Understanding Noncompliant Behavior Definitions And Causes: Fill & Download for Free

Another school shooting. 17 victims. How will gun owners once again convince us more gun ownership makes us safer?Brace yourselves, wall of text incoming:I have a serious problem with people telling me major crimes happening many states away from my own are somehow my responsibility or fault, and that I should share in some sort of collective guilt. I should engage in open dialogue and concede at least some of my own rights, despite the fact that I live in a state (Idaho) with the 6th lowest murder and non-negligent homicide rate per capita in the United States, while simultaneously being the 6th highest rate of gun ownership per capita. Don’t even get me started on unknown or noncompliant firearms, my state doesn’t like to enforce federal gun laws and recently went permitless concealed carry for anyone who can legally possess a firearm.Before you ask me to convince you that more gun ownership is better or safer (because it isn’t, it’s far more complicated than you or other answers here disingenuously make it out to be), you’re going to have to convince me why I must engage in discussion about restricting and conceding my own rights here in one of the safest states in the union, based on major crimes occurring hundreds or thousands of miles away.Per 1,000 residents, Idaho has a property crime rate of 17.44, a violent crime rate of 2.3, and specifically per 100,000 residents, a murder and non-negligent homicide rate of 1.9. This puts us at about the 5th lowest property crime rate, 5th lowest violent crime rate, and 6th lowest murder/non-negligent homicide rate out of all 50 U.S. states. Idaho has an estimated 24.2 firearms per 1,000 residents (probably more, let’s be honest), putting us at the 6th highest number of guns per capita.But Rose, what about Sandy Hook? Connecticut has a property crime rate of 18.08 (higher than Idaho), a violent crime rate of 2.27 (roughly the same as Idaho), and specifically per 100,000 residents, a murder and non-negligent homicide rate of 3.3 (higher than Idaho). What’s your point?But what about San Bernardino? California has a property crime rate of 25.53 (significantly higher than Idaho), a violent crime rate of 4.45 (significantly higher than Idaho), and specifically per 100,000 residents, a murder and non-negligent homicide rate of 4.8 (TWO AND A HALF TIMES HIGHER than Idaho). What’s your point?But what about that church in Texas? Texas has a property crime rate of 27.6 (significantly higher than Idaho), a violent crime rate of 4.34 (significantly higher than Idaho), and specifically per 100,000 residents, a murder and non-negligent homicide rate of 4.8 (TWO AND A HALF TIMES HIGHER than Idaho). What’s your point?But what about the Aurora movie theater? Colorado has a property crime rate of 27.41 (significantly higher than Idaho), a violent crime rate of 3.43 (higher than Idaho), and specifically per 100,000 residents, a murder and non-negligent homicide rate of 3.2 (higher than Idaho). What’s your point?But what about Las Vegas? Nevada has a property crime rate of 25.87 (significantly higher than Idaho), a violent crime rate of 6.78 (THREE TIMES HIGHER than Idaho), and specifically per 100,000 residents, a murder and non-negligent homicide rate of 6.2 (OVER THREE TIMES HIGHER than Idaho). What’s your point?I live in a rural farming community. I own several guns. I like to go target shooting. My husband hunts. We carry when we’re out hiking or camping and expect that we could run into a moose or bear. We have guns in case we need them for vermin control, like the mountain lion that was trying to get into the chicken coop and watching us from the back yard—where our then 5 year old daughter would play. Mountain lions kill people, for those not in the know. Moose are flighty, aggressive, and dangerous. I don’t think I need to explain bears.Rose Swan's answer to Why do farmers need guns?I also own firearms for home defense. I don’t expect that I will ever have to defend myself or my home against other homo sapiens, but I’d rather be prepared than sorry if something like that ever happened. Somebody in a more densely populated city with better funded law enforcement might say “that’s what the police are for.” Sorry, the police don’t even come to my house. I live miles out of city limits (a city of ~2,000 people I might add) and I’m in the sheriff’s department’s jurisdiction. Do you know how often I see sheriff’s deputies while I’m out and about? A couple times a week.In the movies 911 is called or otherwise alerted to some disturbance and help arrives in minutes, if not seconds. Here in the real world rural response time is closer to 30–45 minutes. Maybe 10 if you’re lucky and there’s a deputy nearby already. Not that it matters, because the average interaction time between criminal and victim is 90 seconds. Nobody is going to save you in 90 seconds. Nobody. Least of all out here, where my neighbors may not hear me scream, and if I manage to call for help, they’ll be too late and if I’m lucky I’m not maimed or dead.Here’s a story. I was living in a small town when I was in high school, and I was babysitting a toddler whose mother worked late. I heard somebody clomping very conspicuously on the front porch. I heard them try the door. It was locked, so they tried to force it. I yelled at them that I have a gun and I fucking well know how to use it and they ran off. The homeowner kept a 9mm in the closet, I knew where it was.Later she got home, I told her what happened, we laughed about it a little and I left. 3 hours later she called our house. She’d just called the police because somebody tried to break down her front door, failed, pounded and screamed at her through it, broke down her fence and tried the back door. She told him the same thing, she has a gun and she’s calling the police. He went next door and attacked her neighbor instead. She was his target all along, he just had the wrong house at first. Meanwhile my aunt had to listen to several minutes of her screaming and pleading for him not to kill her before the police arrived. He beat her and raped her.Can you imagine what his drunk dumb ass might have done to my aunt when—not if, but when he broke in? And what about the baby? He put the neighbor in the hospital.Mind you all of this happened before the police arrived. Had he made it into her house she would have had to shoot him, or she would have choked and been the one hospitalized, or dead.Hopefully that will at least convince you to take gun crime and gun control discussions on a more appropriate state-by-state basis, and consider all the factors that make people like me wary of gun control discussion and advocacy. Sweeping regulations and reform at the federal level are gross abuses of power, incredibly negligent, sloppy, lazy, ill-conceived, and based on profound ignorance.But if that doesn’t convince you, I’ll continue on.First, there is no standard definition of “mass shooting”. It’s generally described as a shooting in which 4 or more indiscriminately-targeted victims are killed, excluding the perpetrator. This is in line with the FBI’s definition of “mass murder”. Another common definition is the shooting of 5 or more people, with or without death involved, without a “cooling-off” period. Mass shootings are isolated incidents in that in the U.S. they are rarely connected to one-another, and generally are not committed by groups and organizations. They are not true isolated incidents, in that the profoundly disturbed individuals who commit these heinous crimes often displayed a behavioral pattern of escalation such as domestic violence or criminal activity related to the people or place the shooting takes place.The church shooting in Texas is an example of this escalation of behavior. Devin Patrick Kelly had a documented history and criminal record involving attacks on his wife and child. Following his divorce, police were involved in another domestic dispute between Kelley and his then girlfriend, whom he eventually married. He began sending threatening messages to his mother-in-law, who frequented the church he would later attack, though she was not at church that day. I think it’s pretty obvious who his intended target was all along, though.Similarly in the Plano, Texas mass killing last year, in which Spencer Hight murdered 8 people, including his ex-wife, in her home. His ex had begun divorce proceedings, and after the shooting her mother claimed that Hight had been a physically violent alcoholic.In fact, a study using FBI data found that 54% of mass shootings occurring from 2009–2016 in the United States involved domestic or family violence. In 42% of these cases, shooters displayed a number of warning signs and escalating behavior indicating that they were a danger to themselves and/or others. These warning signs included threatened, attempted, or successful acts of violence toward themselves or others; violation of protective orders; or “evidence of ongoing substance abuse.”Furthermore, and here is where I get more on point, 34% of these shooters were prohibited from legally possessing firearms. Gun laws did not stop 1/3 of these shooters carrying out their crimes. Neither did laws regarding assault, homicide, discharging a firearm in city limits, controlled substance laws, etc, which did not stop any mass shooters, obviously.And more to the