7 ms·

Norway mass murderer Breivik was 'already damaged by the age of two'

50 points by teslacar 10y ago

Waterluvian 10y ago
I've seen this story a thousand times. Someone is abused in some manner, becomes an abuser, and the cycle repeats. I struggle with reconciling these cases because there's two drastically different perspectives you can look at it from: 1. Brevik is a mass murderer and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. 2. Brevik is a victim who was never given a fair shot at life to begin with. He was moulded into the horrible person he became. What is the point of transition where we stop treating someone like a victim and begin treating them like a criminal? How many serious offenders have been raised in such a damaging way that you could argue they're not exactly responsible for any of the awful things they ended up doing? It brings doubt to how we handle serious criminals in modern times.
- jplayer01 10y ago
  It doesn't absolve them of their crimes. It doesn't throw anything into doubt. You can throw in some therapy if you'd like, but these are unfixable people who've done terrible things. They shouldn't ever step onto a street again.
  - Waterluvian 10y ago
    Then what's the line between criminal and insane? In my opinion it's just a fuzzy line decided upon in a very flawed manner.
  - Taek 10y ago
    Unfixable is a strong term and I think a concept that represents a lot of the core issues in our justice system today. The justice system should be in pursuit of a healthier society. Throwing intelligent, capable human beings into a cage and removing them from the economy is costly in many ways. And even if full rehabilitation cannot be achieved, surely there are partial solutions at hand.
    - toyg 10y ago
      I don't think you can class the likes of Breivik with common criminals or run-of-the-mill manslaughter/hot-blooded murderers, or even professional killers. Breivik is a self-professed enemy of society, he sees foreign armies all around him which he is entitled to fight with lethal force. There is no solution for that but to keep him away from anything and anyone. This is not even punishment, this is simple protection of the species. Even if there were a cure effective 99.99% of the times, society simply cannot afford the 0.01% risk. By all means treat him as best as you can, but he just can't be released in society anymore. The best you can hope from him is that he becomes a great monk.
    - ryan-allen 10y ago
      Some people are actually unfixable and destined to commit horrific acts of violence, this we know unequivocally. The only way we can prevent it is by screening and monitoring people before it happens, and we've got a pretty good idea of the precursors for this kind of thing. I doubt society would consent to such interference in order to prevent a few deaths from these rare individuals. Additionally for true prevention we would need to stop certain people from having and raising kids, now... that's a can of worms I am not sure will ever be opened.
      - pizza 10y ago
        How was any of this determined?
  - ed_balls 10y ago
    What if we discover a tumor in his brain that caused this and after removing it he will be a perfectly sound and reasonable person? Should we keep him in forever? What about death penalty?
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    these are unfixable people You can't undo the awful things they did, but I try to avoid language constructs like 'these are unfixable people' in favor of 'we don't know how to deal with this.' One one level I find Ander Brievik appalling because he was willing to murder a bunch of innocent people to uphold the nazi ideology which finally gave him a sense of identity and direction. While he must have had a gaping void at his center in order to go to such lengths, it's not so surprising that a badly alienated person clings to a radical ideology that offers them the social and emotional validation they crave, even at a far remove. On the other hand I'm similarly disturbed at the people who originate and promote ideologies of this kind and who target their arguments precisely at such psychologically vulnerable types, in the knowledge and expectation that their ideas will be acted on by others. Brievik's manifesto, for example, heavily plagiarizes a monograph on political correctness by William Lind, co-founder (with the late Paul Weyrich) of the ultra-libertarian Free Congress Foundation. Lind is an influential military theorist who has done a lot to shape the debate on modern counterinsurgency; also a self-described 'neo-Victorian' and not-so-secret proponent of genocidal policies. But he hasn't shot anyone in person, so that apparently makes it OK. I'm very much anti-censorship and in favor of maximizing personal freedom of expression, but this inevitably leads quandaries like how one should respond to an ideology that argues for the elimination of other peoples' political rights or even existence. Traditionally for liberals 'the solution to bad speech is more speech,' but this notion is predicated on the assumption that rational discourse is the norm and that fair competition obtains in a 'marketplace of ideas.' Increasingly I don't think that either is true that we have run into the limits of the market as social arbitration mechanism because it's apparent that you can attract people to authoritarian politics almost as easily as you can attract people to any other kind of brand. I'm not sure how you systematize this; I don't really agree with Germany's approach of heavily censoring any expression of nazism in public discourse but I can see why they adopted it. For me the rule of thumb is that I won't give the time of day to any ideology that purports to sort people by their personal characteristics rather than by their behavioral ones or employs fallacies to achieve the same ends (eg 'members of (group) did these bad things, people with (characteristics) are members of (group), therefore said people are bad). Now on the individual level you can employ forensic debate to pick apart someone's specious argument and force them to a position where they either affirm or abandon that ideological identity. But on a collective level that's not really practical and what frequently ensues is a race for the lowest common denominator of political discourse, to the point that point that crackpot outfits are now treated like credible sources in debates on the news. The internet has disrupted the media business in no uncertain terms, but it's highly questionable whether the public is actually better informed as a result. There's a lot more data available, and for news junkies like myself that's like an endless supply of free heroin, but our political discourse looks less and less like a creative exchange of ideas and more and more like an elaborate trading card game.
- vacri 10y ago
  You're presenting a false dichotomy, that someone can be treated either as a victim, or as a criminal.
  - Waterluvian 10y ago
