- 5 months ago
- #psychopaths
- #childpsychopaths
- #dangerousfew
Documentary, The Dangerous Few: child psychopaths: Real Stories
#psychopaths #childpsychopaths #DangerousFew
#psychopaths #childpsychopaths #DangerousFew
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LearningTranscript
00:00.
00:06Help me!
00:09Help me!
00:14Cody's killed a few animals.
00:20He's killed...
00:22When he was three, he microwaved a cat,
00:25and he's also killed a little small dog.
00:28My mom had a little Yorkshire Terrier,
00:30and he said he flipped it and it broke its neck.
00:33And then he killed another cat by throwing logs on it.
00:38Cody is just six,
00:40but psychotherapist Brina Satterfield fears for his future.
00:44If the behaviour continues as he heads towards adulthood,
00:47he's going to be an extremely dangerous person.
00:51Cody isn't just going through a phase.
00:54His could be telltale symptoms of violence in later life.
00:59He had no remorse.
01:01He killed those animals.
01:03And she's afraid that he's going to go and continue with the pattern
01:08and start killing people because he doesn't care.
01:12She's afraid that he's going to continue to become a mass murderer.
01:16That doesn't work!
01:18New scientific research claims we can identify children as young as four or five
01:24as potential adult criminals.
01:26They have brains that function differently from normal children.
01:30There's growing clinical evidence that persistent criminals are different from other law-abiding people.
01:59It may be a set of biological factors that tilts them towards a life of crime.
02:04And who knows?
02:05The science of biology may bring us the hope of some cure for the disease of crime itself.
02:12There has been a biological revolution in terms of how we understand crime.
02:17And I think one of the implications of biological research is that we will increasingly view criminal behaviour as a disorder.
02:29The search to understand the roots of criminal behaviour has usually focused on the social causes of crime.
02:35Poverty and deprivation all play their part.
02:38But what the social scientists overlook is the role of the body's biology, especially abnormalities of brain function.
02:46This could be the result of accidents or social factors, difficulties at birth, taking drugs, drinking alcohol.
02:54Whatever the cause, it results in a brain which many scientists are convinced makes the criminal different from the rest of us.
03:01The new discoveries in the exploration of the brain will fundamentally challenge our concept of the very nature of guilt and punishment.
03:15In the light of this new science, we can trace the pathway to crime of two adult offenders.
03:21Frank is a career criminal.
03:24Tony has spent most of his adult life in jail.
03:27Are they both just plain bad?
03:29Or is there evidence that they are the prisoners of their abnormal brains?
03:34There has to be something wrong, or else I wouldn't have wasted half my life in prison.
03:38Most of us have broken the law as children. Few make a habit of it. Still fewer continue into adults offending.
03:50Studies consistently show a tiny handful of children who go on to a career of adult crime.
03:56It is true to say that there are a dangerous few.
03:59That there are only a tiny fraction of the total population who commit most of the misery, they commit most of the crimes.
04:08Researchers now believe that we can identify the dangerous few, long before they ruin their own and other lives by tests that show how the brain is working.
04:19Even more dramatic is the claim that treatment can save children at risk of a criminal career.
04:26So who are the dangerous few?
04:29Cody was diagnosed at the age of four as suffering from attention deficit and conduct disorder.
04:40For 20 years the Satterfield research team have carried out scrupulously controlled scientific studies of children like Cody.
04:47They reveal a consistent abnormality in the electrical activity of the brain.
04:52150 of the children studied are now adults.
04:55I'm sorry you miss out this time because I just got connect four.
05:00But I'm glad that you're playing by the rules. That's terrific.
05:03Let's try it again.
05:05Attention deficit disorder children who also have conduct disorder were followed by us in a long-term follow-up study.
05:14And half of them had been arrested for felony crimes by the time they reached 18, actually before they were 18.
05:21So the combination of attention deficit and conduct disorder is highly predictive of trouble with the law later on in life.
05:31Lauren was diagnosed with these disorders when she was four.
05:37Her parents were warned that they signaled serious trouble ahead.
05:40Lauren, if untreated, if we didn't intervene in her behaviour, if we didn't do a hands-on action with her,
05:52she would be probably a 12-year-old runaway who was promiscuous in sex and probably, you know, in jail at some point, you know, before she was 20.
06:05Lauren is now eight.
06:07So what is it that puts children at risk of developing adult criminal behaviour?