other answers, only 10% of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones. A gun-free zone is an area where people are prohibited from carrying firearms and there are no armed security staff. The vast majority of mass shootings occur in private homes.Mass shootings are not interconnected incidents. They are not a commentary on society, they are not the fault of gun owners. They are typically worst-case-scenario outcomes to ongoing domestic violence situations, and, statistically, they are in fact still very rare. Terrible, tragic, mind-boggling, sensational, but rare.Mass shootings always spawn questions like this. People start arguing about gun laws, particularly across-the-board laws at the federal level with absolutely no regard to individual states’ cultures and violent crime rates.If more people were using arson to kill multiple people we would not be having this discussion. There would be no debate over stricter oversight of common household accelerants, matches, or lighters. We wouldn’t be debating whether or not we should require licenses and background checks to purchase gasoline, diesel, kerosene, or camp stove fuel. We wouldn’t be arguing about closing the Craigslist loophole where people can buy matches or lighters under the table without registering them.If more mass killers used bombs we wouldn’t be arguing about strict oversight, registration, and tracking of people who purchase manure. We wouldn’t be arguing about closing the Craigslist loophole where people buy manure directly from farmers in whatever quantities they wish, or implementing laws regarding how much a farmer’s cows can shit and how they dispose of it. We likely wouldn’t be discussing restricting the purchase if nitrogen fertilizers to registered, monitored plant nurseries only or requiring background checks to purchase.Why aren’t we discussing further restrictions on those who operate motor vehicles? From 2006–2016 on average 35,940.11 motor vehicle deaths. That’s slightly higher than overall gun deaths, and THREE TIMES HIGHER than the gun murder rate specifically. How are we going to bring this number down, what restrictions can we discuss and impose? Is it reasonable to restrict and impose upon the millions of responsible drivers because so many cannot drive responsibly, or because so many tragic accidents occur?“But Rose,” you might counter, “what about countries like Finland that have high gun ownership rates, low gun crime rates, and very strict gun control?” It’s true that Finland has very strict ownership requirements for firearms. They’re largely used for hunting, and license to own must be renewed every few years. Permits are easily and readily denied to anyone convicted of a crime or just acts sketchy enough. Guns must be locked up for safety, and emptied of ammunition if transported out of the home and not in use. Self defense is also not a permissible reason to apply for gun ownership or gun purchase in Finland. Finland has a gun homicide rate of around 0.26. Impressive.Finland also had two mass shootings at school, one in 2007 and another in 2008, with a combined death toll of 18.Moving on.Gun crime itself is not the most common cause of death in the U.S. According to the CDC the top 10 causes of death in the United States are:Heart diseaseCancerChronic lower respiratory diseasesAccidents (unintentional injuries)Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases)Alzheimer’s diseaseDiabetesInfluenza and pneumoniaNephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosisSuicideGun deaths aren’t on that list. In fact, they aren’t even in the top 15.While guns are not anywhere near the most common cause of death in the U.S., they are the most commonly used weapon in homicides. I should note that this does not indicate that stricter gun laws would lower homicide rates, as 1/3 of mass shooters have clearly demonstrated that criminals will still use guns. In the event that criminals are magically prevented having guns because we wave our magic wands and make them all disappear, many of them will still find ways to threaten, injure, rape, or kill other people.Speaking of criminals, did you know that convicted felons, gang members, and career criminals are by far the most common perpetrators of homicide-by-gun? Let’s break down gun homicide statistics, shall we?In 2014 there were 33,594 gun deaths. Of those, 21,286 (a whopping 63%) were suicides. 85% of suicide victims are male, and over half of them are over the age of 45. This statistic doesn’t seem to distinguish all suicides from firearm-specific suicides. Interesting tidbit, though and a worthy topic for another conversation.11,008 (32%) were homicides, which for the purposes of this discussion are defined as murder and manslaughter. Of these homicides, over half are young men, and two thirds of those young men are black. Women are actually significantly less likely to be victims of gun-related homicide. Many studies and statistics since the 1980s have demonstrated that anywhere from 64–80% of these homicides are gang-related. Many occur during the commission of other felony crimes.Lastly, 1,200 (3.5%) include accidents or deaths of otherwise undetermined cause.People make the mistake of lumping all gun deaths together. In reality, the only thing they have in common is that a gun was involved. These deaths all ultimately occurred for a variety of very different reasons to very different people living in very different parts of the country under various different circumstances.Breaking down the statistics does not show a gun problem, it shows a suicide problem and a gang violence problem, and may also be tied to population density. For instance, over half of homicides in the U.S. occur in cities with a population of 100,000 or greater. The majority of drug and/or gang related killings also take place in large cities. More than a third of all large-city homicides occur in cities with a population of 1 million or greater. That’s right, more than a third of large-city homicides occur in only ~10 cities.It’s sensational to claim 33,000 people die from guns every year in the U.S. Wow. That’s a lot of people. That’s more people than the populations of many small, rural towns. But when you put it into perspective—that it isn’t even within the top 15 causes of death and that over half of them are suicides—it’s less sensational.It’s also sensational to place the U.S.’s crime rates next to the crime rates of other developed nations. The problem with comparing our violent crime, murder, and gun crime rates with, say, the U.K. is that each country defines violent crime and rape very, very differently.In 2013 a social media post made the claim that the violent crime rate in England and Wales was essentially five times that of the U.S. This was likely based on raw numbers without accounting for the fact that England and Wales considers many more definitions of “violent crime” than the U.S. does. Taken at face value, England and Wales had about 2200 violent crimes per 100,000 people while the U.S. had about 466 per 100,000.Wow. Such scandal. So sensational. Much controversy.A blogger went to work to debunk this by excluding reported crimes that are well beyond the scope of the FBI’s definition of violent crime. Using 2011 and 2012 statistics narrowed the gap considerably. The violent crime rate in England and Wales was in fact 775, and the U.S. was in fact 383. The crime rate in England and Wales was still considerably higher, but not sensationally so.Another reason you cannot compare crime rates between nations is that the rate of reporting may differ. The willingness to report crime and faith in law enforcement to prosecute crime also factor heavily into the numbers that eventually come to make up a nation’s various crime rate statistics. I’ll use rape as an example, which typically factors into violent crime statistics.If we look at rapes per capita based on rapes reported to and recorded by the authorities, the United States sits at the 14th highest internationally with 27.3 incidents of rape per 100,000 people. Sweden sits at a surprising 6th (63.5). Australia is the 11th highest (28.6).You know what Saudi Arabia’s statistic is? They report 0.3 incidents of rape per 100,000 people. Saudi Arabia’s statistic is based on some very different sets of data than many other countries. For starters, the country has almost no criminal procedure codes, and the few that exist are often ignored. Additionally, few if any laws specifically criminalize rape or outline its punishment. Furthermore, there are many potential drawbacks to reporting rape in Saudi Arabia, as there are many circumstances under which victims are also punished for their own victimization.In one internationally publicized case a victim of a gang rape was punished for being inadequately chaperoned when she and a male acquaintance were kidnapped and assaulted. She was raped 14 times. Her attackers received mostly lenient sentences ranging from 2–5 years. She was sentenced to 90 lashes for the tangentially related crime of riding in a car with a male who was not a relative.When she and her lawyer contested this and appealed the verdict, the rapists’ sentences were increased, now ranging from 2–9 years. However, her sentence was increased to 200 lashes and she was accused of attempting to manipulate the court and verdict by exploiting the media, because in Saudi Arabia nobody