    My mistake if that's how I make it sound. I agree, you can be both. But in many cases we don't try them in court as both. We pick one. In this case it was decided he was sane.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      Using the word "sane" isn't helpful here because it has a very narrow legal definition. A person with a psychotic illness may well not be "insane" in the eyes of the law if they were not operating under their illness at the time of their crime.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      In one case, it is a crime that happened recently and resulted in many deaths. In another case (with the same individual) it happened way past the statute of limitations and to a single person. Judicial systems are not really designed to handle systemic shifts (with the exception of supreme courts) and are specifically limited in where they can weigh judgement on. For the systemic changes modern governments use legislative bodies.
    - vacri 10y ago
      'Sane' has nothing to do with criminal vs victim. It's also a myth that you get off easy if you're legally declared insane - sentences for those people are so routinely longer than regular prison sentences, that lawyers advise against pleading insanity. In any case, if you're a defendant in criminal court, you're being tried as a criminal, whether or not you're a victim. Defendants aren't declared 'victims' and tried differently.
- tinus_hn 10y ago
  Does it really matter that much? Even if you were to say he's not responsible, you can't let him out on the streets. One of the goals of the justice system is to protect society from criminals by removing them from it, temporarily or permanently.
  - Waterluvian 10y ago
    I think the sentence may effectively be the same. But it's critically important not to mislabel people.
  - deepsun 10y ago
    Agree, but justice systems are different: Some countries (like ex-USSR) also practice _punishing_ for a crime in prison -- further humiliating and abusing convicted person. Don't know if there's a reason (if ever were), but some people argue that it helps to reduce future crimes by other people ("don't do that, or you'll get to prison, you know what they do there"). Can't tell if it's supported by statistics. In other countries, like Norway, justice systems are the other way around -- besides removing criminals from society, they also bear a job to re-socializing criminals -- treating them humane and helping them to find a job after the prison. These other responsibilities affect answer to your question.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - pyre 10y ago
    Well, it also depends on how you want to treat him once you remove him from society too. If you want to state that he is just "full of pure evil," then maybe you just want to treat him really poorly.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    > Does it really matter that much? Yes. Not every person "damaged" in this manner gets a life sentence, having committed lesser but still serious crimes. How we treat them in prison and afterwards matters, and an understanding of the causes helps. Punitive, harsh incarceration likely creates/exacerbates a bunch of damaged people with little hope of a future afterwards.
- Clubber 10y ago
  That's a good point. The more we learn about psychology, the more we realize a lot of criminal behavior is based on a chemical problem that is usually treatable. Adam Lanza comes to mind. What he did was probably the most horrible thing I've heard of, but the illness that caused him to do it was treatable. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/nyregion/before-newtown-shootings-adam-lanzas-mental-problems-completely-untreated-report-says.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/nyregion/before-newtown-s... The prison system in the US is supposed to be to rehabilitative rather than punitive. We aren't punishing people, we are fixing them. At least that's how it was described in the 80s. Based on sentencing in the last 30 years, that's hard to believe anymore.
  - mgarfias 10y ago
    Google "Jeanette maples". My wife took the call from the EMTs. Later on her dispatch department was told all about it by the detectives that worked the case. The really really awful crap isn't public knowledge. This is one case where the death penalty is very much appropriate.
- aaron695 10y ago
  If he wasn't a victim of the environment he'd be a victim of genetics. We have compassion for someone born blind, so equally we should have compassion for someone born bad. Or we could live in the real world, not the philosophical one. People do bad things, no matter the reason why punish them as a deterrent to others. Rehabilitate them as much as possible.
- empath75 10y ago
  I'm not a fan of punitive jail sentences for exactly this reason, and I feel like the purpose of prison should be two fold: 1) Primarily to remove dangerous or disruptive individuals from society for as long as they continue to pose a danger. 2) Rehabilate and educate people who became criminals due to a poor upbringing or lack of opportunity, and to move people into medical or psychiatric treatment when relevant. I don't think punishment vengeance or deterrence should be considered at all. Obviously certain people are going to be irredeemable and should be kept in prison for the rest of their lives. But it shouldn't be because they 'deserve' it for whatever reason, but because they're likely to go back to crime on release. I think certain white collar criminals should be as likely to serve long sentences as people who commit armed robbery, depending on their motivation and background, etc.
  - elevensies 10y ago
    Rehabilitation and sequestration are ways to protect and help people after a crime has been committed and presumably after the victim has suffered. Punishment for deterrence--if it actually deters--can do something else entirely, it can prevent the suffering of the innocent and prevent new criminality by increasing the suffering of the guilty.
- nabla9 10y ago
  In most countries personality disorders are not regarded as mental illnesses. Personality disorders have an early onset and have life-long patterns. Psychological and medical treatments are rarely effective. There is line somewhere between what people are and medical condition. When stress response or something goes awry in the young age, it may be impossible to reverse it or treat it. It's what person is. Same person can be both victim and criminal. Criminals typically have impulse control problems and punishment don't work as effective deterrent. This is why criminology and criminal justice systems in Nordic countries puts less weight on punishment. Separating criminals, partial rehabilitation or wearing them out in the system is best that criminal system can do. What people 'deserve' is just revenge seeking and vulgar attitude. It's probably rooted to religious belief in a soul.
  - jolux 10y ago
    Personality disorders are mostly diagnoses for life, sure, but some people do manage to grow out of them often through stuff like CBT/DBT. Even when they don't grow out, properly identifying personality disorders is immensely important and the treatment gap makes this far more difficult than it should be.
- hawkice 10y ago
  > What is the point of transition where we stop treating someone like a victim and begin treating them like a criminal? A possible answer: proportional response. Breivik dealt out much more damage than he ever sustained. If a child has his ice cream taken by another child, and goes on to crush his ice cream bandit's larynx and watch them slowly suffocate and die, I no longer care about the ice cream. Breivik is a monster of the highest order who watched and prolonged his destruction. "Being a victim" is, in cases like this, irrelevant. At least in terms of how we view people like him, and how we handle similar criminals.
