DRAFT

LONNIE ATHENS’ PROCESS OF VIOLENTIZATION—THE

CREATION OF VIOLENT DANGEROUS CRIMINALS
Researched and prepared by Wilbur L. Brower, Ph. D.

Dr. Lonnie Athens stated: “…I will outline a regime which could make anybody into a
violent criminal no matter what their biological makeup.” This short paper is a summary
of the key points in his books titled The Creation of Violent Dangerous Criminals and
Violent Criminal Acts and Actors, along with some background information that help to
put Athens’ findings into a supportive framework. I’ve also included some of my
personal observations and experiences from working with young adults who exhibit
many of the behaviors.
In Mind, Self and Society (1934), George Herbert Mead advanced the notion that
human beings attach meaning to objects, including other human beings, and act on the
basis of those meanings. It was his belief that the human society could not exist without
minds and selves. He asserted that individuals acquire a mind and a self. Culture derives
from an investment of bare nature with meaning. Mead pointed out that meanings are
basically arbitrary, devised through communication among minds and selves—your,
mine and others. Mind and self emerge through a social process. A child does not know
itself, but begins to discover itself through interactions with others, initially by way of
sounds, gestures and expressions. The child begins to learn the sounds, gestures and
expressions from the caregiver and the responses. Later, language acquisition, which
Mead proposed as an essential ingredient for the development of self, accelerates and
enlarges the process of discovering or developing self. The child learns the language of
attitude and value—vocabularies of behavior—for exchanges of gestural and verbal
conversation.
Mead calls the self-building process objectification. We learn to perceive
ourselves as objects by looking back through the eyes of others—by seeing ourselves as
others see us. Mead called this, “taking the attitude of the other.” We form our
objects/identities/personae primarily through social transactions with parents, siblings,
relatives and others close to us, or our “primary group.” They are descriptions filled with
the attitudes and values of our primary group with whom we negotiated them. We also
attach these objects/identities/personae to our bodily sensations and make them ours, or
simulations with attitudes, feelings and values. Mead assumed that within a given society,
the interpretations people make in particular circumstances of situations are based on a
shared set of meanings. Mead called that collective understanding the “generalized
other,” a concept that Athens had difficulty accepting. It was Mead’s belief that an
individual takes on the language of a community as a medium through which people get
their personality.
Selves are not given; they are constructed. They are built, altered, modified,
refurbished, reconstructed, etc., and even replaced over time. We acquire our selves
through our communications with ourselves and with others. The mind and the self are
products of participation in group life. Possessing a self makes it possible for human
beings to ascribe meaning to objects in her or his world, including other individuals. This
allows the individuals to read and interpret others and the world around them. Possessing
a self also allows human beings to construct a world of private inner experiences. Herbert
Blumer (1969) states: “This inner world is one of genuine social experience for him, in
which he may cultivate his impulses, develop his emotions and sentiments, form and
revise objects of others and himself, brood or exult over his memories, develop and
restrain his inclinations, cultivate his intentions and nurture and shape plans of conduct.”
Additionally, possessing a self makes it possible for human beings to interact with the
world around them rather than just react to it. It follows, then, that individuals can operate
out of an inner experience and by operating by direct response to stimuli. We also assign
meanings and interpretation to situations based on our personal interpretations of or
feelings about them.
Athens discovered that violent criminals interpreted the world quite differently
than the most law-abiding individuals. Therefore, their violence emerged from those
different interpretations. Their violent acts were deliberate decisions, not violent acts of
unconscious motivation, deep emotional needs, inner psychic conflicts or sudden
unconscious outbursts, as is often assumed or assigned.