wants to talk or hear about rape because it harshes everyone’s mellow.Despite nothing legally wrong with the appeal, her lawyer was suspended from the case and his license revoked.What does this have to do with international gun crime reporting statistics? Everything. Saudi Arabia boasts an almost supernaturally low rate of rape per capita (0.3), but given their general attitude toward rape, reluctance to prosecute it let alone punish, and tendency to discourage reporting rape by punishing the victim, their reported rape statistics cannot be trusted as they are inherently flawed and incomplete. It’s entirely possible that Saudi Arabia does track these statistics and simply counts them among other crimes.Another flawed argument I frequently see is the idea that if we can reduce the amount of people who can legally own guns, that it will naturally result in fewer guns overall. People seem to cling to the pipe dream that this would not only actually happen, but would happen sooner rather than later.More comparisons to very different countries follow. Small island nations like the U.K. or Japan have few guns and very low gun crime! Just say they aren’t allowed anymore! Can’t import them or transport them across the border! It’s that simple!Except it isn’t. The United States can barely police the border between us and Mexico, never mind the border with Canada, which is even longer. And don’t get me started on our two very lengthy coastal borders. None of our borders can realistically be thoroughly policed enough to keep illegal firearms out. If that were so, surely the “war on drugs” would have ended a long time ago as well.That cocaine ban sure is going swell, by the way. Since it’s illegal and a felony it’s got to be getting really hard to come by as remaining stocks dwindle with no legal way to replenish them. Oh wait. The cocaine ban hasn’t stopped a gratuitous flow of cocaine (and other drugs) through our southern borders. And thanks to very clear immigration laws there’s obviously no need for concern over illegal aliens.Anyway back on topic. We cannot realistically police our borders. We could build a wall, but look at how angry that idea made everybody. That’s obviously not an option, but you have to admit it’d be pretty bitchin’. We could rename ourselves Mordor and not let anyone in.We can restrict or even ban guns, it isn’t going to stop people who wish to circumvent the law obtaining or even making their own guns. If somehow guns did in fact disappear, people would just switch to different kinds of weapons. One might counter “good, other weapons have lower fatality rates than guns do.” I would counter that this is actually a very weak and incredibly insensitive argument, because whether you’re raped at gunpoint or knifepoint, or bludgoned with a baseball bat and raped while unconscious, you still got raped.Or robbed. Or assaulted. Or threatened. Or coerced into something you would not otherwise do.As long as you say “no, it isn’t allowed,” the world will listen. Oh wait, no they won’t, least of all people who do not care for your laws. The same goes with gun laws—again, I cannot state this enough, 1/3 of mass shooters cannot legally possess firearms. That doesn’t stop them.Another common concern cited by gun control advocates is not homicides, but suicides. Roughly 60% of all gun deaths are suicides, after all. If only we could prevent them getting guns, they surely would not commit suicide! Sure they would. They’d find another way. Some of them wouldn’t, yay, you saved lives, but is that really the collective responsibility and burden of all gun owners to bear? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to improve access to mental healthcare and promote awareness and understanding?Besides, it’s not a provable or even logical claim. Japan, for instance, has some of the most restrictive gun ownership laws but one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Not definitive, and more complicated than this due again to very different cultures, but it’s something to consider—if reducing suicides is the goal, people who are determined to go through with it will go through with it. A gun might be more opportunistic, but so’s a bottle of pills or a train.While we’re on the topic of mental health, some gun control advocates want to keep the mentally ill from having access to firearms. I have some problems with this. First of all, how do we define “mentally ill” and who gets to have the final say? Does anybody diagnosed with depression make the “no gun” list? Do people with a mental disorder diagnosis but no history of violence go on the “no” list? Do people who have expressed suicidal ideation in the past but got the help they needed and overcome it nonetheless go on the “no” list?This is where I have a problem. The overwhelming majority of the mentally ill are not a danger to themselves or others. Mental illness is not typically linked to crimes. In England and Wales, for instance, of the ~7 million people who have had, currently have, or are estimated to have in the future a mental health problem, only 50–70 of those 7 million people are involved in homicides each year. Victims more commonly report their assailant possibly being drunk or on drugs. Some studies have put the number of assailants suspected of drug influence as high as 30%. By contrast, only 1% of victims report believing their assailant’s violence was caused by mental illness.In fact, according to SANE Australia the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence and homicide, rather than the perpetrators.According to the American Psychiatry Association only 7.5% of crimes committed by people with serious mental disorders were due to symptoms of mental illness. Is it fair to ban 92.5% of the mentally ill because 7.5% of them have committed crimes that may or may not even be violent or involve guns?I know this has been a long read, are you still with me?Good!Now that we have all of this data we can see a bigger picture. We can understand all the various and different circumstances that contribute to gun violence. Now that we can see how the only thing these crimes have in common is that they involved guns, I need to ask you a few questions.First, how do we know that reducing legal gun ownership across the board will have any significant impact on gun crime? How do we know this without erroneously and disingenuously relying on other countries’ crime data based on very different definitions of crime and very different rates of victim or police reporting?How can you convince me, based on all of the above, that terrible but isolated crimes are the collective responsibility of society as a whole, and that I should be penalized? Can you do so without emotional appeals? Because appeal to emotion is not a fact-based, logical argument, but rather an underhanded attempt to manipulate somebody into agreeing with you.Can you please tell me what an “assault rifle” is? Because there is no legal definition, and there is no widely-agreed-upon definition, and AR-type rifles killed fewer people than hands and feet did in 2016. Knives killed even more than hands and feet.Can you please tell me what a semi-automatic firearm is? I frequently see this erroneously used interchangeably with “assault weapon”. I find it alarming how many people know so little about guns yet presume to lecture everybody else on gun safety, “gun culture”, collective guilt and responsibility, and the particular firearms used in crimes. Are you aware of the differences between semi-automatic and fully-automatic?Can you elaborate on how cosmetic features like flash suppressors, folding stocks, and purely cosmetic features that share a passing resemblance to certain military weapons classifies a firearm as an “assault weapon” despite not altering its mechanical functionality? Is this based purely on a visual association with other firearms that are already heavily regulated, or is this based on actual evidence that a carry strap and folding stock make a gun more deadly or its wielder more likely to murder?How did the federal ban on assault weapons, which lasted from 1994 to 2004, impact gun crime? The ban targeted semi-automatic weapons generally not desirable for hunting. It was allowed to expire after a DoJ study found its effect inconclusive. Note that the weapons it targeted were rarely used in crime before the law was enacted, and that it was little more than lip service to look like the government was cracking down on crime.Do you really think we have a gun problem? Or do we have a drug problem? Or an alcohol problem? Or a gang problem? Does our higher crime rate across the board suggest a variety of varied cultural and population density factors, rather than a single gun problem?And finally, please refer to the map below. This map represents gun homicide rates per 100,000 by state in the United States. As the legend shows, darker colors represent higher gun homicides per capita. Now to my question. Can you please explain to me why all of the medium and lighter shaded states should collectively share in the responsibility and guilt regarding the gun homicide rates in the darker shaded states?Thanks for reading.Sources:Murder in the United States by state - WikipediaHere's where you're most likely to own a gunGuess which states make the top 10 list of most ‘heavily armed’?NeighborhoodScoutTexas church shooting and domestic violence: A large and disturbing patternFastStatsGun violence in the United States - WikipediaNational Institute of Justicehttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdfCountries Compared by Crime > Rape rate. International Statistics at NationMaster.comList of countries by intentional homicide rate - WikipediaList of countries by firearm-related death rate - WikipediaCrime in the United States - WikipediaGeneral statisticsMotor vehicle fatality rate in U.S. by year - WikipediaSocial media post says U.K. has far higher violent crime rate than U.S. doesViolence & mental healthMental Illness Not Usually Linked to Crime, Research FindsGun homicide rate map of America