  - jolux 10y ago
    Certainly, and analyses like these always ignore the fact that there are absolutely people (a majority?) who had horrifying childhoods and who don't end up mass murderers because of it. The truth is twofold: these people are absolutely responsible for their actions (as anyone should be, I personally think 18 is too high) but we can at the same time recognize that society's worst (and Breivik is undoubtedly in that category) do not necessarily choose to become the worst, and that the psychological conditions that make it seem like it's ok to kill people are not entirely within their control. Incidents like these are a public health issue like any other: they point to broader deficits in societal attitudes towards medicine. Specifically in these cases it is the extreme stigmatization of mental illness in much of the Western world (for lack of a better term and not to say that it's nonexistent outside the West, just that I don't know) that makes it difficult for people to receive the care they want and need.
- foxylad 10y ago
  One Dunedin Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Health_and_Development_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Heal... result shows that a "disadvantaged" childhood combined with a certain set of genes leads strongly to anti-social adults (well, men). The same genes with a good childhood tends to result in entrepreneurs. This result really hit home for me, because I was removed from a badly dysfunctional mother when I was ten, and now run my own startup. It seems to me that as a society, we should be a lot more focused on raising our young - failing them incurs the direct cost of their crimes and a lost opportunity cost of the businesses they might have developed.
  - kolinko 10y ago
    It's a bit similar with ADHD. You either end up with artists, or couch potatoes.
- erispoe 10y ago
  You leave out the critical question: how do we best protect society? The cycle of abuse, and circumstances that explain how abusers become abusers, does not absolve us from the necessity of protecting potential victims. It does, however, forces us to treat inmates humanely and to not engage into pure 'retaliation'. There's little evidence that punitive sentences actually do anything for preventing crimes. You can acknowledge the dangerousness of specific individuals and the necessity of preventing (further) crimes, while understanding how they got there. It's also critical to intervene early. By the time they're adults, or have started a criminal career, it's much more difficult for someone to change. At this point potential sentences, however 'punitive', do very little dissuasion.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  The point of transition is always the same... control. If we could change the things that were wrong with such people, and then it was a choice for them to be so changed or remain as they are (and in jail)... that's how you transition from one way of life to another. Unfortunately right now we don't have that kind of ability; the best you have is the educated guess of some doctors or parole officers. We're stuck because on one hand we understand that this guy was sick, but on the other hand he's sick in a way we can't fix, and he's dangerous. If it were a physical ailment with the same qualities, we'd still feel a combination of pity and revulsion.
- m0llusk 10y ago
  This is also now well supported science. The ACE study (http://acestudy.org http://acestudy.org) revealed that children who have adverse experiences in their early life dominate social dysfunction and even after one significant adverse experience have dramatically different life outcomes from other people. Allowing children to be abused is a major social problem that costs all of us terribly.
- kolinko 10y ago
  It's important to not forget genetics in the role of this. There are genes that cause anti-social behaviour, depression, alcoholism, and so on. Such people, when untreated, are quite likely to be bad parents. Their children, will indeed show a similar pattern to the parent's, but childhood abuse/neglect would be more a symptom than an underlying cause of a terrible family history. We know that because of twin and adoption studies. In many of such scenarios, what predicted a messed-up psyche was not the family someone grew up with. Instead, it was either family they were born into (adoption), or a set of genes (different correlations for mono/di-zygotic twins).
ggrochow 10y ago
Sucks I can't really read the article because some-custom scrolling or scripts are breaking the vim-fx FF plugin and the normal-scrolling doesn't even move the page.
- falsedan 10y ago
  How about you open the page in a different browser, or disable the plugin? edit I see vim-fx has an ignore toggle: press 'i' and scroll as normal? I have no problems with Pentadactyl.
- nickysielicki 10y ago
  Firefox or Chrome? If Chrome, give vimium a try. I have no such issues with Chromium 57.0.2987.98 + vimium + ublock origin + umatrix. The only scripts running are served from '*.tv2.no', but even with blocking those the article loads fine, albiet without images. vimium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba... umatrix: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal... ublock: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...
  - falsedan 10y ago
    > FF FireFox
    - jwilk 10y ago
      Is Firefox (note that the latter f is lowercase) really such a long word that it needs to be abbreviated?
      - falsedan 10y ago
        n
- 10y ago
javajosh 10y ago
It's remarkable there was any awareness of his predicament at all. All too often it seems that society is only sensitive to the more obvious forms of abuse (sexual and physical). Yet I suspect psychological abuse is far, far worse. I bet if you looked deeply into the lives of U.S. school shooters you'd find a similar story. The real lesson here is: if you're a borderline woman, do NOT have children. If you do, give them up for adoption. We as a society should be ready and willing to forcibly separate children from borderline parents.
- brianberns 10y ago
  > We as a society should be ready and willing to forcibly separate children from borderline parents. Who gets to decide if someone is "borderline"? How do we know that the people making this decision are not borderline themselves? Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to impose morality on others that is not vulnerable to the same problems that it's trying to fix.
  - tbihl 10y ago
    To say nothing of what it does for public faith in any officials administering such policy. It's not hard to imagine a large group becoming entirely untrusting of, for example, the police by such a brash pursuit of family-breaking.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    We don't seem to have a problem imposing the morality of "don't kill people" and "don't steal stuff." Is this fundamentally different?
    - vacri 10y ago
      Have a look at how Australian Aborigines feel about their separation from parents because of contemporary morals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
      - 10y ago
BadassFractal 10y ago