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 It was Athens’ belief that unless violent criminals are bad seeds, genetic monsters
born that way, there had to be something in their childhood or a previous experience that
drove them to become violent adults. He argues and provides compelling evidence, from
extensive interviews with individuals who have committed violent criminal acts, that
violent dangerous criminals, in fact, are created through a four-stage process. Athens
wanted the individuals during the interview to construct objects of themselves at the point
where they remembered being violent or near-violent. He also wanted to know how they
thought of themselves during the time of the offense. Their self-concepts would
eventually emerge.
From these interviews with violent dangerous criminals, Athens found frightened,
angry children. He said that, “When people look at a dangerous violent criminal at the
very end of it, they will see, perhaps unexpectedly, that the dangerous violent criminal
began as a relatively benign human being for whom they would have more sympathy
than antipathy.” Athens was not concerned about the statistical distribution of
characteristics of violent offenders or their offenses. His primary concern was the social
psychological processes at work within the offender during the violent criminal acts.
Athens found that violent people consciously constructed violent plans of action
before they committed violent criminal acts. They do not “snap” but make decisions and
act on them. He found that the interpretations violent actors make of situations during
which they commit violent criminal acts evolve through a common series of steps. The
perpetrator:
⚫ Assesses the victim’s attitude and indicates to herself/himself what he
believes to be the meaning of that attitude
⚫ Engages in a dialogue with himself/herself, implicitly consulting the
significant figures out of her/his past whose attitudes he has internalized, to
decide whether or not the victim’s presumed attitude warrants violent action
⚫ Initiates violent action against the victim, if he concludes that the attitude
warrants a violent act.

During his interviews, Athens discovered four distinct types or kinds of interpretations.

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1.Physically defensive—a violent actor forms physically-defensive interpretation in two
steps—1) interpreting the victim’s attitude to mean that physical a physical attack
is imminent or already is underway, and 2)—t hen telling himself/herself that
he/she should proceed to respond violently and forming a plan of action. It is
perceived that the victim is making or has made a gesture that the perpetrator
believes constitutes or foreshadows a physical attack, requiring acts of self-
defense. Athens found that criminals who form plans of action as a results of
physical defensive interpretations view themselves as non-violent. They fell
compelled to use violence in self-defense, and their primary emotion is fear.

2.Frustrative—the perpetrator forms a frustrative interpretation when he/she interprets

the victim’s attitude to mean that (1 the victim is resisting or will resist what the
perpetrator wants to do (such as rape, robbery, etc.), or (2 the victim wants the
perpetrator to behave in a way that the perpetrator rejects (such as allowing him
to be arrested). After an internal debate, the perpetrator concludes that he/she
should respond violently to this frustration and then determines a violent plan of
action. The perpetrator’s primary emotion in forming a frustrative interpretation
is anger at the thwarting of her/his intentions.

3.Malefic violence—from the Latin word maleficus, which means evil. There are three
steps that lead to the malefic interpretation: a) the perpetrator assesses the attitude
of the victim to be belittling, scornful or contemptuous of her/him; b) the
perpetrator concludes from the internal debate that the victim’s attitude means
he/she is an evil or malicious person; and c) the perpetrator, believing the victim
to be extremely evil and malicious decides to counter such evil or maliciousness
with violence and enacts a violent plan of action. The perpetrator’s primary
emotion in forming a malefic interpretation is hatred.

4.Frustrative-malefic—the victim’s frustrative resistance or insistence leads the

perpetrator to conclude that the victim is evil and malicious, which demands a
violent response.