06:12They seem to lack normal feelings and emotions.
06:16Lauren's symptoms were typical.
06:19Lauren was different from birth.
06:27She never smiled.
06:30That was really, that was really hard.
06:32The child never went through that, you know, stage of smiling and cooing and laughing that maybe three or four months old do.
06:42And she just never did.
06:44And she was so different from what I expected a child to be or compared to her older sister.
06:51None of the other children were like this at all.
06:54A disturbing symptom is their attitude to suffering.
06:58Cruelty to animals inflicted without remorse is one of the clearest indicators of violence in later life.
07:05Cody doesn't seem to care that he's done it.
07:09When he killed the dog, it was my mom's dog we were babysitting.
07:13And we get to the airport and he's yelling out the window,
07:17Nanny, I killed your dog, I killed your dog.
07:20And he was just real, he thought that was the greatest.
07:23I don't know.
07:25He didn't have any remorse at all.
07:27This little boy from a very young age showed a lot of particularly disturbing behavior.
07:37He was extremely aggressive to peers early on.
07:41And he is to siblings now constantly to the point where his mother has been told to watch him when he's home all of the time when he's with his siblings.
07:51I'm concerned that he might hurt his siblings.
08:00Get out of their room, Cody.
08:04Cody.
08:08Out.
08:10Get out.
08:11You're not allowed in here.
08:12Are you in here?
08:13Yes, you are in here.
08:14Get out of here, please.
08:16You're not supposed to be in here.
08:20You remember why?
08:22Yes.
08:23With his sisters, he'll just hit them for no reason.
08:27And if they do anything, the slightest thing, he gets really upset.
08:33They go in his room, he has a tendency to just grab them by the hair, the arm, the leg, and drag them out.
08:41Come on.
08:42Come on.
08:43They do raspberries with their tongue, and he didn't like that.
08:48And so he just backhanded her and just slapped her right across the face.
08:52Rina said that one day he could blow up and kill one of my daughters out of just anger and not even think twice about it.
09:07Baby alert!
09:08Baby alert!
09:09OK, hold on, Cody.
09:13Don't touch her.
09:14Don't touch her.
09:15Don't touch her.
09:19By school age, Lauren's behavior was leading her into trouble.
09:24There was a time that Lauren took a little tile tool to school when she was about four years old.
09:32And this tile tool, you could put a piece of tile in it and it could cut the tile.
09:38You could also put a finger in it and I suppose it could slice a finger.
09:43She was showing kids this tool and I guess it scared the school because I think she had asked a child to go ahead, stick your finger in it.
09:51I was called several times by the school because they were concerned about her level of violence and aggression in the classroom.
10:02Lauren was forever in trouble.
10:04Her mother's attempt to correct her seemed simply to fuel her defiance and her sense of menace.
10:11I used to think Lauren was going to kill me in my sleep because Lauren, she would do whatever her impulses told her.
10:26And if I made her mad, I was the one reprimanding her.
10:30You know, I was the one who was going to get in trouble for it and I just used to think that she would kill me.
10:38It's a really sad thing for a mother to say.
10:42Do you have your lunch by the door?
10:43No!
10:44Yes.
10:45Excuse me, eye contact.
10:46Yes.
10:47Lauren, eye contact.
10:48Yes, I'm ready.
10:49Do you have your lunch by the door?
10:50Yeah.
10:51Okay.
10:52This is where I grew up right here and that's where we stole the car from.
10:58This is where I'd leave that apartment and get into a lot of trouble and sell drugs and we'd deal our marijuana and deal our speed.
11:06Danny's ingrained infant delinquency wasn't diagnosed.
11:10His mother hadn't heard of attention deficit disorder.
11:13When he started stealing at three, boys she thought will be boys.
11:18I said, what's under your shirt?
11:21And he said, oh, it's a secret.
11:23And I said, well, I have to see the secret.
11:26And we lifted his shirt and he had stolen from his little friend about six little cars.
11:31And I said, you can't take these.
11:33And he said, yes, I can.
11:35Yes, I can.
11:36I had them hidden.
11:37Attention deficit disorder children are different than the ordinary child in that the patterns that they get into of lying and stealing are pervasive.
11:50They're not transient.
11:52They last for longer than six months or a year.
11:56Danny came from a well-off and stable family.
12:00He had no need to steal.
12:02But for him, stealing and the habit of lying became both casual and compulsive.