You eventually realize that it's next to impossible to hate someone when, if you were born into their situation, with their genetics, their environment, their condition, you would very likely have done the same exact thing. There's a tragic amount of predetermination in life.
- adekok 10y ago
  Studies show that there is a large correlation between genetics and life outcome. i.e. when treated badly, most people will end up bad, some won't. When treated well, most people will end up good, some won't. There are people who are pre-disposed to do bad things, no matter what. There are people who are pre-disposed to do good things, no matter what. See the stories about Romanian orphans for how a bad system can turn most people into functioning sociopaths: http://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-brains.html http://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-b... Yet some still turn out OK.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  You might, but then again you might choose not to. I reject the idea that it's just predetermination, that undermines the concept of agency. I come from a similar or possibly worse background, I find Brievik's problems extremely relatable and thus find him extremely interesting on a personal level. On the other hand I've never initiated violence against anyone else, even though I'm a long way from being a pacifist. I have a code of conduct and while it hasn't profited it me much in material terms at least I derive moral satisfaction from it.
- melq 10y ago
  I don't disagree with your basic premise, and cannot even fathom what its like to have your formative years defined by such tragic and insurmountable circumstances... That being said, there are a lot (probably a considerable majority) of people who have gone through the same or worse, and never commit an act comparable to the methodical slaughter of 70+ innocent strangers.
BlytheSchuma 10y ago
This all could have been prevented with a Government regulated IUD program.
seagullz 10y ago
"As the trial for Breivik's bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people entered its second week, the far-right fanatic told a court that he was the victim of a "racist" plot to discredit his ideology. He said no one would have questioned his sanity if he were a "bearded jihadist." " https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/04/23/breivik-claims-racist-plot-to-cast-him-as-insane https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/04/23/breivi... http://bridge.georgetown.edu/mental-illness-a-key-factor-in-terror/ http://bridge.georgetown.edu/mental-illness-a-key-factor-in-...
4991throwaway 10y ago
Wow reading the account of his childhood was very eye-opening. For starters, I should say I've never hurt anyone willingly, not in any serious way at least, nor for any length of time. Secondly, my parents are happily married as were their parents, my home life was mostly fine. My dad is an emotional black hole but I love him. What I found strikingly similar to Anders was his emotional reaction to people, being distant, few friends, fake smiles that I usually have to try very hard to make them be believable. He obviously got hurt by people in his life and learned to depend on himself to keep his ego intact, and that's my experience as well. I have a deep desire to be normal but I know i'm not. Up until about 9 or 10 I was a pretty normal kid, but then my family moved across the country. I knew nobody in the new town. Before the move I had a best friend, several other friends and I had a pretty happy childhood overall. I'm convinced I had ADD because I was extremely hyper-active and my primary outlet in my new school was to draw, most of my worksheets until about middle school were filled with random doodles. I day-dreamed constantly, I was always behind on work because I could rarely focus on doing any one thing for more than a few minutes. So in my new school, I had an extremely hard time making any friends. I have one I would consider a close friend, though the older we get the more distant we seem to become. So all the ADD-fueled mannerisms that I thrived on before moving, that my old friends accepted me in spite of them, all worked against me at the new school. I didn't fit in anywhere at my new, much larger school. I never really got into fights or was overly picked on, but I always felt rejected just for being me. DUring high school at a job, one of my bosses told me once "You're a really serious guy, you know that", because I seldom showed any emotion. At the time I took it as a compliment. I'm much more emotive these days, but the damage to my personality has been done. I live alone, haven't had a girlfriend in over a year and I generally have very little contact with people outside of work, and only at work. I really seldom desire any, though I do love to be in small company as long as i'm not the center of attention. My old childhood friends really are strangers to me now, I tried to reconnect with most of them but the person I was back then isn't the person I am today. I guess I just wanted some more insight into this. I certainly don't mean anyone harm, but everytime I see a psychological profile of a serial killer, I always see a part of them in me, the desire for time alone and the lack of adherance to most social norms and the general distance with people both physically and emotionally. My neighbors I'm pretty sure are afraid of me simply because I seldom have any guests and I keep to myself for the most part, especially after my last girlfriend moved out over a year ago. I really don't know any of my neighbors very well at all even though I've lived here over 5 years. I want to be a normal, people enjoying person, I have that drive in me, but something stops me. Not sure why I posted, but there are a lot of wise people who post here so I'm curious what input they might have (good or bad).
mgarfias 10y ago
This reads scarily like how my ex is with our boy. I hope that the proper care he gets 1/2 time at my house keeps him from going nuts
muramira 10y ago
Am I the only one to cry out bullshit! The guy is a terrorist, period. He deserves to pay for what he did. I survived a genocide and you don't see me go around and kill people.
- cooper12 10y ago
  No one is saying his childhood absolves him of any responsibility. The article is merely looking at his upbringing. It's apples and oranges where you compare genocide to child abuse.
wtbob 10y ago
What worries me about this is the detailed nature of this account. Surely every one of us has had quite a few painful years: imagine if it had all been recorded in dry, bureaucratic detail. I'm reminded of the story about æroplanes and the mythical average pilot: just as no pilot is actually average (and, in the original story, that's why cockpits designed for the average were bad for everyone), might it not be that none of us is statistically normal, and thus every one of us is thus abnormal, and hence dangerous to the bureaucratic state? None of this is meant to minimise Brevik's horrific crime, of course. But I'm worried about this level of detail being available for anyone on the planet. I don't know what the solution is: obviously, it's now possible to record lots of details about anyone, and just as obviously, it's possible for those details to be made available. That implies that those details will be made available, and so we as a society must come to terms with that. Still, it's a bit chilling that a State can track a man down to that level of detail.

