What Causes a Psychopath to Commit Violent Crimes Such as Murder or Rape?

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Whenever a violent crime is committed such as the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech or the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, we draw a conclusion that these mass killers are psychopaths. Actually, most psychopaths are not violent. The thing that people need to think about what causes a psychopath to commit violent crimes such as murder or rape? Are serial killers and rapist sane to comprehend their actions to the crimes thy have committed. Many people would yes they are and, they understand what they have done. This way of thinking is bias because we want to see serial killers and rapist sent to prison or executed but, it truly doesn’t get to the true answer of can they truly comprehend their actions. Where does the thought process of violent crimes originate from? If violent crime is predictable, why are we not punishing those who can predict these crimes that chose not to say or do anything? There has been research conducted and many books and journals have been published to answer these questions. Dr.Adriane Raine mentions in his book “The Anatomy of Violence” about the thought process of people who commit violent crimes. Dr. Anna Marie Latisco also provides evidence that about how a psychopath mind works and, how it is not easy to predict in the “Journal of America Psychological Association”. Dr. Robert I Simon suggest in his book “Bad men do what good men dream” that psychopaths are actually normal people. Stephen Porter and Sasha Porter make a point in their research article that published in the book “The Psychopath” by Hugues Herv’e and John C Yuille that psychopaths are not easily predictable but, have a tendency to continue to be violent once they have become violent.

Psychopaths are by m...

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...mong Us. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.

Hauser, Christine Virginia Tech shooting leaves 33 dead, New York times April 16 2007

Hervé, Hugues, and John C. Yuille. The Psychopath: Theory, Research, and Practice. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

Leistico, Anne-Marie R., et al. "A large-scale meta-analysis relating the Hare measures of psychopathy to antisocial conduct." Law and human behavior 32.1 (2008): 28-45.

Millon, Theodore. Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior. New York: Guilford Press, 1998. Print.

Raine, Adrian. The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime. , 2013.

Simon, Robert I. Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior. Washington, D.C: American Psychiatric Pub, 2008.

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