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Athens also found that there were three possible developments that determined whether
or not a violent actor would follow through to commit a violent criminal act: 1) the actor
has tunnel vision, a “fixed line of indication,” and carries out the act immediately or
nurtures the idea along until he/she carries out the plan of action; ) 2 “restraining
judgment” where the violent actor redefines the situation and judges that he/she should
act violently; and 3) “overriding judgment’ where a violent actor breaks out of a fixed
line of indication but returns to it later.
Athens concludes that violent actors consider, decide and choose when and where
to act violently and are responsible for their actions. They interpret situations very much
like the average individual—fearfully, angrily or hatefully. Unlike the average individual,
they decide to act violently as a result of that interpretation. Athens sought to understand
what was different about the violent actors’ decision-making process that leads them to
different conclusions. This led him to a fundamental discovery about the structure of
human personality.
Athens wanted to understand the self-interaction of violent criminals, what they
thought about when they assaulted, killed and raped. While he understood aspects of
Mead’s “generalized other” theory, he had difficulty reconciling it with what he learned
first-hand by interviewing violent dangerous criminals. The theory constituted a person’s
character, principles and acknowledged attitudes of all members of that community. It
explained conformity, but it did not explain individualism. It explained agreement, but it
did not explain disagreement. Athens was studying individuals whose attitudes and
behaviors were totally out of sync with the acknowledged attitudes of their community
that had judged them violent and dangerous and sentenced them to prison. They were
extreme examples of barbaric individualism, which is antagonistic to the general society.
Athens’ conflict with Mead’s model led him to propose a more intimate
community that was more of a shadow or reflection of the “I” and the “me” of each
individual. Athens determined that, somewhere between the individual and the broad
collectivity of society, there were some significant others whose attitudes shape
individuals. The significant others could be parents and other members of the primary
group, the voices of past experiences the individual has had. He advanced the theory that

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the internalized attitudes of significant other individuals are constants in a person’s life,
which make it possible for a person not to be unduly influenced by immediate, passing
experiences. Athens identified these incorporated attitudes as “phantom others,” and
proposed that these “phantom others” comprise a “phantom community.”
Athens also states that we talk to ourselves; in essence, talk with a go-between
when we are undergoing social changes. We also talk with phantom others, who are not
physically present, but whose impact upon us is as powerful as people who are present
when we are during our social experiences. Our phantom community is ever-present, but
we may be unaware or unconscious of their presence. Our phantom communities are
likely to emerge during times of personal crisis, and they are a hidden source of our
emotions, especially fear, anger, hate and love. It is his belief that we assign meanings to
situations when we talk to ourselves, and that our phantom community is a major
contributor to our emotions. Our phantom community tells us how an experience is going
to conclude before it actually does. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is from the phantom community that Athens’ subjects interpreted the attitudes
of their victims; and it was from the phantom community, not the “generalized other,”
that they found justification for responding violently. Unlike the typical individual,
violent dangerous criminals attached different, violent meaning to their social
experiences. Many people feel frustrated, become angry and hate, but only a small
number uses violence to overcome those conflicts. There will be more about this later.
It is from the phantom community that violent dangerous criminal construct self-
images. He discovered that the image the criminals had of themselves when they
committed a crime determined they types of violent acts they committed. He found three
types of self-images, and labeled them violent, incipiently violent and non-violent. Violent
self-image individuals see themselves and as seen by others as having 1) violent
dispositions, a readiness and willingness to attach other people physically with the
intention of seriously harming them; and 2) see themselves as having violence-related
attributes and characteristic, such as explosive, hot-headed, mean, ill-tempered and
coldhearted. They commit violent criminal acts in situations in which they formed
malefic, frustrative, frustrative-malefic or physically defensive interpretations.

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 Incipiently violent self-image individuals see themselves and are seen by others as
having violence-related attributes, but only a readiness or willingness to make serious
threats of violence toward others. They make menacing physical gestures and violent
ultimatums toward others. They commit violent criminal acts only in situations in which
they formed physically defensive interpretations or frustrative-malefic ones.
Non-violent self-image individuals do not see themselves and are not seen by
others as having a violent or incipiently violent disposition. They commit violent acts in
situations in which they form physically defensive interpretations of situations in which
they find themselves.
They referred to their phantom community to construct their self-images and their
interpretation of situations in which they found themselves. Those who have a violent
self-image have an unmitigated violent phantom community providing them with
expressed and unlimited moral support for acting violently toward others. Those who
have an incipiently violent self-images have a mitigated phantom community providing
them with expressed, but limited, moral support for acting violently toward others. Those
who have non-violent self-images do not have a non-violent phantom community that
provides them any expressed moral support for acting violently toward others.
He discovered that crimes are a product of social retardation because criminals are
guided by an undeveloped, primitive phantom community that impedes them from
cooperating with ongoing social activities and interactions of their corporal community or
the greater society in which they live.
It is Athens’ belief that a small group of people who have violent phantom
communities “are at the heart of our violent crimes.” He contends that there are three
types of violent criminals based on their phantom communities and their self-conceptions
and self-images: ultra-violent, violent and marginally violent. He states that ultra-violent
criminals “inhabit unmitigated violent phantom communities and paint violent portraits
of themselves.” Violent criminals “inhabit mitigated violent phantom communities and
paint incipiently violent self-portraits.” Marginally violent criminals “inhabit non-violent
phantom communities and paint only non-violent portraits of themselves.” Therefore, he
believed that in order to understand violent criminals, one had to understand the phantom