50 points by teslacar 10y ago

I've seen this story a thousand times. Someone is abused in some manner, becomes an abuser, and the cycle repeats. I struggle with reconciling these cases because there's two drastically different perspectives you can look at it from: 1. Brevik is a mass murderer and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. 2. Brevik is a victim who was never given a fair shot at life to begin with. He was moulded into the horrible person he became. What is the point of transition where we stop treating someone like a victim and begin treating them like a criminal? How many serious offenders have been raised in such a damaging way that you could argue they're not exactly responsible for any of the awful things they ended up doing? It brings doubt to how we handle serious criminals in modern times.

jplayer01 10y ago
It doesn't absolve them of their crimes. It doesn't throw anything into doubt. You can throw in some therapy if you'd like, but these are unfixable people who've done terrible things. They shouldn't ever step onto a street again.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  Then what's the line between criminal and insane? In my opinion it's just a fuzzy line decided upon in a very flawed manner.
- Taek 10y ago
  Unfixable is a strong term and I think a concept that represents a lot of the core issues in our justice system today. The justice system should be in pursuit of a healthier society. Throwing intelligent, capable human beings into a cage and removing them from the economy is costly in many ways. And even if full rehabilitation cannot be achieved, surely there are partial solutions at hand.
  - toyg 10y ago
    I don't think you can class the likes of Breivik with common criminals or run-of-the-mill manslaughter/hot-blooded murderers, or even professional killers. Breivik is a self-professed enemy of society, he sees foreign armies all around him which he is entitled to fight with lethal force. There is no solution for that but to keep him away from anything and anyone. This is not even punishment, this is simple protection of the species. Even if there were a cure effective 99.99% of the times, society simply cannot afford the 0.01% risk. By all means treat him as best as you can, but he just can't be released in society anymore. The best you can hope from him is that he becomes a great monk.
  - ryan-allen 10y ago
    Some people are actually unfixable and destined to commit horrific acts of violence, this we know unequivocally. The only way we can prevent it is by screening and monitoring people before it happens, and we've got a pretty good idea of the precursors for this kind of thing. I doubt society would consent to such interference in order to prevent a few deaths from these rare individuals. Additionally for true prevention we would need to stop certain people from having and raising kids, now... that's a can of worms I am not sure will ever be opened.
    - pizza 10y ago
      How was any of this determined?
- ed_balls 10y ago
  What if we discover a tumor in his brain that caused this and after removing it he will be a perfectly sound and reasonable person? Should we keep him in forever? What about death penalty?
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  these are unfixable people You can't undo the awful things they did, but I try to avoid language constructs like 'these are unfixable people' in favor of 'we don't know how to deal with this.' One one level I find Ander Brievik appalling because he was willing to murder a bunch of innocent people to uphold the nazi ideology which finally gave him a sense of identity and direction. While he must have had a gaping void at his center in order to go to such lengths, it's not so surprising that a badly alienated person clings to a radical ideology that offers them the social and emotional validation they crave, even at a far remove. On the other hand I'm similarly disturbed at the people who originate and promote ideologies of this kind and who target their arguments precisely at such psychologically vulnerable types, in the knowledge and expectation that their ideas will be acted on by others. Brievik's manifesto, for example, heavily plagiarizes a monograph on political correctness by William Lind, co-founder (with the late Paul Weyrich) of the ultra-libertarian Free Congress Foundation. Lind is an influential military theorist who has done a lot to shape the debate on modern counterinsurgency; also a self-described 'neo-Victorian' and not-so-secret proponent of genocidal policies. But he hasn't shot anyone in person, so that apparently makes it OK. I'm very much anti-censorship and in favor of maximizing personal freedom of expression, but this inevitably leads quandaries like how one should respond to an ideology that argues for the elimination of other peoples' political rights or even existence. Traditionally for liberals 'the solution to bad speech is more speech,' but this notion is predicated on the assumption that rational discourse is the norm and that fair competition obtains in a 'marketplace of ideas.' Increasingly I don't think that either is true that we have run into the limits of the market as social arbitration mechanism because it's apparent that you can attract people to authoritarian politics almost as easily as you can attract people to any other kind of brand. I'm not sure how you systematize this; I don't really agree with Germany's approach of heavily censoring any expression of nazism in public discourse but I can see why they adopted it. For me the rule of thumb is that I won't give the time of day to any ideology that purports to sort people by their personal characteristics rather than by their behavioral ones or employs fallacies to achieve the same ends (eg 'members of (group) did these bad things, people with (characteristics) are members of (group), therefore said people are bad). Now on the individual level you can employ forensic debate to pick apart someone's specious argument and force them to a position where they either affirm or abandon that ideological identity. But on a collective level that's not really practical and what frequently ensues is a race for the lowest common denominator of political discourse, to the point that point that crackpot outfits are now treated like credible sources in debates on the news. The internet has disrupted the media business in no uncertain terms, but it's highly questionable whether the public is actually better informed as a result. There's a lot more data available, and for news junkies like myself that's like an endless supply of free heroin, but our political discourse looks less and less like a creative exchange of ideas and more and more like an elaborate trading card game.
vacri 10y ago
You're presenting a false dichotomy, that someone can be treated either as a victim, or as a criminal.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  My mistake if that's how I make it sound. I agree, you can be both. But in many cases we don't try them in court as both. We pick one. In this case it was decided he was sane.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Using the word "sane" isn't helpful here because it has a very narrow legal definition. A person with a psychotic illness may well not be "insane" in the eyes of the law if they were not operating under their illness at the time of their crime.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    In one case, it is a crime that happened recently and resulted in many deaths. In another case (with the same individual) it happened way past the statute of limitations and to a single person. Judicial systems are not really designed to handle systemic shifts (with the exception of supreme courts) and are specifically limited in where they can weigh judgement on. For the systemic changes modern governments use legislative bodies.
  - vacri 10y ago
    'Sane' has nothing to do with criminal vs victim. It's also a myth that you get off easy if you're legally declared insane - sentences for those people are so routinely longer than regular prison sentences, that lawyers advise against pleading insanity. In any case, if you're a defendant in criminal court, you're being tried as a criminal, whether or not you're a victim. Defendants aren't declared 'victims' and tried differently.
tinus_hn 10y ago
Does it really matter that much? Even if you were to say he's not responsible, you can't let him out on the streets. One of the goals of the justice system is to protect society from criminals by removing them from it, temporarily or permanently.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  I think the sentence may effectively be the same. But it's critically important not to mislabel people.
- deepsun 10y ago
  Agree, but justice systems are different: Some countries (like ex-USSR) also practice _punishing_ for a crime in prison -- further humiliating and abusing convicted person. Don't know if there's a reason (if ever were), but some people argue that it helps to reduce future crimes by other people ("don't do that, or you'll get to prison, you know what they do there"). Can't tell if it's supported by statistics. In other countries, like Norway, justice systems are the other way around -- besides removing criminals from society, they also bear a job to re-socializing criminals -- treating them humane and helping them to find a job after the prison. These other responsibilities affect answer to your question.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- pyre 10y ago