12:07Mischief was maturing into delinquency.
12:10He constantly lied.
12:11He was the greatest.
12:13And he was very convincing and very good at it.
12:16They become quite skilled at lying and the predicaments that they had gotten into and the excuses of why they weren't where they were supposed to be,
12:26or why they had stolen a car or whatever the situation was.
12:32He was very gifted at that.
12:35Children like Lauren and Cody have a brain abnormality consistently found in those who go on to a criminal career.
12:43Good or bad social environment will only have some effect.
12:47This basic biological defect is central to the potential for crime.
12:54Uh-oh, he says.
12:56The heart?
12:57Yeah.
12:58The heart?
12:59Don't climb up that way.
13:00Don't do it that way.
13:01Although they're hyperactive, these children actually suffer from a low level of arousal in a part of the brain called the frontal cortex.
13:10Arousal levels can be monitored and measured by the amount of electrical activity in the brain.
13:17Scientists have found that one wave pattern, the theta waves, is invariably different in children at risk of criminal behaviour.
13:25When you're drowsy, the theta waves are slow and large.
13:28When you're concentrating, the waves are faster and focused.
13:32The at-risk, overactive children have paradoxically an abnormal degree of the drowsy pattern.
13:39One British study by Adrian Raine measured arousal levels in young boys before any had committed an offence.
13:47The critical question, basically, is can those criminals be identified nine years earlier on the basis of the measures of arousal?
13:55And the answer is yes, they can.
13:57We find that the criminals have an excess of theta activity here.
14:02And theta activity is slow-wave, e.g., it measures an under-aroused individual.
14:09So, essentially, the three measures of arousal were all predicting to who becomes criminal nine years later.
14:17What causes low arousal in children?
14:20Very often brain damage results from problems at birth.
14:24Cody suffered severe oxygen deprivation when he was born.
14:27His deep behavioural disorder is matched by a classic pattern of low arousal.
14:32But why should low arousal predispose a child to crime?
14:39The answer lies in how the brain works.
14:42The frontal cortex regulates the ability to plan and organise behaviour.
14:47It also controls our emotional reactions.
14:51In normal people, important messages from the nerves activate the frontal cortex,
14:56which analyses them and then tells the limbic system how to react.
15:02This area generates our emotions like love, anger and fear.
15:06The limbic system is the seat of our instinctive, irrational or impulsive behaviour.
15:12With low arousal, internal communication is more sluggish.
15:17So, the incoming messages need to be far more sensational than normal to get through to the frontal cortex.
15:28This means the cortex is slower to activate the limbic system,
15:33which in turn fails to generate normal feelings of fear.
15:39Low arousal indexes lack of fear.
15:42For example, one thing that stops most of us from committing antisocial acts
15:46is that we are frightened about the consequences of committing antisocial acts.
15:50Probably because we've been punished for doing antisocial things as children
15:54and we remember the consequences of our actions.
15:57If she did something of which she was told not to do, if she broke something, there was no guilt or fear.
16:14Fear was the biggest thing. She would not be scared of anything.
16:19Discipline meant nothing to Danny, because by the age of ten he was literally fearless.
16:25He would stay out all night using and selling drugs and stealing to buy more of them.
16:32I started selling the marijuana, which hooked me onto cocaine and then hooked me onto a crystal meth speed.
16:39And when I was selling that, that's when I got caught a couple times by other police officers in other places,
16:47hanging out with friends, selling on the streets.
16:50We found no matter what the discipline was or the consequences for his misbehavior, it was never enough.
16:58We couldn't punish him enough.
17:00He was at that point becoming bigger and stronger than I was anyway, and he could walk out the door.
17:06I mean, he knew how to ride the bus system, he could steal money, he could take my jewelry, he could sell it,
17:12he could do anything he wanted. There was no stopping him.
17:15We were really at a loss for answers.
17:19It may seem contradictory that the overactive child has an underactive brain.
17:25But an active frontal cortex is essential to the ability to concentrate.
17:33Their low brain arousal means that hyperactive children can't focus their attention.
17:38They're always on the move.
17:41The primary consequences of not being able to focus attention in school are very, very bright children fall way behind in school.
17:49They're unable to do any academic work at the level that they should be able to do it, given their IQs.
17:59As they fall further behind, they develop a very low self-esteem and low self-image.
18:05They feel that they're wrong or bad very often.