Thanks for the anonymous A2A.I've been in law enforcement (corrections and patrol) most of my career. I also have some job history as a resident caregiver for the mentally ill, and bachelor's degree in sociology. That's less a resume, than an up-front statement that my opinion is strictly a "lay opinion." I am not a researcher, I don't have a PhD, and I can't claim to be an expert.That said, this is a topic I've spent a great deal of time thinking about, reading about, and talking about - with professors, coworkers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, even offenders. There's no way around a long answer here, so apologies in advance if you were hoping for a short response.Based on my own experiences and observations, I believe our justice system's greatest failing is its "one size fits all" approach. I'm sure some states and counties do better than others, but the most common model seems to be what I'd describe as a "sliding scale of justice," where the punishment is incarceration, the length of which is determined almost mathematically, like plotting a line on an XY graph. X is the severity of the crime and Y is the defendant's criminal history.There is a certain appeal to that model, and I don't mean to say it's without its uses. But I think it can be a crutch.To me, it seems there is something wrong when we use the same punishment (just in varying lengths) to address such disparate crimes as driving on a suspended license and rape, or theft and murder. Surely incarceration is not the be-all, end-all answer to all these transgressions?Any law is, eventually, an expression of force. There is always an implied consequence. Human nature dictates that this is necessary. It would be lovely to live in a utopia where everyone cooperated for the greater good, but that simply isn't realistic. So, I am not contesting that there must be consequences for law violations. There's no way to get around that.However, I think the first thing we as a culture need to do is take a look at our laws, and decide which ones are worth the consequences.The war on drugs is of course the most obvious example. It is difficult to argue that drugs like meth and heroin are good things, or that they should be permitted in our society. But I think we need to look long and hard at whether the correct response is criminalization of anyone who possesses such substances. Drug policy is a topic all its own, and I do not support across-the-board legalization, but I do believe mere possession of drugs in amounts reasonable for personal use ought to be de-criminalized.A public health model might work better. For example, if I as a peace officer encounter someone and lawfully discover meth on their person, they would not be arrested, but the meth itself would be confiscated and destroyed, and I could provide assistance in locating resources for treatment if the person were so inclined.Another possibility that seems to hold promise is the "drunk tanks" found in some jurisdictions. The one major benefit to arresting people for simple drug possession is that it often gives them time to sober up. I've had more than a few addicts tell me that if it weren't for stints in jail, they'd be long dead. If I encountered such a person, say someone who is publically intoxicated and causing a nuisance, and could articulate that they were a danger to self or others, perhaps a better option would be to simply take them to a jail (or other facility) and let them sober up. Such a "hold" could be confirmed by a medical professional at the facility (to prevent me from abusing this authority), and the person could be released once cleared by medical staff as being sober enough to function; in the mean time, they'd have access to medical care, treatment options, food, sanitation, etc. In the worst case (and undoubtedly most common) scenario, they'd be released and go back to using. But how would that be any different than the current model, except that the user, the court system, the jail, the defense attorneys, and all the rest would have one less case in the docket - and the user would not have another crime on their record.I can't claim that these are definitive answers. I can only suggest they might be a better alternative. Drugs are bad, no doubt about it. They are stealing our children, our friends, our family members. They rot our communities from the inside out. But are handcuffs the answer to addiction?We could ask similar questions about other "vice" crimes.Another example that I believe we need to consider is low level crimes of domestic violence. Every time I try to bring this up, invariably I am accused of advocating for violence against women. Please understand, nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing makes my blood boil like a man who beats a woman or a child.But there is a difference between a savage beating and a push or a broken coffee cup, and the difference ought to be summed up by more than the length of the sentence.I have worked almost exclusively in a state wherein ANY crime committed between adults in a domestic relationship REQUIRES me to make an arrest, with very limited exception. The law defines domestic relationships as married couples, folks who have dated, children, parents, roommates past and present. Cops are forced to arrest elderly dementia patients who slap their spouses, women who slap their husband once in the face during an argument, men who shove their girlfriends while trying to escape from an escalating argument. Obviously none of those behaviors are healthy, by any stretch of the imagination, but do they require a mandatory arrest? Does a woman slapping her husband or a man pushing his wife justify a court intruding on their relationship, ordering them not to have contact with each other, and forbidding the convicted party from ever again owning a firearm?These laws were enacted because police turned a blind eye to all but the most serious domestic abuse. Historically, many cops took a "what happens at home, stays at home" approach to beatings. I am not advocating a return to such blindness. We've learned a lot as a society about the cycles of abuse, and the difficulty that women in particular face in leaving an abusive relationship. Abuse of any form is never acceptable in a relationship, but there must be better solutions to unhealthy relationships than handcuffs, right?A better response might be strengthening the community resources available to victims of domestic abuse. A broken nose is different than a broken plate, and while the former ought to lead to arrest, the second should really be none of the police's business, except perhaps to stabilize the situation if we are called, to provide counsel and access to resources, and maybe to give someone a ride to a friend's house to cool off.There are plenty of other examples, but those are the two that I have seen cause the most damage during my career. Addicts are not helped by criminal charges, and neither are most marriages.All that to say, I think before we can even begin to talk about the RESULT of the justice system, we need to consider more carefully the laws we have enacted. Our society seems to have an unfortunate, knee-jerk tendency to respond to each new problem with a new law. Then we sit back and wonder why we have one of the largest inmate populations in the developed world. Perhaps it is because we view every problem as one that should be shunted to the police and the courts?None of that is to undermine my belief that crimes need to be punished. Although I have some misgivings about certain laws, I do believe in rule of law itself. Most cops get into law enforcement to serve their communities, and I think most of us stay because we believe in order, not chaos. It's not that we think the system is perfect, it's that we think the system is vastly preferable to anarchy.I do believe laws are necessary, and I do believe laws need to be enforced.As far as ways to enforce those laws, I mentioned earlier that I think incarceration can be a crutch.There are times when people do need to be removed from the community and, as I try to explain to my kids, "put on grown-up timeout." At its best, incarceration provides structure, sobriety, and opportunities for personal betterment, ranging from GED and even college courses to twelve step meetings and church outreach programs. Every little bit helps. Incarceration is also an effective "deterrent of last resort," if less restrictive means are ignored.That said, there are a lot of other models for punishment, which we either under-utilize or ignore completely. I'll start with the most draconian, and work my way backwards.DEATH PENALTYThis is probably more of a philosophical issue than a criminological one, but I