  Well, it also depends on how you want to treat him once you remove him from society too. If you want to state that he is just "full of pure evil," then maybe you just want to treat him really poorly.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  > Does it really matter that much? Yes. Not every person "damaged" in this manner gets a life sentence, having committed lesser but still serious crimes. How we treat them in prison and afterwards matters, and an understanding of the causes helps. Punitive, harsh incarceration likely creates/exacerbates a bunch of damaged people with little hope of a future afterwards.
Clubber 10y ago
That's a good point. The more we learn about psychology, the more we realize a lot of criminal behavior is based on a chemical problem that is usually treatable. Adam Lanza comes to mind. What he did was probably the most horrible thing I've heard of, but the illness that caused him to do it was treatable. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/nyregion/before-newtown-shootings-adam-lanzas-mental-problems-completely-untreated-report-says.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/nyregion/before-newtown-s... The prison system in the US is supposed to be to rehabilitative rather than punitive. We aren't punishing people, we are fixing them. At least that's how it was described in the 80s. Based on sentencing in the last 30 years, that's hard to believe anymore.
- mgarfias 10y ago
  Google "Jeanette maples". My wife took the call from the EMTs. Later on her dispatch department was told all about it by the detectives that worked the case. The really really awful crap isn't public knowledge. This is one case where the death penalty is very much appropriate.
aaron695 10y ago
If he wasn't a victim of the environment he'd be a victim of genetics. We have compassion for someone born blind, so equally we should have compassion for someone born bad. Or we could live in the real world, not the philosophical one. People do bad things, no matter the reason why punish them as a deterrent to others. Rehabilitate them as much as possible.
empath75 10y ago
I'm not a fan of punitive jail sentences for exactly this reason, and I feel like the purpose of prison should be two fold: 1) Primarily to remove dangerous or disruptive individuals from society for as long as they continue to pose a danger. 2) Rehabilate and educate people who became criminals due to a poor upbringing or lack of opportunity, and to move people into medical or psychiatric treatment when relevant. I don't think punishment vengeance or deterrence should be considered at all. Obviously certain people are going to be irredeemable and should be kept in prison for the rest of their lives. But it shouldn't be because they 'deserve' it for whatever reason, but because they're likely to go back to crime on release. I think certain white collar criminals should be as likely to serve long sentences as people who commit armed robbery, depending on their motivation and background, etc.
- elevensies 10y ago
  Rehabilitation and sequestration are ways to protect and help people after a crime has been committed and presumably after the victim has suffered. Punishment for deterrence--if it actually deters--can do something else entirely, it can prevent the suffering of the innocent and prevent new criminality by increasing the suffering of the guilty.
nabla9 10y ago
In most countries personality disorders are not regarded as mental illnesses. Personality disorders have an early onset and have life-long patterns. Psychological and medical treatments are rarely effective. There is line somewhere between what people are and medical condition. When stress response or something goes awry in the young age, it may be impossible to reverse it or treat it. It's what person is. Same person can be both victim and criminal. Criminals typically have impulse control problems and punishment don't work as effective deterrent. This is why criminology and criminal justice systems in Nordic countries puts less weight on punishment. Separating criminals, partial rehabilitation or wearing them out in the system is best that criminal system can do. What people 'deserve' is just revenge seeking and vulgar attitude. It's probably rooted to religious belief in a soul.
- jolux 10y ago
  Personality disorders are mostly diagnoses for life, sure, but some people do manage to grow out of them often through stuff like CBT/DBT. Even when they don't grow out, properly identifying personality disorders is immensely important and the treatment gap makes this far more difficult than it should be.
hawkice 10y ago
> What is the point of transition where we stop treating someone like a victim and begin treating them like a criminal? A possible answer: proportional response. Breivik dealt out much more damage than he ever sustained. If a child has his ice cream taken by another child, and goes on to crush his ice cream bandit's larynx and watch them slowly suffocate and die, I no longer care about the ice cream. Breivik is a monster of the highest order who watched and prolonged his destruction. "Being a victim" is, in cases like this, irrelevant. At least in terms of how we view people like him, and how we handle similar criminals.
- jolux 10y ago
  Certainly, and analyses like these always ignore the fact that there are absolutely people (a majority?) who had horrifying childhoods and who don't end up mass murderers because of it. The truth is twofold: these people are absolutely responsible for their actions (as anyone should be, I personally think 18 is too high) but we can at the same time recognize that society's worst (and Breivik is undoubtedly in that category) do not necessarily choose to become the worst, and that the psychological conditions that make it seem like it's ok to kill people are not entirely within their control. Incidents like these are a public health issue like any other: they point to broader deficits in societal attitudes towards medicine. Specifically in these cases it is the extreme stigmatization of mental illness in much of the Western world (for lack of a better term and not to say that it's nonexistent outside the West, just that I don't know) that makes it difficult for people to receive the care they want and need.
foxylad 10y ago
One Dunedin Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Health_and_Development_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Heal... result shows that a "disadvantaged" childhood combined with a certain set of genes leads strongly to anti-social adults (well, men). The same genes with a good childhood tends to result in entrepreneurs. This result really hit home for me, because I was removed from a badly dysfunctional mother when I was ten, and now run my own startup. It seems to me that as a society, we should be a lot more focused on raising our young - failing them incurs the direct cost of their crimes and a lost opportunity cost of the businesses they might have developed.
- kolinko 10y ago
  It's a bit similar with ADHD. You either end up with artists, or couch potatoes.
erispoe 10y ago
You leave out the critical question: how do we best protect society? The cycle of abuse, and circumstances that explain how abusers become abusers, does not absolve us from the necessity of protecting potential victims. It does, however, forces us to treat inmates humanely and to not engage into pure 'retaliation'. There's little evidence that punitive sentences actually do anything for preventing crimes. You can acknowledge the dangerousness of specific individuals and the necessity of preventing (further) crimes, while understanding how they got there. It's also critical to intervene early. By the time they're adults, or have started a criminal career, it's much more difficult for someone to change. At this point potential sentences, however 'punitive', do very little dissuasion.
M_Grey 10y ago
The point of transition is always the same... control. If we could change the things that were wrong with such people, and then it was a choice for them to be so changed or remain as they are (and in jail)... that's how you transition from one way of life to another. Unfortunately right now we don't have that kind of ability; the best you have is the educated guess of some doctors or parole officers. We're stuck because on one hand we understand that this guy was sick, but on the other hand he's sick in a way we can't fix, and he's dangerous. If it were a physical ailment with the same qualities, we'd still feel a combination of pity and revulsion.
m0llusk 10y ago
This is also now well supported science. The ACE study (http://acestudy.org http://acestudy.org) revealed that children who have adverse experiences in their early life dominate social dysfunction and even after one significant adverse experience have dramatically different life outcomes from other people. Allowing children to be abused is a major social problem that costs all of us terribly.
kolinko 10y ago
It's important to not forget genetics in the role of this. There are genes that cause anti-social behaviour, depression, alcoholism, and so on. Such people, when untreated, are quite likely to be bad parents. Their children, will indeed show a similar pattern to the parent's, but childhood abuse/neglect would be more a symptom than an underlying cause of a terrible family history. We know that because of twin and adoption studies. In many of such scenarios, what predicted a messed-up psyche was not the family someone grew up with. Instead, it was either family they were born into (adoption), or a set of genes (different correlations for mono/di-zygotic twins).