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 communities of violent actors. This led him to the investigation of the social process that
leads to the development of a violent phantom community.
Two of Athens’ assumptions were: 1) people are a result of social experiences that
they undergo; and 2) significant experiences that make people dangerous violent
criminals do not occur all at once, but gradually over a period of time. He proposed that
there are some social experiences that a person can undergo that are so consequential and
profound that they leave an indelible impression on the individual. Those experiences
could make a person a dangerous violent criminal. Those social experiences build on
each other and form a development process with discrete stages.
Athens’ interviews led him to conclude that violent dangerous individuals are
created by way of a socializing process that included a strong influence of a phantom
community. It was a four-stage experiential process that he termed violentization. The
progression of stages is: 1) brutalization, 2) belligerency, 3) violent performance and 4)
virulency, and individuals have to go through the attendant social experiences in one
stage before they can enter the next higher stage of violence development. The following
outline provides some of the factors and explanations associated with each stage in the
progression.

1. BRUTALIZATION:

a) Violent Subjugation—the subject’s primary group (characterized by

regular, face-to-face interaction and intimate familiarity between its
members, such as a clique, family, gang) threatening to use or using
extreme physical force to compel the subject’s obedience and respect.
There can also be coercion wherein the authority figure forces the
individual to comply with some command that the subject displays some
reluctance to obey or refuse outright to obey. The authority figure
continues the battering until the subject signals submission by obeying the
command or proclaiming intensions to. Then, the authority figure stops.
But, before that point in the subjugation, the subject reaches at state of
terror and panic, and subjection is the only way out. Submitting to and
stopping the battery provides a great sense of relief to the subject.

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 Immediately afterward, however, the subject feels humiliated from the
realization of having been battered into submission. The subject is
incensed by the humiliation and later is filled with rage that is transformed
into a desire to seek revenge. The subject’s desire for vengeance expresses
its in fantasies in which the subjugator is battered, maimed, tortured or
murdered. Coercive retaliation is intended for momentary submission for
compliance to a present command.
The authority figure can also exact retaliation to punish the subject
for previous disobedience or disrespect. Retaliatory subjugation involves
relentless battering because the authority figure refuses the subject’s offers
of submission. Once the subject realizes that the subjugator was not going
to relent, the subject becomes resigned and falls into an apathetic state,
becoming numb to the pain, absorbing the punishment and falling into a
stupor. The subject will harbor desires to batter, maim, torture or murder
the subjugator. Retaliatory subjugation seeks a permanent submission to
ensure future obedience and respect.

b) Personal Horrification—The subject witnesses (sees or hears) another

person undergoing violent subjugation. The other person must be a
member of the subject’s primary group. The subject feels helpless in
defending the group member. The wrath felt builds into fantasies about
battering, maiming, torturing or killing the subjugator. The intense
feelings eventually turn to personal shame and blame because the subject’s
inability to stop what was witnessed. The subject blames her/his own
impotence rather the subjugator’s wickedness.

c) Violent Coaching—The subject is prompted to violent conduct by

someone in the subject’s primary group who is older and more
experienced than the subject, or a credible authority figure. Subjects are
taught that they have a personal responsibility to physically attack any

