Inside the Criminal Mind

Very different points of view. Dump all the sociological explanations; these are bad players, not victims. Great premise and good supporting content. But every chapter has 8-10 anecdotes for which no citation is made. Literally dozens of uncited quotes. Unprofessional output for someone with a PhD. We should be told where all these stories come from or there is no way to validate them. Too bad. Otherwise very good and original formation.

Love it or hate it, Dr. Samenow hits it on the head when he says that someone with a criminal mindset must learn to accept responsibility for their own actions or they will never be able to lead a truly productive and crime-free life. I also think that he has it right when he says that criminals, or anyone for that matter, are constantly doing a balancing test. We each do a risk/benefit analysis for our decisions, no matter how small that decision may seem. What makes someone a criminal, is the fact that they make decisions that manipulate and/or harm others for their own benefit. While this is something that everyone does from time to time, criminals seem to do it constantly. No matter what brought them to this pattern of decision making (poverty, genetics, a lust for excitement, etc.), the way to reverse it is to make them realize that they are responsible to change that pattern.

Was the despicable criminal and murder spree on April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech University by Seung-Hui-Cho because of his gender, race, parental upbringing, psychotic inclinations, or simply by the acts against him by those around him? None of the above, inclusive and or exclusive of either one of the purported reasons, if you read the theories and analytical presentations author Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D., enumerates in his book titled "Inside the Criminal Mind." According to the author, it is a misconception the person inclined to be a criminal is because of his or her parental upbringing, poverty, influential friends, mother, father, family and neighborhood. In his book, "Inside the Criminal Mind," the author states, "Criminals cause crime - not bad neighborhoods, inadequate parents, television, schools, or unemployment. Crime resides in the minds of human beings and is not caused by social conditions." The author also discounts the theory of a psychotic mind, "...psychological theory, in its current state, is more misleading than illuminating in explaining why people become criminals. Far from being a formless lump of clay, the criminal shapes others more than they do him." "...criminals come from a wide variety of backgrounds - from the inner city, suburbia, rural areas and small towns and from many religious, racial or ethnic groups. They may grow up in closely knit families, broken homes, or orphanages. They may be grade school dropouts or college graduates, unemployed drifters or corporate executives. In most cases, they have brothers, sisters, and next-door neighbors who grew up under similar circumstances but did not become criminals." Thus the gestalt of "Inside the Criminal Mind," sets out to show criminals know right from wrong and the criminal is not the product of external sources. Criminal behavior is the product of the individuals' way of thinking. The author Samenow says, "I shall expose the myths about why criminals commit crimes. I shall draw a picture for you of the personality of the criminal just as the police artist draws a picture of his face from a description. I shall describe how criminals think, how they defend their crimes to others, and how they exploit programs that are developed to help them. I shall discuss what these people are like as children for, with systematic study; it is possible to identify at least some children who are predisposed to criminality." Looking back and thinking of the video Seung-Hui Cho made which was televised to the world, he did exactly what author Samenow illustrates in his book which was publish way before Seung-Hui Cho came into being. The criminal never takes responsibility for his acts and blames everyone and everything for his shortcomings and worse yet, for his criminal mind. Those of us who saw the video and were not aware how the criminal and his mind thinks, felt a sense of guilt and culpability for the despicable crimes he committed. However, we did not mold h

Dr. Stanton Samenow doesn't discuss WHY criminals are what they are because, he admits, we don't know and because, more importantly, who cares? WHY isn't the issue, nor was it his objective in writing. What's important is that we recognize the criminal mind & what might be done to fix it, both of which he addresses excellently. (It similarly is of little importance WHY a person has cancer or why they are an addict--what's pressing to them is being cured or having their addiction arrested). ... I spent 17 months visiting and corresponding with a young convicted murderer for a non-fiction book. I hadn't read Samenow's book beforehand, so I had no preconceptions from his work. Reading it afterwards, I find his description of the criminal stunningly accurate, down to fine details. ... Samenow's book isn't bogged down with a lot of attribution & statistics because he's speaking with the authority of being partner with Dr. Samuel Yochelson, the three volumes they wrote together, the work at St. Elizabeths (for more in depth, read their work, "The Criminal Personality.") ... Meanwhile, this book is a very accessible, understandable, accurate, well-written description designed for a much wider audience that really cuts away all the myths & challenges the reader to be compassionate not by excusing the criminal but by asking him to accept responsibility, the first step to a cure. ... If Samenow's solution sounds a lot like a 12 Step program without overt spirituality, that's not a criticism--12 Step programs have proven to be the most effective way to approach alcoholism and other addictions. No approach to alcoholism has ever been more successful than Alcoholics Anonymous, which is now more than 60 years old. All approaches have very high failure rates, just as attempts to cure cancers have high failure rates ( & crime and addiction are as serious to the individual & to society as cancer). Comparing Samenow's ideas to AA's 12 Steps is, thus, hardly a criticism. ... Samenow's basic message is 1. the criminal thinks differently from the responsible person, 2. the criminal chooses crime, 3. the criminal's only possible outcomes are to continue their behavior, to commit suicide or to change, 4. many of the excuses we make for criminals are wrong and also not truly empathetic or compassionate and even sometimes covertly racist, 5. what criminals say after the fact is unimportant, it's their antecedent patterns of thought and action that matter, 6. only a change in thought patterns can help a criminal. ... He makes the excellent point that rehabilitation is sort of an odd concept since the word implies a return to a previous state of being, yet most lifelong criminals have never known anything other than what they are so how could they be rehabilitated? This is similar to the idea of recovery for the addict--recovery to what? I was always an addict: I'm not REcovering (God forbid!), I'm changing my entire approach to life, which is also the only way ou

Stanton Samenow explains in a language accessible to everybody that criminals have a peculiar, distorted view of the world. This view is organised and shows universal patterns which can easily be recognised. On the other hand, we don't learn much about the inner structure of those patterns and their origin. Why do criminals think that way ? Do they gain some advantage from it ? Another problem is the lack of measure of the patterns observed. This problem is well dealt with by research on psychopathy, where a tested scale is used (Hervey Cleckley, Robert Hare). Here in Geneva, a new research has been developped by historians, using both Stanton Samenow and Hervey Cleckley. A larger view of the subject, combining the penetrating insights of the two authors will help us, we hope, to better understand not only ordinary criminals, but ideological criminals as well, like Hitler for example. The ultimate purpose is to show that the patterns isolated by Stanton Samenow in The Criminal Mind are relevant to all types of criminality, whether individual or collective.

I first read this book years ago, when it first was published. After working in the field of juvenile justice for many years, I am now in the position to teach new employees in the field how to understand the incarcerated youth we work with. Although not all the youth we work with are criminals (some are really victims of social circumstances), this book was extremely helpful in helping me to understand how some of the youth we work with think, and how and why they truly are different from "ordinary" people. In every chapter I read I recognized at least one of the young people I had worked with over the years. This book gives valuable insight into the criminal mind.