ggrochow 10y ago

Sucks I can't really read the article because some-custom scrolling or scripts are breaking the vim-fx FF plugin and the normal-scrolling doesn't even move the page.

falsedan 10y ago
How about you open the page in a different browser, or disable the plugin? edit I see vim-fx has an ignore toggle: press 'i' and scroll as normal? I have no problems with Pentadactyl.
nickysielicki 10y ago
Firefox or Chrome? If Chrome, give vimium a try. I have no such issues with Chromium 57.0.2987.98 + vimium + ublock origin + umatrix. The only scripts running are served from '*.tv2.no', but even with blocking those the article loads fine, albiet without images. vimium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba... umatrix: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal... ublock: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...
- falsedan 10y ago
  > FF FireFox
  - jwilk 10y ago
    Is Firefox (note that the latter f is lowercase) really such a long word that it needs to be abbreviated?
    - falsedan 10y ago
      n
10y ago

javajosh 10y ago

It's remarkable there was any awareness of his predicament at all. All too often it seems that society is only sensitive to the more obvious forms of abuse (sexual and physical). Yet I suspect psychological abuse is far, far worse. I bet if you looked deeply into the lives of U.S. school shooters you'd find a similar story. The real lesson here is: if you're a borderline woman, do NOT have children. If you do, give them up for adoption. We as a society should be ready and willing to forcibly separate children from borderline parents.

brianberns 10y ago
> We as a society should be ready and willing to forcibly separate children from borderline parents. Who gets to decide if someone is "borderline"? How do we know that the people making this decision are not borderline themselves? Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to impose morality on others that is not vulnerable to the same problems that it's trying to fix.
- tbihl 10y ago
  To say nothing of what it does for public faith in any officials administering such policy. It's not hard to imagine a large group becoming entirely untrusting of, for example, the police by such a brash pursuit of family-breaking.
- mikeash 10y ago
  We don't seem to have a problem imposing the morality of "don't kill people" and "don't steal stuff." Is this fundamentally different?
  - vacri 10y ago
    Have a look at how Australian Aborigines feel about their separation from parents because of contemporary morals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
    - 10y ago

BadassFractal 10y ago

You eventually realize that it's next to impossible to hate someone when, if you were born into their situation, with their genetics, their environment, their condition, you would very likely have done the same exact thing. There's a tragic amount of predetermination in life.