believe we under-utilize the death penalty. I recognize that will likely be an unpopular opinion, and I am also well aware that the flaws in our justice system mean the specter of innocents put to death loom large over this discussion. It's for that reason that I've waffled on this belief throughout my life.But the more time I've spent around the worst crimes - the more family members I've seen robbed of parents - the more victims of rape and child molestation I've seen irrevocably altered - the more firmly I believe that any just society would answer such crimes with death. A life for a life may sound harsh, but when a human being chooses to murder or violate another, I believe they forfeit the right to live. Forgiveness is important, and mercy is a virtue, but when someone steps across the line and becomes a true predator, I don't believe they have any place among the rest of us.I don't necessarily object to life in prison in lieu of the death penalty, except that the predators do no better in prison - murder, assault, and rape continue within the walls, victimizing others, usually people serving time for lesser crimes, and sometimes the officers and other staff (nurses, counselors, teachers) who work inside the walls.CORPORAL PUNISHMENTA number of other countries cane some offenders, rather than incarcerating them. This will probably never be supported in the United States, simply because it would be deemed offensive to too many people, even it could somehow survive an eighth amendment challenge.That said, based on my experience working with offenders, a temporary punishment involving pain (and possible public humiliation) would undoubtedly be a greater deterrent to many of the young men than our current model.Low-level drug dealers, petty thieves, rabble rousers, whatever you want to call them, we probably all know a few. Older inmates call them "young punks." For these offenders, jail is often more of a mandatory frat house than an effective punishment. These are folks who live in the moment, not the long term. In jail, they bump into old friends, make new friends, compare notes on criminal endeavors, share "war stories," and play games, often at the expense of weaker inmates or staff.Watching them, it's hard not to think that caning might be a better alternative. Ultimately, however, I cannot quite bring myself to support this idea. I have no problem with parents who responsibly spank their children, but I think at some point using pain as a teaching aid becomes more disrespectful than valuable. Perhaps if there were data to support a dramatic drop in recidivism under corporeal punishment, I might change my mind, but at this point I don't support the idea.What I do think has value....HARD LABORThe same "young punks" who might benefit from caning, might also benefit from hard work. Not to sound like a grumpy old man, but the single best influence on my character as a young man was hard labor. As I got older, I was paid for my efforts, but as a younger kid, my parents expected me to split wood, dig ditches on the property, move rocks, and other forms of manual labor. In my early teens, "grounded" meant "working hard," not just sitting in my room.Currently, many jails and prisons have work programs that are optional, as part of incarceration. I've worked with inmates on "work crew," and many of them flourish with work to do. It makes the time pass, keeps them healthy, and provides a source of purpose and personal pride.My thought is, why not take this outside the context of traditional incarceration? Some jurisdictions already implement this type of program. Instead of sitting in jail for three weeks after a theft conviction, they give the option for able-bodied offenders to work in forestry, roadside cleanup, or other forms of labor. In some cases, they are paid for their time, with a portion (or sometimes all) of their compensation going toward fines or restitution.This would seem to make more sense than traditional 'sit and think' models of incarceration.I think this also goes hand-in-hand with old-school approaches like allowing misdemeanor offenders to expunge their records by joining the military. Logistically, this might not work any more - the military is pickier than it once was - but redirecting offenders from a jail environment to structure, hard work, and job training seems like a good solution.It would also be a serious punishment to many of the "young punks" I mentioned earlier. A lot of these guys will tell you to your face that they'd rather spend six weeks in jail than have to work hard for a few days; many change their tune once they have the opportunity to work hard.And even if it doesn't reduce recidivism, at least society would be getting a benefit back from the offender. Lord knows there are enough projects out there just waiting for some sweat equity.Now, moving away from the harsher punishments....ALTERNATIVE COURTSPrograms like drug courts have a great deal of potential. Although the long-term success rate is depressing low in many of the drug courts I've encountered, it is still a good idea, and any success is still a life saved.For those who are unfamiliar, a typical drug court model involves an offender who is facing drug-related charges. Usually the charges must be considered "non-violent." The offender signs a contract with the court, usually stipulating to their own legal guilt and agreeing to follow drug court rules.The court itself is presided over by a judge, but is in practice usually run by a panel - typically made up of drug counselors, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and other professionals (mental health, narcotics detectives, recovered users, etcetera). The panel and the participants work together to hold participants accountable, get them through treatment, and coach them into jobs, stable housing, and better habits. Participants are required to submit regular UAs, attend self-help and twelve-step meetings, and comply with rules such as not associating with known users, not committing new crimes, etc. Slip-ups are punished with "sanctions," typically anywhere from a day to a week in jail. In some cases, participants will be remanded to jail for longer periods of time, pending a bed date in a treatment facility.If a participant breaks the rules too often (usually it takes several months of willful noncompliance), chooses to "opt out," or commits new crimes that do not qualify to be rolled into the drug court contract, they will be kicked out of drug court. Since they already stipulated to their guilt, all that is left is a bench trial before the judge, followed by sentencing.In some cases, this sentence hangs over the head of participants as an effective deterrent. Drug court seems to work best for folks who are looking at a long time in the pen if they fail. Participants with lesser crimes or shorter criminal records know they will likely be sentenced to "time served" (meaning they will be released) even if they fail out of the program. I'm not sure what the ideal solution to this dichotomy is.Should participants complete the program - which, with ongoing success, loosens day-to-day controls over the participants over the course of anywhere from 1-3 years - they "graduated" drug court. This is a big deal. Anecdotally, maybe 15-20% of participants actually make it to graduation. They are often unrecognizable from their former selves. I've attended a few graduations, and it is a very moving experience.The sad thing is, of the 15-20% who graduate, at least half seem to relapse within the next few years.Even sadder is that a long-term success rate of 5-10% really isn't that bad, compared to incarceration or other treatment options. After all, saving even five out of a hundred is better than saving none at all.There are many similar programs, like veterans courts or mental health courts. The only offshoot program with which I have experience is mental health court - and I am a huge supporter. Mental health courts work very similarly to drug courts, except with a focus on treatment, counseling, and medication regimens.Unlike drug courts, mental health court participation is often a longer-term commitment. Most mental health courts do graduate participants, but they often welcome those participants back in the future. The "stick" of incarceration is less likely to be used, and ongoing crimes are more likely to be rolled into the mental health court contract.Although "success" tends to be harder to define in mental health court, the impact on the lives of participants is hard to overstate. I have been continually impressed by the improvements I've see in many of my "frequent customers" once they begin to participate in mental health court. Structure, human interaction, accountability, support, and a structured medication regimen can make all the difference.Speaking of which...MENTAL HEALTH REFORMNot exactly an alternative to incarceration, but if we want to reduce recidivism, limit the number of mentally ill in our prisons, and reduce crime - this is an absolute must.Anyone who is paying attention knows our mental health system is broken. Ever since we dismantled the asylum system in the 1960s, there has been no viable alternative presented.In the interest of protecting individual liberties, most states prohibit family members, doctors, community mental health providers, and law enforcement from forcing the mentally ill to