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 protagonist. Through the following techniques, violence coaches instruct
novices what they should do when people provoke them:

⚫ Vainglorification—glorifies violence through storytelling. The violence

coach tells personal anecdotes about violent acts-her or his own or those of
relatives or close friends
⚫ Ridicule—promotes violence through belittling and derision via
comparisons between the coach and the novice
⚫ Coercion—coaching through coercive, violent subjugation, where the
coach threatens to physically attack the novice unless the novice attacks a
protagonist
⚫ Haranguing—repeated and raves about hurting other people, from which
the novice learns over time the lesson conveyed by the coach
⚫ Besiegement—The coach mixes a combination of penalties and rewards to
overcome any reluctance the subject has to engage in violence

All three components involve the individual being subjected to cruel and coarse treatment
at the hands of another individual in a way that dramatically impacts the individual’s
subsequent life in some traumatic way. All three brutalization experiences, violent
subjugation, personal horrification and violent coaching, are necessary to complete
brutalization.
It is Athens’ belief that most people who complete the process, especially males,
do so by early adolescent, and are left in a confused, turbulent condition. This confused,
turbulent condition prepares them for the next stages of the violentization process. The
violent subjugation generates emotionally-charged thoughts in the subject with a
repressed sense of rage and vague notions about physically attacking other people.
The personal horrification adds a sense of powerlessness, turning the subject’s
feeling inward. The subject was unable to protect her/his intimates and concludes that
she/he is worthless. The violent coaching adds humiliation to the feelings of worthless-
ness. Athens writes: “The question which has been in the back of the subject’s mind for

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 some time and which only now moves to the forefront is: Why have I not done anything
to stop my own and my intimates’ violent subjugation?”

2. BELLIGERENCY

Belligerency—The subject re-directs the question from “Why have I not?” to “What can I
do?”, and clearly understands, for the first time, the importance of the coaching received.
The subject concludes: Resorting to violence is sometimes necessary in this world. The
subject then resolves to use serious violence only if there’s serious provocation and only
if there’s a good probability of prevailing. This mitigated violent resolution represents the
completion of the belligerency stage.

3. VIOLENT PERFORMANCES

If there is defeat in a violent act, the subject is likely to either avoid physical
confrontation or resort to more lethal violence more quickly. If there is a draw, the
subject is left in limbo. If the subject prevails in a violent confrontation or performance,
primary group members and secondary group members (school officials, police,
prosecutors, judges, etc.) reinforce the opinion or notion that the subject is an
authentically violent person, and needs to be approached and treated with apprehension.
The subject engenders social trepidation, wherein the subject’s violent notoriety is better
than not being known for anything at all. Being known as a dangerous person creates and
gives the subject a greater power over her or his immediate social environment. The
subject draws the conclusion that he or she is invincible, and is determined not to tolerate
any provocation from others and, in fact, is likely to provoke others. The subject has
come full circle from a hapless victim of brutalization to a ruthless aggressor—the same
kind of “brutalizer” the subject once despised. This completes the fourth stage of
violentization, which is virulency.

4. VIRULENCY

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The subject resolves to unmitigated violence, and will attack others physically with the
serious intention of inflicting severe harm or killing them minimal or less than minimal
provocation of their part. The subject is ready to become an ultra-violent criminal.
Athens contends that unless an individual has undergone an authentically violentization
developmental process, he or she will not become a dangerous violent criminal.
Violentization is transmitted experientially across generations, and the process can take
several years or a few months. Violentization is a social process that requires inter-
personal interactions and the process changes over time. For example, subjects suffer
from low self-esteem during the early stages of violentization, and then suffer from
unrealistically high self-esteem to the point of arrogance should they reach the final
stage—virulency.

