known as The Milwaukee Cannibal and The Milwaukee Monster was born May 21st, 1960 to his parents Joyce Annette and Lionel Herbert Dahmer. When Dahmer was six years old he had minor hernia surgery that afterwards changes in his behavior were reported. He went from a happy young boy to increasingly insecure and a loss in self-confidence, these changes seemed to coincide with the birth of his younger brother David Dahmer who was born seven years after him. At age eight Jeffrey and his family moved to Bath Ohio due to his father’s career as an analytical chemist. The move seemed to deepen his already increasing odd behavior and seclusion from society. By age fourteen he started to have impulsions to murder and perform necrophilia, these impulsions were amplified again when his parents ’marriage fell apart and they divorced in 1977.
He was a pretty happy child overall until he had to have a minor surgery to correct a double hernia when he was 6 years old. The surgery seemed to affect him. Dahmer’s father was very consumed in his own things and his mother also suffered with severe psychological problems. As his mother’s disease got worse the conflicts within his family escalated. He felt guilty of her sickness and thought that he was the main cause of all the problems in the family. When he was a teenager his parents’ divorce and the psychological stresses that came from it may have been the tipping point that turned his thoughts about necrophilia and murder into action. In his life he killed many males which involved drugging, raping, beating, dismembering, photographing, and eating
...sses ranging in the fields of forensics to human psychology. The mechanisms in his brain that allowed for such horrific crimes against humanity, and then his complete transparency in regards to the details of all of them, still puzzles and intrigues people. While Dahmer’s psyche can be explored from many theories, his own self-diagnosis proves quite profound: “maybe I felt I had no control as a child and a young adult, and that got mixed in with my sexuality, and doing what I did was my way of feeling in complete control, at least for that situation, creating my own little world where I had the final say” (“Confessions of a Serial Killer”). No matter how we choose to analyze him, from Freudian to modern DSM-recognized personality disorder thought, the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer will continue to remain a mystery to even those who knew him best, and to the victims of it.
We are all faced with articles and news reports detailing crime occurring all over the world, crime that affects all types of communities, crime relating to religious, gender and age differences to name but a few. I have always paid close attention to the punishments handed out to criminals, in which I always seem to find myself debating on whether these punishments have been fair or are un just.
During Dahmer’s psychiatric evaluation, Dr. Wahlstrom concluded, “Jeffrey was suffering from a mental illness never cured for” (FBI 1992). This leads me to perceive that Dahmer must have been displaying psychotic traits that went unnoticed and undocumented during his early lifetime. I can only speculate that this uncured mental illness lead Dahmer to develop and refine his inability to empathize with society; which in turn, lead him to engage in cruelty without mentally comprehending the victim’s suffering. Although the causes for psychopathy are unclear, some suggest that psychogenic aspects can outline abnormalities which may be present in psychopaths (Schmalleger 2014). When looking at Dahmer’s distant relationship with his parents early on in his childhood, I became conscious of the fact the lack of affection from his parents which may have lead him to develop twisted views on how one should display affection to others, thus prompting him to show psychotic behavior later on in life (The profile of Jeffrey Dahmer 1996). Even though the letter of the law fails to describe Dahmer and even if he was not fit to stand trial, I believe the court would have declared him fit for trial due to the brutality of the
For centuries, prisons have been attempting to reinforce good behavior through various methods of punishment, some more severe than others. There are several types of punishments which include “corporal punishment, public humiliation, penal bondage, and banishment for more severe offenses, as well as capital punishment”(Linklater, V). Punishments which are more severe pose the question “Has it gone too far?” and is stripping away the rights and humanity of a criminal justified with the response it is for the protection of the people? Is justice really served?
A killer is not born. A killer is made. However, we are all born with the potential to kill, and any one of us can be made into a killer. It might take a lot to drive us to murder, but some people are simply more susceptible to the idea than others. People tend to believe that serial killers are mentally ill individuals, however, more often than not, they are rational beings who have suffered tremendously. Often, we cannot tell who is a serial killer. It could be the person standing next to you, and you would not have the slightest indication. Serial killers are shaped by isolation from their peers, neglect from loved ones or caregivers, and copious amounts of physical and psychological abuse as children.
“My consuming lust was to experience their bodies. I viewed them as objects, as strangers. It is hard for me to believe a human being could have done what I've done”(Dahmer). Jeffrey Dahmer is notably one of the most infamous serial killers in the United States. Along with seventeen murders under his belt, he was also a pedophile, cannibal and necrophiliac.
Years later, Lionel Dahmer wrote a letter declared an issued sentence and appeal psychological help before his son’s probation. Jeffrey was approved early release by the judge, after serving 10 months of his sentence. Once everything was done with court, Dahmer got an apartment where he began to build up in rituals as he experimented with chemicals of discarding and often devour the flesh of his victims. Throughout the sick and twisted games he would pull to trap his victims, a close call came in 1991, when a young teenage boy ran out of Dahmer’s apartment. The boy was fourteen years old but Dahmer told the authorities that he was his lover and the teenage boy was 20 years old. The police let him go again, but filed out a police report of homosexually
Brenna Courtemanche Professor Crombie ENC 1102 4 April 2014 The Mind of Serial Killers There is no specific manual or "how to" book to depict what a serial killer would potentially act or look like. It would be comforting if real-life serial killers were like those in the movies. If they were obviously masked like Jason on Friday the 13th, we would be aware whenever they approached. If they were introverted loners like Psycho's Norman Bates, they could not trick us so easily into their deviant plan.
I actually believe in our legal system and I believe in justice. I believe in justice as an ideal that we strive for and that is what it means to me. The legal system, when looked at closer is not justice but instead - judgment. You can be punished when found guilty, in a number of ways, but who knows if they’re “fair” punishments, it’s all a matter of opinion. Is life in jail, say 25 years, going to be enough punishment for the parents charged with brutally murdering their daughter Farah Khan? Her life was brief, but whoever killed her also mutilated her body parts. The possibilities for her life were endless, she could have lived to the old age of 95. So is 25 years enough for her killers? They’ll be able to walk free at the end of their term, and perhaps few will remember them then and what they did. Why is justice important then? Because although the legal system is not always right, it needs that lofty ideal of justice as something to strive for, something to hope gets accomplished, the hope for every victim of a crime of any nature. The seeking of justice is a tiring and long quest akin to the seeking of truth, for they are closely linked and without one there may not be the other.
The fact that punishment is already institutionalized in prisons and jails, provides legality for the cases behind agents in the prison system to safely and securely administer punishment with oversight. Taking into the consideration the safety and security of citizens, and the commitment we have to protecting human’s civil rights, then what other way to eliminate problematic citizens than by locking them up. People opposed to punishment are opposed to capital punishment as well, but in that instance harm is being done by one person to another by the means on execution. As reliable as that seems to just wipe the person clean from society, so there is absolutely no possible outcome of them harming another ever again is substantial. Morally, it is not permissible in the views of some philosophers to even consider the death penalty as an option, but the only other means for stability in law-making and the establishment of those laws, is some sort of retribution.
A sentence of life in an air-conditioned, cable-equipped prison where a person gets free meals three times a day, personal recreation time, and regular visits with friends and family is a slap in the face of morality. People will say here that not all prisons are like the one cited. someone who murders another human being can only be made to pay for his actions by forfeiting his own life. This is so, simply because a loss of freedom does not and cannot compare to a loss of life. If the punishment for theft is imprisonment, then the punishment for murder must be exponentially more severe, because human life is infinitely more valuable than any material