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Key points
- Injuring others does not alter the views of some criminals that they are upstanding individuals.
- Good deeds alone do not change a criminal's basic personality.
- A criminal's thinking that he is a good person makes it so (i.e., from his standpoint).
- If a criminal thinks of himself as a decent person, he has little incentive to change.
While addressing the judge during a sentencing hearing, the prosecutor asserted, “We have a cold-blooded murderer. His business was murder, and his incentive was money. The world of Tony* was a world of killing for hire. He killed the father of two children, and he did it for the money." The judge sentenced Tony to life in prison.
Since childhood, Tony had been committing crimes, among them robbery, burglary, and credit card theft in different states. Even in prison, he was such a menace that he had numerous writeups for infraction and spent weeks in isolation.
When I interviewed Tony, he had already spent a decade in the penitentiary. He admitted that he had committed many crimes for which he had never been caught, Tony did not regard himself in any way as a bad person. Instead, he endeavored to convince me that he was a good human being, and that was precisely how he saw himself.
How does a “hitman” who has left a trail of carnage behind him continue to see himself as a good person? While discussing the homicide, Tony remarked that he killed the man in “a compassionate manner” because the victim did not suffer. (Tony had killed him instantly by firing several bullets into the man’s chest at point blank range.) He explained, “It was important that I see it as no suffering was involved.” Tony was oblivious to how many victims there were, including the man’s children, relatives, friends, neighbors, and many others. At the time, he considered himself to be the victim because he had been arrested and was facing life in prison.
Upon escaping from a correctional facility, Tony commandeered a truck with a child passenger. He said that at the time he thought that the boy in the passenger seat could not possibly have been afraid because he had assured him, “The worst you’ll see is me dying.” Tony recalled, “I didn’t want to think of myself as terrifying a man and a child.”
As the years passed, Tony appeared to be turning over a new leaf. He tried to become helpful to others. He was determined to impress upon prison staff members that he had changed. “Opportunities to help occur every day,” he noted. Tony’s behavior was so exemplary that he was allowed to interact with people who visited the prison. When adolescents were brought in for a “scared straight” tour, he led the groups and talked to the teenagers about their future. Tony so impressed prison staff that he was permitted to assume increasing responsibility in dealing with outside vendors. While bragging about what a model inmate he had become, Tony acknowledged, “Security had misgivings.”
When an unchanged criminal succeeds in convincing others that he is a good person (and believes it himself), he becomes even more dangerous to others who do not know the truth.
Whereas Tony’s behavior appeared to have taken a turn for the better, his criminal thinking persisted. I asked him to discuss what he considered to be his positive and negative qualities. Tony responded by saying that he is “honest, compassionate, responsible, and intelligent.” As negatives, he mentioned being a people pleaser and “very passive in physical relationships.” This self-characterization emanated from a man who earlier had acknowledged that he had been a “user” of people and had had sex with dozens of women without a condom and had been a homosexual prostitute.
Elaborating on his quality of “passivity,” Tony stated, “I have difficulty with confrontation. I don’t want to argue.” It was striking that a man who had committed scores of crimes involving confrontation and brutality would describe himself as passive. This former hitman could identify no faults other than his passivity.
Having heard little that was self-critical, I asked Tony to compose a letter describing his thinking when he becomes irritated, frustrated, or depressed. I inquired, “If you think you are doing everything well and that your personality is unflawed, what reasons would you have to make changes?”
It is true that Tony had acquired new skills and interests while incarcerated. He had become religious, worked at learning a foreign language, and was becoming an accomplished public speaker. However, his criminal thinking patterns were still in evidence. Tony spoke about getting enraged while playing sports. He described how he gratuitously injected himself into situations that did not concern him and thereby enhanced his image of himself as a sage advisor to others so that he could “fix” them. He mentioned taking people “under my wing and trying to get them to make changes.”
Because Tony and others like him already perceive themselves as good people, they have little incentive to change. Holding onto that self-concept is crucial to their sense of well-being. One inmate told me, “If I thought of myself as evil, I couldn’t live.”
A criminal may be amenable to change if his good opinion of himself collapses. This could occur as he is facing consequences that he finds intolerable and sees no way out of. When the door of a detention center slams behind him, he may start pondering all that he has lost, then realize that life is passing him by. At such a time, he may find it difficult to maintain his elevated image of himself. Some offenders do what they always do. They continue to believe in their own decency as they reassert control, attempt to dominate others and seek excitement in their new setting behind bars.
*The name “Tony” is used for purposes of protecting confidentiality.