Athens’ research brought him to the conclusion that people who have never had any prior
violence-related experiences whatsoever do not suddenly commit heinous, violent
crimes! His research shows emphatically that violentization is the cause of criminal
violence, not poverty, genetic inheritance, psychopathology and other factors often
contribute to dangerous criminal behaviors. He found that dangerous criminal behaviors
cut across class, race, cultures, economic and social status and gender. However, Athens
did find some differences, primarily because of different interpersonal interactions and
socializing techniques, in criminal behaviors between men and women.
In his efforts to further explain his theories about creating violent dangerous
criminals, Athens also examined and explained various kinds of communities historically
and present-day. He asserts that dominance is a social universal because human beings
compete for dominance, which he defines as “swaying the development of social acts in
accordance to one’s preferences.” He states that social acts are collective co-ordinations
of the separate of individuals, and people dominate “when they impose their view of a
developing act social act on others.” He also states that in all communities, a dominance
hierarchy invariably emerges, and that people who occupy higher positions often make
their identification of emergent social acts prevail over people in lower positions. This
usually initiates a dominance struggle. Athens identified three distinct kinds of
communities within the United States and how they differ from each other. He also states

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that in spite of their differences, they all are the same regarding the dominance hierarchy,
and the norms that people use for settling dominance disputes. However, “the individual
type that predominate
The three kinds of communities that Athens identified are civil, turbulent and
malignant. Each community has its own “unique phantom communities, self portraits,
patterns of actions and insignia of dominance,” characteristics I’ve attempted to show in a
table format:

COMMUNITY WHO SELF NORMS FOR

DOMINATES PORTRAIT SETTLING
DISPUTES
CIVIL Pacifists—will not Anti-violent Gossiping about,
commit even ridiculing, snubbing,
physically, even deluding or temporarily
under life-threatening avoiding rivals. In more
circumstances. extreme disputes, rivals
may be permanently
Marginally violent Non-violent purged from the group
person—will only by firing, disowning,
commit physically divorcing, ostracizing or
violent acts. shunning. Violent
crimes are a rarity.

TURBULENT No individual In transition No prevailing norm for

predominates—a toward either resolving dominance
turbulent mix of all civility or disputes. Violent crime
four types: pacifist, malignancy is smaller than in
marginally violent, malignant communities,
violent and ultra- but still a much bigger
violent one than in civil ones.

MALIGNANT Ultra-violent Violent A willingness and

person—prepared to readiness to attack other
commit the full range people physically with
of violent acts and the intention of seriously
has unmitigated harming or killing them
violent communities for any dominative
provocation.

Violent person—has Incipiently Prepared to commit

mitigated violent violent physically defensive and
phantom frustrative-malefic

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 communities violent acts under
extreme dominative
provocation.

Physical violence is the

most effective means of
settling dominance
disputes, and one must
be prepared to use and
receive deadly force.
Violent criminal acts of
all kinds occur with
great frequency, and
produce an unsurprising
callousness toward
violence among its
members.

From his interviews with violent dangerous criminals and his understanding of Herbert
Mead’s work on the “I,” “me,” and phantom communities, Athens developed thirteen
principles to delineate the “other,” as outlined below:

1. People talk to themselves as if they were talking to someone else, except that they
talk to themselves in shorthand.

2. When people talk to each other, they tell themselves at the same time what they’re
saying; otherwise they would not know. Athens states that a corollary of this
principle is that people may talk to themselves silently while also echoing what
they are saying to someone else, so that what they tell someone or what someone
tells them is not necessarily what the speaker is thinking.

3. While people at talking to us, we have to tell ourselves what they are saying.
Unless we do, we do not know what they are telling us.

4. “Soliloquizing transforms our raw, bodily sensations into emotions.”

5. We always talk with an interlocutor when we soliloquize. “Everything that is said

to us, including what we say to ourselves, some interlocutor tells us.”

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6. The phantom other is the one and the many. “It is a multiple because more than
one phantom companion is ready at hand. We need a council of phantom others
for social flexibility, since different phantom others offer different expertise.