adekok 10y ago
Studies show that there is a large correlation between genetics and life outcome. i.e. when treated badly, most people will end up bad, some won't. When treated well, most people will end up good, some won't. There are people who are pre-disposed to do bad things, no matter what. There are people who are pre-disposed to do good things, no matter what. See the stories about Romanian orphans for how a bad system can turn most people into functioning sociopaths: http://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-brains.html http://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-b... Yet some still turn out OK.
anigbrowl 10y ago
You might, but then again you might choose not to. I reject the idea that it's just predetermination, that undermines the concept of agency. I come from a similar or possibly worse background, I find Brievik's problems extremely relatable and thus find him extremely interesting on a personal level. On the other hand I've never initiated violence against anyone else, even though I'm a long way from being a pacifist. I have a code of conduct and while it hasn't profited it me much in material terms at least I derive moral satisfaction from it.
melq 10y ago
I don't disagree with your basic premise, and cannot even fathom what its like to have your formative years defined by such tragic and insurmountable circumstances... That being said, there are a lot (probably a considerable majority) of people who have gone through the same or worse, and never commit an act comparable to the methodical slaughter of 70+ innocent strangers.

BlytheSchuma 10y ago

This all could have been prevented with a Government regulated IUD program.

seagullz 10y ago

"As the trial for Breivik's bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people entered its second week, the far-right fanatic told a court that he was the victim of a "racist" plot to discredit his ideology. He said no one would have questioned his sanity if he were a "bearded jihadist." " https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/04/23/breivik-claims-racist-plot-to-cast-him-as-insane https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/04/23/breivi... http://bridge.georgetown.edu/mental-illness-a-key-factor-in-terror/ http://bridge.georgetown.edu/mental-illness-a-key-factor-in-...

4991throwaway 10y ago

Wow reading the account of his childhood was very eye-opening. For starters, I should say I've never hurt anyone willingly, not in any serious way at least, nor for any length of time. Secondly, my parents are happily married as were their parents, my home life was mostly fine. My dad is an emotional black hole but I love him. What I found strikingly similar to Anders was his emotional reaction to people, being distant, few friends, fake smiles that I usually have to try very hard to make them be believable. He obviously got hurt by people in his life and learned to depend on himself to keep his ego intact, and that's my experience as well. I have a deep desire to be normal but I know i'm not. Up until about 9 or 10 I was a pretty normal kid, but then my family moved across the country. I knew nobody in the new town. Before the move I had a best friend, several other friends and I had a pretty happy childhood overall. I'm convinced I had ADD because I was extremely hyper-active and my primary outlet in my new school was to draw, most of my worksheets until about middle school were filled with random doodles. I day-dreamed constantly, I was always behind on work because I could rarely focus on doing any one thing for more than a few minutes. So in my new school, I had an extremely hard time making any friends. I have one I would consider a close friend, though the older we get the more distant we seem to become. So all the ADD-fueled mannerisms that I thrived on before moving, that my old friends accepted me in spite of them, all worked against me at the new school. I didn't fit in anywhere at my new, much larger school. I never really got into fights or was overly picked on, but I always felt rejected just for being me. DUring high school at a job, one of my bosses told me once "You're a really serious guy, you know that", because I seldom showed any emotion. At the time I took it as a compliment. I'm much more emotive these days, but the damage to my personality has been done. I live alone, haven't had a girlfriend in over a year and I generally have very little contact with people outside of work, and only at work. I really seldom desire any, though I do love to be in small company as long as i'm not the center of attention. My old childhood friends really are strangers to me now, I tried to reconnect with most of them but the person I was back then isn't the person I am today. I guess I just wanted some more insight into this. I certainly don't mean anyone harm, but everytime I see a psychological profile of a serial killer, I always see a part of them in me, the desire for time alone and the lack of adherance to most social norms and the general distance with people both physically and emotionally. My neighbors I'm pretty sure are afraid of me simply because I seldom have any guests and I keep to myself for the most part, especially after my last girlfriend moved out over a year ago. I really don't know any of my neighbors very well at all even though I've lived here over 5 years. I want to be a normal, people enjoying person, I have that drive in me, but something stops me. Not sure why I posted, but there are a lot of wise people who post here so I'm curious what input they might have (good or bad).

mgarfias 10y ago

This reads scarily like how my ex is with our boy. I hope that the proper care he gets 1/2 time at my house keeps him from going nuts

muramira 10y ago

Am I the only one to cry out bullshit! The guy is a terrorist, period. He deserves to pay for what he did. I survived a genocide and you don't see me go around and kill people.

cooper12 10y ago
No one is saying his childhood absolves him of any responsibility. The article is merely looking at his upbringing. It's apples and oranges where you compare genocide to child abuse.

wtbob 10y ago

What worries me about this is the detailed nature of this account. Surely every one of us has had quite a few painful years: imagine if it had all been recorded in dry, bureaucratic detail. I'm reminded of the story about æroplanes and the mythical average pilot: just as no pilot is actually average (and, in the original story, that's why cockpits designed for the average were bad for everyone), might it not be that none of us is statistically normal, and thus every one of us is thus abnormal, and hence dangerous to the bureaucratic state? None of this is meant to minimise Brevik's horrific crime, of course. But I'm worried about this level of detail being available for anyone on the planet. I don't know what the solution is: obviously, it's now possible to record lots of details about anyone, and just as obviously, it's possible for those details to be made available. That implies that those details will be made available, and so we as a society must come to terms with that. Still, it's a bit chilling that a State can track a man down to that level of detail.