take psych meds, no matter how necessary the meds are. Even in cases where meds are needed for personal or community safety, generally only psychiatric institutions are permitted to force the use of medications. And there are very few beds for the chronically mentally ill. Even when we do get folks who desperately need intervention into a bed, they are typically "stabilized" through mandatory medication regimens over a period of weeks, then released into the community - where they promptly stop taking their meds.Now, I understand the philosophical argument against forcible medication. It's a very easy position to defend.But once you've encountered enough truly psychotic individuals, that argument holds next to no value. Once you deal with someone who chews holes in their arms but refuses meds, or another believes he is Christ incarnate and stalks countless women in the community but refuses meds, or another who cannot care for herself enough to even toilet properly but refuses meds - you stop caring about whether they refuse meds. And then, once you encounter them after they do get themselves on a medication regimen, and you see how much better they do with their meds, the whole question ends up turned on its head.You no longer wonder whether it is immoral to force the severely disabled to take their meds. You wonder whether it is immoral NOT to force them to take their meds.We need reforms to these laws, to allow parents, corrections staff, and community mental health providers to enforce a medication regimen on the gravely disabled. There should be checks and balances, to limit abuse, but this reform alone would be a huge step forward.In addition, we need better funding for medical and mental health providers in jails. We need more beds in more psychiatric facilities. We need better funding and better oversight for group homes in the community.The bottom line is we need to turn our attention to caring for the most vulnerable in our society. These folks are at risk, and sometimes they pose a risk. In my opinion, this is the biggest issue facing our nation right now.If we only do one thing to improve our justice system, this is the one to pursue.RESTORATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE JUSTICE MODELSI am by no means an expert in these alternative models to incarceration, but based on what I have seen, read, and heard, they have a lot of promise.Restorative justice focuses on repairing the crime and reconciling the victim to the offender, rather than overt punishment. Some jurisdictions offer restorative justice as a voluntary alternative, in which the offender and the victim can mutually agree to participate.For example, a thief might meet with her victim to discuss the impact the theft has had on the victim's life; they would then mutually agree on an appropriate form of repayment. If the thief stole $75 and spent it on alcohol, and therefore it cannot be returned, the thief might agree to perform 15 hours of work for the victim. Similarly, a teen who spray-paints graffiti onto a local business might be required to clean the spray paint, re-paint the business, and contribute a day of volunteer work at a local charity.The advantage here is that it makes the impact of crime immediate and personal for the offender, while also restoring some of what is lost to the victim. I have been told the process can also be very empowering for the victim, can leave a lasting impact on the offender, and in some cases can forge lasting relationships.Some crimes - pretty much any crime of a violent or sexual nature, for example - are fundamentally incompatible with this model. In other cases, however, the seems like a no-brainer.And if the offender refuses to participate, well, there's always hard labor or incarceration as the alternative.I'm sure there are numerous other alternative approaches; I know I don't have all, or probably even most, of the solutions. I'm curious to read others' responses, and hope my thoughts have provided some insight from the ground level of the justice system.EDIT 2/11/15: Please, please - if this topic interests you - check out the following article: Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? A Provocative New Theory.Also, check out this great answer: Tim Dees' answer to In what ways could prison costs be reduced?

Studies have shown that doctors have an unusually high number of authoritarians among them. They were raised that way and expect there to be hierarchy, deference to authority figures (“I tell you, I am the doctor”), obedience, submissiveness to authority, and conformity.The Authoritarian Reign in American Health Care - Kathryn A. Ballou, Kandace J. Landreneau, 2010Dr. Bruce Levine:For several years, I have thought it important to illuminate the authoritarian nature of mental health professionals—especially those who have not rebelled in any way against their professional socialization. In this article, I will summarize a compelling analysis from the Journal of Medical Ethics on the variables in “contemporary medical culture” that produce doctors who are authoritarian and harmful. First, however, some definitions and my personal observations.Authoritarian is defined as “relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority.” Authoritarians with power demand unquestioning obedience from those with lower rank, and authoritarian subordinates comply with all demands of authorities.In contrast, anti-authoritarians reject—for themselves and for others—an unquestioning obedience to authority, and they believe in challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. In contrast to authoritarians’ unquestioning obedience, anti-authoritarians assess whether authorities actually know what they are talking about, and whether they are competent, honest, have integrity, and care about those people who are trusting them. And when anti-authoritarians determine an authority to be illegitimate, they resist that authority—no matter whether that authority is their parent, teacher, or doctor.There is always a tension between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians, and when authoritarians have power over anti-authoritarians, this tension results in various forms of violence.In February 2012, Mad in America published “Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill,” my personal observations on mental health professionals’ authoritarianism and how this results in harm for their patients. (This article was republished on other web sites with titles such as “Would We Have Drugged Up Einstein? How Anti-Authoritarianism Is Deemed a Mental Health Problem.”) No other article I’ve published has resulted in more emails (which I continue to receive), the majority from people reporting feeling validated and believing their anti-authoritarianism—or their child’s—has resulted in mental illness diagnoses.In that article, I simply reported my observations about how the selection and socialization of mental health professionals breed out anti-authoritarians. I noted that gaining entrance into graduate school or medical school and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. I pointed out that those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities, and it was my experience that most psychologists and psychiatrists are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. I concluded that noncompliant patients create enormous anxiety for authoritarian doctors, and that this anxiety along with doctors’ shame over their own excessive compliance can fuel harmful diagnoses and treatments.While researching my current book Resisting Illegitimate Authority, I came across a July 2012 Journal of Medical Ethics article titled “A Long Shadow: Nazi Doctors, Moral Vulnerability and Contemporary Medical Culture,” authored by Alessandra Colaianni. While Colaianni discusses how doctors in Nazi Germany enabled Nazi atrocities, she makes clear that “contemporary medical culture” also enables harm. I briefly mention Colaianni’s article in Resisting Illegitimate Authority, but I thought that Mad in America would be a good place to provide a more detailed summary of her analysis.Colaianni begins by reporting, “More than 7% of all German physicians became members of the Nazi SS during World War II, compared with less than 1% of the general population. . . . By 1945, half of all German physicians had joined the Nazi party.” Colaianni points out, “Physicians joined the Nazi party and the killing operations not at gunpoint, not by force, but of their own volition” (there is not a single reported case of a physician who was shot, incarcerated, or penalized in any way for refusing to participate in the killing operations).However, Colaianni does not merely reiterate the history of how authoritarianism among doctors in Nazi Germany enabled Nazi atrocities. Her original contribution is a description of those variables that continue to exist today in “contemporary medical culture” that result in doctors’ authoritarianism and harmfulness. The following is a summary of those variables:Hierarchy and Socialization: “Medical culture is,” Colaianni concludes “in many ways, a rigid hierarchy.” The essence of authoritarianism is unquestioning obedience, and Colaianni points out, “Those at the lower end of the hierarchy are used to doing what their superiors ask of them, often without understanding exactly why. . . . Questioning superiors is