The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime - Softcover

Raine, Adrian

 
9780307475619: The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307475611 ISBN 13: 9780307475619
Verlag: Vintage, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Passionate, courageous, and at times controversial, The Anatomy of Violence is a ground-breaking work that will challenge your core human values and perspectives on violence.

Why do some kids from good environments become mass murderers? Is there actually such a thing as a natural born killer? And, if so, what can we do to identify and treat those born with a predisposition to criminal behavior? For more than three decades Adrian Raine has sought answers to these questions through his pioneering research on the biological basis for violence. In this book, he presents the growing body of evidence that shows how genetics and environmental influences can conspire to create a criminal brain, and how something as seemingly innocent as a low resting heart rate can give rise to a violent personality. Bristling with ingenious experiments, surprising data, and shocking case studies, this is also a clear-eyed inquiry into the thorny ethical issues this science raises about prevention and punishment. 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Adrian Raine is the Richard Perry University Professor of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and a leading authority on the biology of violence. After leaving secondary school to become an airline accountant, he abandoned his financial career and spent four years as a prison psychologist to understand why some individuals become violent psychopaths while others do not.

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Introduction

It was the summer of 1989 in Bodrum, a beautiful seaside resort on the southwestern coast of Turkey, soaked in sun, history, and nightlife. I was on vacation and it had been a long day. I had taken the bus from Iráklion, where I had caught the second-worst case of food poisoning I had ever had in my life, including two days in bed throwing up with backbreaking pain.
 
It was very hot that July night, and I could not sleep. I had kept the windows open to try to stay cool. I tossed and turned, still somewhat sick and sleepless—in and out of consciousness, as my girlfriend slept in the room’s other single bed. It was just after three a.m. when I became aware of a stranger standing above me. At that time I was teaching a class on criminal behavior, and I would tell my students that when they became aware of an intruder in their apartment, they should feign being asleep. Ninety percent of the time thieves just wanted to grab the goods and then get out. Let them go—then call 911. You run no risk and have a fighting chance of getting your possessions back without a violent confrontation.
 
So what did I do when I saw the intruder at my bedside? I fought. In the milliseconds that it took my visual cortex to interpret the shadowy figure and signal this to the amygdala, which jump-starts the fight-flight response, I leaped out of my bed. In little more than a second, I had instinctively grabbed the intruder. I was on automatic pilot.
 
Information from the senses reaches the amygdala twice as fast as it gets to the frontal lobe. So before my frontal cortex could rein back the amygdala’s aggressive response, I’d already made a threatening move toward the burglar. This in turn immediately activated the intruder’s fight-flight system. Unfortunately for me, his instinct to fight also kicked in.
 
The next thing I knew I was being hit so quickly that it felt like the man had four fists. He hit me so hard on the head that I saw a streak of white light flash before my eyes. He also hit me in the throat. He seemed to hit me all over.
 
I was violently thrown against the door. I felt the doorknob and I must confess the thought of escape sprang into my mind. But at that instant I heard piercing screams from my girlfriend, struggling with the man. She eventually ended up with bruises on her arms, but I think these were defense wounds and that the intruder only wanted to keep her quiet. Seeing them struggle, the instinctive reaction that had originally come upon me when I was in bed returned. I leaped at him again and somehow managed to push him out of the open window.
 
In that instant I felt an immediate sense of safety and relief. But the euphoria evaporated after I turned on the light switch and saw the blood running down my chest. I tried to shout out, but what came out of my mouth was a hoarse whimper.
 
Completely unknown to me in the midst of that mismatched contest was that the assailant had been holding a knife. Quite a long one, with a red handle and a six-inch blade, it turned out. But I was lucky. As I warded off his blows with my arms, the blade of the cheap knife had snapped off, leaving only a few millimeters of metal left on the handle. So when he attempted to cut my throat, the damage was far less than it might have been.
 
The police arrived surprisingly quickly. The hotel was right beside an army barracks. There had been a sentry on duty who had heard the shouts and screams and he raised the alarm. The hotel had been quickly surrounded, so that when the police arrived they believed that the perpetrator was still inside the hotel.
 
Meanwhile I was taken to the hospital. It was rudimentary and bare. I was laid on my back on what felt like a hard concrete slab, while the doctor put a few stitches in my throat. The window of the hospital room was open, and I could hear in the distance that a party was still going on. The strains of the music wafted through the window, the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night,” of all songs.
 
Afterward, the police wanted me back at the hotel to go over what had happened. All the residents were now standing in the lobby, even though it must have been about five a.m. by then.
 
The police had thoroughly gone through the rooms of all the residents in search of my assailant. I learned later that one man had looked a bit flushed when the police pulled him from his bed, and he had a red mark on his torso that looked fresh. He was in the upstairs room right next to me. So he was one of the two suspects waiting for me when I entered the lobby.
 
Both were young Turkish men. Both were naked from the waist up—just as the attacker had been. One was quite a good-looking man, but otherwise there was nothing out of the ordinary about him. The second suspect had a rougher look. He was also stocky and muscular, and what flashed through my mind at that moment was that he had the classic mesomorphic physique that early criminologists believed typified criminals. He also had a striking scar on his upper arm. His nose looked as if it had been broken. His looks persuaded me. He had to be the man who’d tried to cut my throat.
 
The police pulled him aside and had a quiet word with him. But not so quiet that the manager of the hotel couldn’t overhear and translate the conversation back to me. The police told him they simply wanted to clear up the case, and if he’d admit that he was the perpetrator, they would let him go. So the gullible guy made his admission, and was promptly arrested.
 
At that point, I’d had enough of Bodrum and Turkey, and I told the police I was off to the neighboring island of Kos in Greece in the next two days. Remarkably, they decided to expedite the trial. It was something of a ceremony at the outset. It started off at the police station. I was placed next to my assailant, and we were marched through the center of the town, side by side, to the courthouse. Quite a number of people came out to watch, as I had been featured in Bodrum’s local newspaper the previous day, pictured with a prominent white bandage on my throat. Many of them pointed at us and yelled at the defendant. Although whatever they said was incomprehensible to me, it was clear that the defendant was not a popular man.
 
The trial itself was novel, to say the least. The courtroom looked like a scene out of the Nuremberg trials, but in a distorted dream. There was no jury at all. Instead, there were three judges in scarlet robes seated loftily above us. The defendant did not have an attorney. Neither did I, for that matter. Adding to the strangeness, none of the judges could speak or understand any English, and I certainly could not speak Turkish. So they procured a cook who could speak some English and serve as my interpreter. It was all very surreal.
 
I gave my testimony. The judges asked me how I could identify the assailant given that the incident had occurred just after three a.m. and it had been dark. I described to them how the moonlight was streaming through the window by my bed, illuminating one side of the assailant’s face as we struggled. That I had frantically wrestled with him and that that gave me a sense of his stature and build. I said that I could not be completely sure—but frankly, whether that part ever got translated, I’ll never know.
 
After I gave my testimony through the cook, the defendant gave his testimony. Whatever he said in Turkish, the judges were not persuaded. They found him guilty as charged. It was as simple as that.
 
After the verdict one of the judges ushered me and my translator over to the bench. He told us that the defendant would be brought back later for sentencing, and that...

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Verlag
Vintage
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307475611
ISBN 13 
9780307475619
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
496
Kontakt zum Hersteller
VINTAGE
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage/

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Italien

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