Lonnie Athens starts the book by specifying that violent crimes are considered to be heinous if there wasn’t any provocation. This means that the victim’s injuries were out of proportion to the provocation. In society, the most dangerous criminals are the ones who commit violent crimes that are heinous. Athens states that the goal of the book is to find out what makes people become this type of criminal. In the second chapter, Athens outlines two categories of theories that have been used in the past to determine how people end up becoming dangerous violent criminals. These two categories are bio-physiological and social environmental. Athens discusses how dualistic theories such as these are not the answer to uncovering how dangerous violent criminals are made, because trying to attribute criminality to separate sources just segregates factors. Athens believes that a holistic approach would be a better option because it does not separate social environments from the organic body. This would mean that a holistic approach would lead to a non-dualistic theory. Athens believes that studying social experiences is the answer to discovering how dangerous violent criminals are created.
Athens then goes on to state that the goal of his research is to develop a new theory that can explain the creation of these criminals. He believes that it is important to build rapport with the criminals so that you are able to attain their significant life experiences. Athens studied 50 people because he believed that it if you studied fewer people, then you would be able to get more in depth results. First, Athens payed attention to the social experiences of veteran and novice criminals. He believed that the novice criminals would provide more information about the early stages of the process, and that veteran criminals would provide more information about the latter stages of the of the experiential process.
However, this was not what happened. Next, Athens compared the two criminal groups to a group of criminal males who were non-violent. Some of the non-violent criminals went through similar social experiences to the ones that Athens described in the experiential process. Again, Athens was not able to find the social experiences that were unique to dangerous violent criminals. For his third try, Athens used a group of 6 women who were victims of domestic assault because they experienced similar social experiences that were significant in the past, but they did not end up becoming criminals who were dangerous and violent. Athens had better luck with this group and was able to finalize an experiential process that he felt confident created dangerous violent criminals. This process consisted of brutalization, belligerency, violent performances, and virulency. These four stages are made up of social experiences, and an individual must have the experiences of each stage before they can move on to the next stage.
Athens explains how there are three experiences that make up stage one, which is brutalization. These three experiences are violent subjugation, violent coaching, and personal horrification. Violent subjugation is when authority figures that come from a primary group of the subject uses violence in order to make them yield to their authority. This violent subjugation can take the form of coercion or retaliation. During coercive subjugation, the authority figure will stop the violence when the subject submits. The goal of this type of subjugation is to gain submission in the moment.
On the other hand, during retaliation subjugation the authority figure will not stop the violence even if the subject submits. The goal of this type of subjugation is to gain the subject’s permanent submission. The next experience, personal horrification, is when the subject witnesses someone from their primary group being subjected to violent subjugation. This causes the subject to feel inadequate because they are not able to help the intimate, and ultimately the subject begins to feel responsible for the violent episode. Personal horrification relies more on psychological trauma. The final experience, violent coaching, is when the subject learns from an older adult who assigned themselves the role of coach. This coaching is mostly informal and implicit, however, the encouragement of violent behavior is still very obvious.
I believe the material from Athens’ book that most closely relates to the textbook is Athens’ views on what type of theory is best for describing the creation of dangerous violent criminals.
