Author Archives: ac126398

This piece in the New York Times titled, Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?, was written by Jennifer Khan. This article reminded me a lot of the documentary on diagnosing child with psychological disorders.  This is the story of a family with a son who exhibits many different traits that can be associated with numerous disorders within the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, but they believe he is a child psychopath. The mother tells stories of the child’s ability to go from extreme temper tantrum to silent cold calculating behavior. But the other significant point made was the difficulty in finding a therapist whose opinion matched the opinion of the previous therapist.  This story is a continuation of the issues raised in the documentary from class.  The real lack of understanding child personality disorders and the appropriate ways to treat them.  Kahn writes that “Currently, there is no standard test for psychopathy in children, but a growing number of psychologists believe that psychopathy, like autism, is a distinct neurological condition — one that can be identified in children as young as 5.” Then she continues on to write about how doctors are attempting to isolate true psychopaths from child that exhibit severe behavior problems. The key to diagnosing the child as a psychopath is behavior problems and “also test above normal on callous-unemotional traits.” This is a interesting topic for us to discuss because there is a belief that there are psychopaths who work on Wall Street or other high demanding jobs. Where would a successful diagnosis of childhood psychopathy lead? Would we be looking to cure it? What happens if there is no cure? Mandatory monitoring? What does everyone else think?

Andrew Conyers

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-11/news/32619857_1_sexual-abuse-gary-schultz-face-charges-tim-curley

This article is written by Daniel Filler about the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal at Penn State. Jerry Sandusky was able to use his postion at the university’s football program and a non-profit organization he started to sexually abuse children for decades.  The scandal blew up in the middle of this past college football season and resulted in the trail and conviction of Sandusky.  This piece is a opinion editorial where Filler says “Over the past two decades, advocates, the media, and politicians have stoked public fears about sexual abuse. The resulting panic has had serious consequences.” This op-ed captures everything that we have been discussing in class in regards to moral panic, stigma, and the shortcomings of laws passed by our society. Filler sums up the failures we submit ourselves to by writing “Over the past 20 years, society has approached sex crimes with unbridled passion and anger. This emotional search for justice is entirely appropriate in particular cases; that is one purpose of sentencing. But when the same intense feelings become an engine for policy-making, they may undermine the crafting of effective laws.” We witnessed this same exact circumstance when we watched Witch Hunt in class on Wednesday. Filler also touches on the public shaming and ineffective responses to sexual crimes, “It has subjected all sexual offenders to greater stigma and, more importantly, has led to a complex array of laws that dramatically increase the costs of conviction even for less serious sexual offenses. In some states, a low-grade sex offender faces greater repercussions than a murderer.” I agree with much that Filler wrote in this article, but changing public opinion and policy in regards to sexual crimes is extremely dangerous to a politicians career in politics. What does everyone else think?

Andrew Conyers

In class we discussed a study by Robert Agnew, that used Strain Theory to determine the factors that cause delinquency with children.  This reading was interesting because of the attempt to predict why children behave the way they do with data that is limited to only a few criteria.  With other readings we have discussed various models for human behavior, but we have not yet discussed how people are punished for any deviance or delinquency. I found this article on the New York Times website, which was about the recent Supreme Court case that ruled on the harshness of sentences for minors, specifically life without chance for parole.  While reading the article I noticed that many issues that we have discussed in class are present in this article. How we label people and the implications of that label are extremely important to how someone gets punished for a crime.  Then there is also the issue of rating a crime’s severity, but the age of the offender must also be considered while determining that. This article quotes Supreme Court justices,  an assistant state attorney general, and lawyers who work for juvenile advocacy groups. This article if anything showed me that people will use the label minors to restrict rights and enforce rules of society under this guise of  minors being “immature, impulsive, susceptible to peer pressure and able to change for the better over time,” but then punish them as full grown people without taking these same factors into consideration.

Andrew Conyers

Our class has been discussing how to identify people and the reasons to document individuals and analyze their appearance. In our last class credit scores and Social Security numbers came up.  In recent times people in America have become whatever their credit score allows them to be.  Before you buy anything or open various types of accounts, either cell phone or signing a lease, your credit score is checked.  The individual in America is now whoever has a social security number attached to a credit report.  This article from the New York Times is about a new form of crime involving social security numbers.  People are stealing the social security numbers of random people, to file the taxes before their victim can so they can get the cash refund.  What stood out most to me was the author of the piece, Lizette Alvarez, makes a point of stating “some violent criminals have traded their guns for laptops.” It was interesting that Ms. Alvarez felt the need to emphasize that a certain type of criminal is committing this crime. Later on in the article she writes “The criminals, some of them former drug dealers…” I do not understand the need to qualify the crime by stating that criminals of other crimes do this.  The article explains the vulnerability of people’s identity and the way in which criminals use social security numbers and other information to commit the crime of Identity Theft.  It is interesting to me because this is a crime based on the idea that we all need a number to identify who we are and how vulnerable we are because of it.

Andrew Conyers