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Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 959751
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.3
ISBN: 0375402497
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.3
EAN: 9780375402494
ASIN: 0375402497
Publication Date: September 14, 1999
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Product Description
Why do some men, women and even children assault, batter, rape, mutilate and murder? In his stunning new book, the Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes provides a startling and persuasive answer.
Why They Killexplores the discoveries of a maverick American criminologist, Dr. Lonnie Athens -- himself the child of a violent family -- which challenge conventional theories about violent behavior. By interviewing violent criminals in prison, Dr. Athens has identified a pattern of social development common to all seriously violent people -- a four-stage process he calls "violentization":
-- First, brutalization: A young person is forced by violence or the threat of violence to submit to an aggressive authority figure; he witnesses the violent subjugation of intimates, and the authority figure coaches him to use violence to settle disputes.
-- Second, belligerency: The dispirited subject, determined to prevent his further violent subjugation, heeds his coach and resolves to resort to violence.
-- Third, violent performances: His violent response to provocation succeeds, and he reads respect and fear in the eyes of others.
-- Fourth, virulency: Exultant, he determines from now on to utilize serious violence as a means of dealing with people -- and he bonds with others who believe as he does.
Since all four stages must be fully experienced in sequence and completed to produce a violent individual, we see how intervening to interrupt the process can prevent a tragic outcome.
Rhodes supports Athens's theory with historical evidence and shows how it explains such violent careers as those of Perry Smith (the killer central to Truman Capote's narrative In Cold Blood), Mike Tyson, "preppy rapist" Alex Kelly, and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Why They Kill challenges with devastating evidence the theory that violent behavior is impulsive, unconsciously motivated and predetermined. It offers compelling insights into the terrible, ongoing dilemma of criminal violence that plagues families, neighborhoods, cities and schools.
Amazon.com Review
In Why They Kill, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes traces the life and career of criminologist Lonnie Athens, a man who took his own sad and squalid life and turned it on its head to make a groundbreaking career as a criminologist. Athens grew up in a violent, angry world. Rather than absorbing the sickness and violence around him, though, he studied it, and eventually developed a theory about how violent criminals are created. Rhodes's critical examination of Athens's work forces readers to consider how violent our society really is, how it became that way, and what might be done to change it. When applied to well-known criminals such as Michael Tyson and Lee Harvey Oswald, Athens's ideas become concrete and take on an urgent tone: it's easy to discuss theories and predictors in the abstract, but these stories are real, and they repeat themselves in our society at an alarming rate. Rhodes's approach to this disturbing subject stands apart from many other crime books in its intelligence, humanity, and empathy. These are not just descriptions of "scumbags" and their brutal crimes, but intensely personal stories that reveal how a culture of violence propagates itself. --Lisa Higgins
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist June 12, 2008
Rhodes demonstrates the ability to break down and make alive Criminologist Lonnie Athens' theory of violentization. His use of well known violent indviduals and how they fall into this refinement of social learnig theory make a clear and strong argument to think about the theorist stages that lead to violent behavior. If you seek to know more about possible methods to promote a less volent world prehaps facing this tale will be productive.
 First half fails, second half outstanding December 24, 2006
The author's overall message is an astounding exploration of the criminal mind and how they become violent, and end up killing. The reviews and synopsis of the book are great... However, the first half of the book, about 170 pages, drag the reader along Lonnie Athens' (a criminologist) life. It tells of his schooling and how he made his studies. These 170 pages could have been boiled down to about 25. However, the second half of the book, where it takes an in depth look as some of Athens' findings about violentization are outstanding. I was dissapointed at first, but was engulfed by his message in the second half of the book. The book however explores what a college studnet would learn in any criminology or sociology 101 class. That in fact, violentization is what causes people to act the way they do. The author and Athens's just come at the fact in a slightly different manner and deter from the common conceptions of poverty, race, social class, etc and boil it down to simply being exposed to a violent upbringing. Worthwhile to read, but its not a medical breakthrough.
 Brilliant but such a huge question unanswered! February 10, 2005
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
It is not clear why the state of completed violentization is consolidated to the degree of no return?! The author(s) claim that a cataclysmic experiences or long-term significant events lead to fragmentization. That should apply also to violent criminals otherwise the theory of transition through fragmentation is NOT a theory... I was very disappointed in the end of the book, almost like a European movie... it ends without a finish... and it would not matter much if it wasn't for the grave implications of acting on the idea that violent criminals are irreversibly violentized and that another "cataclysmic experience" "or significant series of events" would not open an opportunity for a transformation leading away from violence.
In other words... what is missing is the other half of the theory, the de-violentization theory. Are there ANY violent criminals who have managed to return to non-violence? Why are statistics being treated so harshly throughout the book yet they come handy in dealing with this important question?
Even if there were only a few, then what was the process of their de-violentization? Could it have been another "cataclysmic experience" or some other sequence of significant events? Was it some process of transformation, which would challenge the violent phantom community and violent "generalized other" and replaced them with their non-violent equivalents?
My question is... "Why is de-violentization impossible?" What is the evidence that such process DOES NOT exist? For if it didn't, all that we learn from this theory through the examples of veterans and so on, are irrelevant to building programs of rehabilitation and healing. If during their service veterans completed violentization, according to the conclusion of this book, they should all join the violent criminals in the brig! But for this to happen we must first prove that there is NOT ONE case available of a person who has completed violentization and who has managed to return to non-violence.
If the "tranformation through fragmentation" theory works one way, it should also work the opposite... otherwise the theory is not worthy of consideration for explaining the violentization process, and therefore this is not a theory to be taken seriously in providing clues on neither our correction nor our veteran rehabilitation programs.
The book in general is wonderfully written and there is nothing wrong with generating questions on a hot subject such as violence.
Criminology with Psychology April 27, 2004
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've met more than a few criminologists at the University where I learned and taught psychology (and where, interestingly, Athens spent a good chunk of his early career), and I was always struck by how little psychology I found in the writings and the lectures of most criminologists. I don't mean complex theories of motivation or conversion or what have you; I mean simple notions of learning that we teach freshman students. Criminologists seem to be able to generate complex hypothesis at the drop of a hat, but precious few of them are willing to step back and say, as Athens did, that brutal criminals act that way because they've been taught to be brutal. And astoundingly enough, when Athens did bring some simple psychology into criminology, he was thought a dangerous radical. Reading of Rhodes' ideas I was put in mind of the books of the John Douglas, who built up FBI's Criminal Profiling division- another man who caused a revolution in crimonology by applying simple, well-known principles of learning. Rhodes' biography of Lonnie Athens is interesting for a number of reasons; first the story of the man himself, second, the revolution he brought to the study of criminal behavior- a revolution that still hasn't quite taken hold everywhere- and last as a picture of a how change comes (or doesn't come) in well-established areas of academic study. Strongly recommended.
Sound, insightful, useful August 24, 2003
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am a psychologist working in a maximum-security prison. This book introduced me to Athens' work. I am incorporating his ideas both into our treatment methods for offenders and our screening tools for parole and Community custody evaluations. Athens' work, described so well here, answers many questions, offers tools for distinguishing the truly dangerous criminal from the petty, and suggests avenues for research and treatment that will keep us all busy for the next 50 years. Well worth the trouble to read.
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