7. We soliloquize both superficially and profoundly. Superficially we self-talk

ourselves through out daily experience with people we are aware of and
recognize. But ordinarily we are not aware of our phantom companions.

8. Our phantom others are the hidden source of our emotions. If we devise emotions
by soliloquizing about bodily sensations, and if our phantom others play a critical
role in our soliloquies, then our phantom others must largely shape the emotions
we devise. Our phantom others “tell us how an experience that we are undergoing
will unfold before it actually ends, which can create in us a powerful self-
fulfilling prophecy.” That prediction in turn can stir us so deeply that we will be
moved to carry it out when without its powerful influence we might not have done
so. Since our phantom others stand in shadow, we may well be unaware of their
authority over us.

9. Talking to ourselves allows us to compose self-portraits, f we could not

soliloquize, and we could not describe ourselves to ourselves.

10. The phantom community rules. It occupies center stage whether we are alone or
not.

11. Since soliloquies are necessarily “multi-party dialogues,” conflicts of opinion are
always possible.

12. Absolute conformists or absolute individualists are rare. Whether we act like one
or the other in the course of a specific social experience depends on what our
phantom community tells us. When our “us” (our phantom community) disagrees
with “them” (our “generalized other”), we act like individualists, confounding

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 “their” expectation; when “us” and “them” agree, we act like conformists,
meeting “their” expectation.

13. Significant social experiences shape our phantom community.

Personal Thought, Questions and Observations

We are what we say and believe we are.

How do we change young adults’ self-conceptions and self-images toward violent

behaviors to self-conceptions and self-images toward personal mastery and value and
academic success?

Who we think we are has a profound influence on our actions and behaviors. Our
thoughts become our blueprints and roadmaps for what we are likely to do.
Our phantom communities can be extremely dangerous for us if we listen exclusively to
those communities for moral guidance.

How has the growing hip-hop culture influenced the attitudes and behaviors of today’s
young adults? Does this culture constitute a phantom community that has more influence
than society at-large?
Phantom communities are inevitable. How can we develop phantom communities that are
non-violent? What are some of the components or elements of an effective of non-violent
phantom communities?
How can we thwart or eliminate violent phantom communities? How do we extinguish
students’ need to act violently toward each other?
What social pressures can be brought to bear on schools that will not deal effectively with
belligerent students? Can these students be directed to rehabilitative and therapeutic
settings for help before their offenses go beyond the point of rehabilitation?

Some things that can be done:

⚫ Reduce violence in families

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 ⚫ Reduce school violence
⚫ Offer non-violent coaching such as training in negotiation, anger management and
conflict resolution
⚫ Discourage bullying
⚫ Offer mentoring to children at-risk of violent coaching
⚫ Counsel belligerent student
⚫ Dissolve or pacify street gangs
⚫ Separate violent dangers students from the remainder of the students so that their
presence will not have any legitimacy with others

What roles have economic and social oppression had on creating phantom communities
that work in opposition to the functioning of general society? How might this contribute
to the present prison population?

Upon reflection on the violentization process, it seems that prisoners are exposed to a
phantom community in which violentization is re-enforced and solidified. If this is true, it
might explain the high recidivism rate.

One of the primary reasons for being in business is to move inventory or provide a
service. The more inventory one moves or the move service one provides, the more
money one expects to make. In the prison “business,” however, the more inventory one
has the more money he or she will make. There is no incentive to get rid of inventory.
This would suggest that there is little or no incentive to “rehabilitate” the inventory.
Could this be a major factor contributing to the growing prison population?
If prison businesses were penalized for not rehabilitating their inventory, what affect
might that have on the results of their rehabilitation efforts?

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 Sources

Athens, Lonnie, 1997. Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
_____________, 1992. The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.

“The Self and the Violent Criminal” Lonnie Athens

Blumer, Herbert, 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkley:

University of California Press.
Rhodes, Richard, 1999. Why They Kills—The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist.
New York: Vantage Books.

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