often uncomfortable, for fear both of negative consequences (retaliation, losing the superior’s respect) and of being wrong.”Career Ambition: Colaianni notes: “Becoming a doctor requires no small amount of ambition. . . . The stereotypical pre-medical student [is] ruthlessly competitive, willing to do anything to get ahead.” She notes that “there is a fine line between being motivated to succeed and being willing to compromise one’s integrity to attain success.” My experience is that for psychiatrists in training, even if they have trepidations about harmful “treatments” such as electroshock (ECT), they recognize that a refusal to administer ECT can threaten their career. The sad reality is that for many doctors, career ambition—and an accompanying compulsion to please authority—trump their moral apprehensions.The ‘License to Sin’: Colaianni points out, “Physicians and even medical students are allowed to perform actions that, in other contexts, are taboo.” She reports how, in medical school, she and classmates “dissected the cadaver of a 98-year-old woman, cutting her muscles apart with scalpels and cleaving her bones with a saw.” This “license to sin,” she concludes, can result in harmful arrogance.Inflicting Pain: Colaianni notes: “Doctors must become comfortable inflicting transient pain and discomfort on their patients for their own benefit in the form, for example, of stitches and biopsies.” Becoming comfortable with inflicting pain can lead to, Colaianni points out, “doctors who do not worry enough about whether they are hurting their patients.” This results in, for example, the overutilization of dangerous and sometimes necessary procedures and treatments.Medical Terminology and Euphemism: Colaianni notes how medicine and scientific researchers use language that protect them from the realities of suffering. “Scientists use euphemisms and the passive voice in journal articles . . . writing ‘the animals were sacrificed’ at the end of the experiment is less jarring than admitting that ‘I killed 20 mice by holding their necks and pulling their tails until their spines snapped’.” Euphemisms also provide doctors with self-deceptions and deceptions to patients about truths that, when clearly stated, reduce doctor authority; she gives these examples: “We routinely use the words ‘idiopathic’ or ‘cryptogenic’ to mean ‘we don’t know,’ and ‘iatrogenic’ or ‘nosocomial’ to mean ‘we caused it’.”Detachment: Colaianni discovered that “the medical profession requires unflappability in the face of things that others would consider disgusting, horrific, or otherwise overwhelming.” She reports being warned against getting too emotionally invested in her patients; and she was taught to have a clinical detachment or ‘detached concern, which means “showing empathy and caring, but not so much that you burn out emotionally.” Colaianni reports, “It is well documented that medical students become less empathetic and even less ethical as we progress through medical school.”While there are doctors such as Colaianni who have angst over their professional socialization, many do not.Among psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals, there are a handful who risk their career to resist harmful authority, but most do not; and I believe that anti-authoritarian patients should be especially concerned with authoritarian psychiatrists and psychologists—perhaps even more so than with other authoritarian doctors. While an authoritarian cardiothoracic surgeon may be an abusive jerk for a nursing staff, that surgeon can still effectively perform a necessary artery bypass for an anti-authoritarian patient. However, authoritarian psychiatrists and psychologists will always do damage to their anti-authoritarian patients because anti-authoritarian noncompliance creates anxiety and often even shame for authoritarian doctors, and their anxiety and shame fuel harmful diagnoses and treatments.Source: Why Many Doctors Are Authoritarians – and Harmful - Mad In AmericaWhat is especially troubling is that in Germany doctors were some of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, and were instrumental in helping the Nazis rise to power, despite their profession of helping people. The reality of it is horrifying. This is especially true when we hear about the experiments done on people that were inhuman by Nazi doctors, experiments involving live dissection, freezing to death, poisoning, amputation, etc. And children were experimented on, particularly twins.The medical society may have self-selected in joining the Nazi Party based on a variety of major vulnerabilities and factors; these include: 1) Professional vulnerabilities among physicians in general, 2) Economic factors specific to German physicians, and 3) Nazi ideological and historical factors. The causes of the brutalities committed by the Nazi doctors with such self-righteous, methodological efficiency—acts that have reverberated for years since—continue to elude many historians and psychologists. Nevertheless, identification and analysis of the web of vulnerabilities and other factors that fueled this behavior can guide us toward prevention of future abuse by highlighting the conditions that make physicians susceptible to misapplications of medical research, medical practice, and medical ethics (Mileck, 1954). Such analyses also provide vital case studies for teaching medical ethics more effectively. To the extent that we can understand and teach about the context and motives that surrounded physician's abandonment of the Hippocratic Oath in favor of Nazi ideology and inhumanity, the teaching of bioethics can cultivate essential practical insight. Such insight is necessary to identify one's own vulnerability to seductions of abandoning the Hippocratic Oath, as well as principles such as beneficence and respect for the autonomy of the “other” (Ries and Wald). Alas, such seductions arise with some regularity in the ever-changing biopsychosocial (not to mention economic) landscape of clinical practice. Moreover, thorough analysis of these vulnerabilities and factors provides lessons in what has been termed ethicogenesis, i.e., harm caused under the banner of self-righteousness, in the name of such ethical values as public health or even medical ethics itself (Bursztajn, 1986). Unimaginable as the Nazi medicalization of genocide may seem today, the perversion of ethical principles is no more confined to the historical past than are demoralization, economic insecurity, a need to belong and conform, and the search for a quick fix to existential problems. George Orwell's admonition in 1984 that “He who controls the past, controls the future” is well worth remembering, so that education in medical ethics will not omit the pitfall of invoking ethics themselves as a rationalization for perpetuating crimes such as those that were enabled by the German Medical Society (Granick, 2009). Our initial analysis raises a variety of questions we look forward to exploring in future work, including the fundamental question of the relationship between professional authority, authoritarianism, and the avoidance of awareness of dependency and individual fragility.Source: ScienceDirect—Research articleAttitudes toward Jewish doctorsThe self-righteous persecution and marginalization of Jewish physicians by early Nazi members of the German Medical Society were greatly facilitated by caricaturing Jewish physicians as unethical. For example, in 1935 Hans Lohr lauded the remarks of Reich Physician Leader, Gerhard Wagner, “[Jewish physicians have]…debased the concept of professional honor and undermined the ethics and morals intrinsic to our racial stock” (Löhr, 1935, in Mosse, 1981). By attributing to Jewish physicians the ethical failings of early Nazi Party physician joiners, German Medical Society members could wrap themselves with the flag of moral and ethical purity while enthusiastically victimizing their Jewish physician colleagues. This was an important, perhaps essential, move in the process of rationalization, since a conception of ethics—of doing good—has animated the profession of medicine since antiquity. Id.Support for Nazi IdeologyExamining Nazi ideologies through the looking glass of German medical practitioners of that era calls attention to factors that may have made physicians especially open to and interested in Nazi rationalizations. Through a Social Darwinist ideology, Nazism explicitly framed its methods and aims in biological terms. As Hitler's deputy, Rudolph Hess, claimed: “National socialism is nothing but applied biology” (Lifton, 1986). Through sacralizing the social whole over the individual, Nazism promised partial solutions to existential problems that physicians confront daily. 