The role of moral disengagement in the execution process

The present study tested the proposition that disengagement of moral self-sanctions enables prison personnel to carry out the death penalty. Three subgroups of personnel in penitentiaries located in three Southern states were assessed in terms of eight mechanisms of moral disengagement. The personnel included the execution teams that carry out the executions; the support teams that provide solace and emotional support to the families of the victims and the condemned inmate; and prison guards who have no involvement in the execution process. The executioners exhibited the highest level of moral, social, and economic justifications, disavowal of personal responsibility, and dehumanization. The support teams that provide the more humane services disavowed moral disengagement, as did the noninvolved guards but to a lesser degree than the support teams.     

Loneliness and associated violent antisocial behavior: analysis of the case reports of Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen

It can be theorized that loneliness plays a significant role in the development and continuation of violent, antisocial attitudes and behavior. Analysis of case reports of two serial killers, Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer, indicate that there is evidence for such a link. In this article, a list of significant correlates of loneliness and antisocial behavior is presented. This may be useful for the assessment of possible dangerousness and in the development of prevention and intervention programs. Suggestions are made for the adequate treatment of loneliness and correlated violent, antisocial behavior. A need is recognized for more research into the psychosocial, emotional, neurobiological, cultural, and ethnic determinants of loneliness and their correlation to specific antisocial and/or criminal behavior.     

Information,apprehension, and deterrence: Exploring the limits of police productivity

The capacity of police departments to solve crimes and apprehend offenders is low for many types of crime, particularly crimes of profit. This article reviews a variety of studies of police apprehension and hypothesizes that an important determinant of the ability of the police to apprehend criminals is information. The complete absence of information for many types of crime places fairly clear upper bounds on the ability of the police to effect solutions.To discover whether these boundaries are high or low we analyzed data from the 1973 National Crime Panel about the types and amount of information potentially available to police through victim reports and patrol activities. The evidence suggests that if the police rely on information made readily available to them, they will never do much better than they are doing now. On the other hand, there appears to be more information available to bystanders and passing patrols than currently is being used, which suggests that surveillance strategies and improved police methods for eliciting, recording, and analyzing information supplied by victims and witnesses might increase the probability of solving crimes and making arrests. In light of this we review a few possibly helpful innovations suggested in the literature on police productivity and procedure.