4.1. Social Darwinism and eugenics The pseudoscience of Social Darwinism served as the philosophical justification for “eugenic cleansing” of Jewish populations across Germany and eventually Europe. The Social Darwinist model in its most volatile form drew its inspiration from what was, at the time of its inception, the greater economic, governmental and technological advancement of the “White European” in comparison with other populations. Extending this observation, the model reasoned that this greater advancement was manifest reality of “survival of the fittest” at work, thereby concluding that the White European race must be self-evidently superior to other races (Hofstadter, 1992). The Nazi regime needed merely to bend this philosophy to its own needs, preaching German supremacy and destiny for rule over what it deemed to be impure or unfit races. This skewed philosophy directly motivated the Action T4 eugenics program, run by some 50 physicians, who sent surveys out to hospitals, urging their colleagues to nominate candidates for euthanasia (Proctor, 2001). Victims were typically injected or starved to death in psychiatric hospitals, or transported to specialized facilities to be poisoned or gassed to death, and then cremated. Action T4 was, essentially, “medically supervised murder,” and the majority of participating physicians gaining experience through the program also became supervisors of the infamous ‘Final Solution’ plan to annihilate all European Jews (Proctor, 2001). Medical professionals were highly influenced by Social Darwinist ideas. According to one estimate, over 90 per cent of the members of the medical profession at the highest level were involved in one way or another in work … [involving] … experiments … carried out on human beings in which…the subject was either sacrificed or permanently wounded…in German hospitals, universities and concentration camps (Drobniewski, 1993). The Nazi medical experimentation, with its veneer of a research program progressing to benefit the nation—and, by extension, all of humanity—was an easy subsequent step for the regime to implement. After all, the Nazis would certainly need biomedical knowledge to be able to face the many challenges they would confront in the upcoming war years. A eugenic movement provided a direct means of conducting the kinds of research that could address these problems while cutting the efficiency costs that typically accompany humane treatment of experiment subjects. Not the least of the war challenges Germans faced, for example, was that of the many hostile thermal environments in which their soldiers would have to fight and survive. This problem, and others like it, inspired cruelly creative experiments into the prevention of hypothermia and into the general prolongation of life in cold weather and water, in which countless Jews and Russians either drowned or froze to death (Pozos, 2002). The importance of biological research to the Nazi war effort provided a utilitarian justification for these atrocities, which were framed as necessary goods in the aim to create an immortal species of humans, “Übermenschen.” Since such a vision required important, salvific roles for medical scientists as creators and implementers of socially useful knowledge, physicians could easily be taken up by this ideological narrative. 4.2. The social organism as sacred The idea that the social whole has precedence over the individual was very clearly encapsulated in the sayings propagated by Hitler: “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz” (What is useful for the community has priority over what is useful for the individual) and “Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles” (You are nothing; your people [nation] is everything) (Reich, 2001). Hitler was advocating social unity at all costs, including dehumanization of internal minority citizens. In more typical circumstances, such collectivist ideas can serve to moderate extreme individualism. However, post-WWI Germany suffered a deteriorated standard of living, a loss of community spirit, subsequent feelings of loneliness in the German citizen, and a rising potential for rebellion and disorder– circumstances that may have made a collectivist ideology especially attractive (Ferguson, 1975; Mileck, 1954; Weiss, 1987). The Nazi Party promised to quell this social insecurity and loneliness by dissolving individuality and freedom into the single-mindedness of the group. The German people would be one unified organism. Hitler's ideas were popularizations of earlier, more abstract philosophical ideals. In German philosopher Johann Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation (1808), one encounters these ideals of salvific collectivism germinating, at least among intellectuals, with full candor: The means of salvation, which I have promised to disclose, consists in cultivating a completely new self, … a universal and national self, and in educating the nation, whose former life has been extinguished and become the appendage of a foreign life, to a wholly new life … the interest of the whole to which he belongs is indissolubly bound by the motivating feeling of approval or disapproval to the interest of his own extended self, which is aware of itself only as part of the whole and can only bear itself when the whole is agreeable… Through the new education we desire to form the Germans into a totality that in all its individual parts is driven and animated by the same single interest… [it] would consist precisely in this, that, on O.S. Haque et al. / International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 473–479 477 the soil whose cultivation it takes over, it completely annihilates freedom of will, producing strict necessity in decisions and the impossibility of the opposite in the will, which can now be reckoned and relied on with confidence (Fichte, 1808/2009, p. 23–24). It is not surprising, therefore, that one would later come across these ideas in the tremendously influential figure of German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, here at a political rally in 1938: Our starting-point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty or clothe the naked—those are not our objectives. Our objectives are entirely different. They can be put most crisply in the sentence: we must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world (Burleigh & Wippermann, 1991). These collectivist, totalitarian ideals were also expressed by popular medical theorists at the time. During the rise of the Nazi Party, the ideas of the extremely influential medical theorists Erwin Liek and Karl Kotschau were gaining popularity. Liek and Kotschau argued that commitments to care of individual sick persons had to give way to a preventative care that respected emerging needs of the entire society (Reich, 2001). These ideas were particularly potent because they manipulated not only medical practice, but also the very definition of medical care. By viewing the social organism as sacred and the individual as dispensable (as manifested in the ideas of Liek and Kotschau), physicians could see themselves as saving a sick society in the service of the larger enterprise of creating a stronger, healthier Germany. The Nazi regime also formed a strange connection between healing and killing, in which the latter was construed as a type of the former. Psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton explains how the regime framed eugenic killings as a form of healing, a cleansing for the Aryan population and post-WWI body politic. In short, the doctors believed that by destroying lives they were paradoxically saving the ones that most mattered amid the entire society (Lifton, 1986). Id.Desensitizing of DoctorsHaving emerged from the horrors of WWI, many men had been in war and seen human beings ground to hamburger and blown up by machines guns and bombs. WWI was a carnage fest, and this desensitized doctors. Id.Economic Advancement and Upward MobilityMany doctors were incentivized by increased pay and respect, desiring upward social mobility and saw the Nazis as a way to gain that status. Before the Nazi rise to power the economy was in shambles, with hyperinflation. Id.Militarization of SocietyGerman society had become increasingly authoritarian prior to WWII. A military style organization of social status developed. Doctors that resisted this organization were treated with contempt. Id.AuthoritarianismThis was described above, and authoritarian parenting was incredibly popular in Germany at this time, which enhanced the effect.Sources cited in the above article:Conclusion:The Nazis were primarily authoritarian.Some doctors are supportive of authoritarianism. This happened in Nazi Germany given a mix of historical factors. But we still see authoritarianism among modern doctors, and they don’t have the same pressures as those who lived in a collapsed economy pre-WWII. Therefore, there seems to be some personality factors involved.Most troubling is that many doctors were early members of the Nazi Party. They played an instrumental role in the rise of the Nazis to power.Nazi doctors engaged in horrific human experiments that tortured and killed countless numbers of patients, including children. Some were vivisected alive, placed in frozen water, burned, poisoned, etc. The atrocities committed by these supposed healers is the most disturbing thing this author has ever read about.The Nazis believed in eugenics, Social Darwinism, and ethno-nationalism. They believed some groups were superior to others, genetically. Contrast this with the communists, who believed people were equal. Both supported top down power structures and centralization of control. However, the difference between socialism and fascism is the belief in the fundamental superiority of some groups over others. Fascism relies on scapegoating and ethno-nationalism to consolidate its power. Socialism is diametrically opposed to this. Many people get confused by the authoritarianism and believe the two are the same. Were the Nazis Socialists?