18:08Not behaving to teachers, not conducting by the rules, and not being able to do good in academics, such as not doing my homework,
18:17and not doing the schoolwork in class.
18:19I just couldn't focus, and I just couldn't concentrate and pay attention to any of my work, which is why I acted up.
18:26It's why I couldn't focus that made me angry, and it made me frustrated, and it made me act up even more.
18:33So this leads into a whole set of negative self-perceptions for the child.
18:39And very often they make up for that by doing things, simple, effective, immediate things that make them feel good.
18:49But those things very often are not socially acceptable.
18:54When I got into trouble, it made me feel better. I needed to feel like I was a rebel, like I was just getting into more crimes.
19:03And even when I got arrested, sometimes I would feel better about that afterwards, because I felt like I did misbehave,
19:10and some things I got away with which I felt good about.
19:15At ten years old, Danny had a reputation as a nasty piece of work. Other children feared and avoided him.
19:22But there's another reason why low arousal can lead to extreme behaviour.
19:27Those with low arousal are driven by the need for excitement.
19:31This craving for risk and adventure can either fuel a brilliant career or find fulfilment in crime.
19:40Kids with low arousal seek out stimulation to increase their arousal levels back to normal.
19:45Now, for some adolescents, joining a gang, burglaring a house, beating somebody up, might be their way of getting an arousal jug in life.
19:54Yeah, I found it very exciting. That was the whole reason of doing it. All the crimes that I did, it was just really exciting to me.
20:01I liked the action. I liked having to get away from the cops, and I thought I was cool. I thought it was a cool thing to do.
20:11Danny was 15 when he was sent to a juvenile correctional centre for 18 months.
20:21We were unaware of what his problem really was, other than just being a bad person, a bad kid. We didn't know what to do.
20:30Cody and Lauren have been labelled potential criminals.
20:34But doesn't childhood deserve the presumption of innocence? Doesn't singling them out itself doom them to delinquency?
20:42It does seem a little beyond the pale to take a child, say, in fifth grade, and go out and stop measuring their arousal and say,
20:50well, you're in danger of being a future criminal. That doesn't seem right to me.
20:54If you don't label a child, or don't diagnose a child, you can't get him proper treatment.
21:00Treatment may indeed be possible. The few studies that have been tried all offer hope that the brain differences that tilt a child to crime can be overcome.
21:11Biology need not be destiny. Our brains need not doom us. If we really want to, we can stop a lot of crime by conquering our children's criminal potential.
21:23Yeah. Yeah, it hurts.
21:26Cody is undergoing intensive treatment. The aim, to change his behaviour. The prize, to save him from his potentially criminal self.
21:33If you help them, just check off each day.
21:41Brina Satterfield's methods are controversial. She has no fears about using science to diagnose children at risk.
21:48The first step in a two-year process is to convince the parents that their children are damaged by a brain disorder and need help rather than punishment.
21:57Remember that ADD kids do not have a good sense of time, whether it's a week or a month, or five minutes.
22:04They don't have a very good conceptual, internalized idea of how long that is.
22:11It's hard to not look at him and say, he's just misbehaving. He's doing this on purpose.
22:17And realize that he has something wrong with him and not, it's really hard to, because he gets to where he drives you nuts.
22:26And it's not his fault. There's something wrong in the brain.
22:32Brina mapped out that there are brain transmitters, and when the transmitter signals don't connect, there's a disorder.
22:43Her stealing wasn't her stealing, it was part of this disorder.
22:47It made it so much more easier to look at it that way.
22:50The next stage is to teach the parents how to cope with these apparent children from hell.
22:57One of the immediate problems is that parents are very reactive to what their children's behavior is or fails to be,
23:07and so they're constantly chastising their children, and a lot of anger develops.
23:12I truly hated my child. I hated Lauren.
23:17I mean, my whole life was turned upside down around this child.
23:22I mean, here, the guilt a mother has on feeling hatred towards a child, their own child.
23:28Brina made me look at this as a handicap.
23:31You wouldn't yell at a retarded child. You wouldn't go smack a retarded child.
23:35You know, you just can't. And you have to step back and you have to go, they are incapable of controlling their behavior.
23:42They are incapable.
23:43You're a star, aren't you?
23:45Yeah, I'm a star.
23:47The other part of the treatment is chemical.
23:50Come here, you need to take your pills.
23:52Ritalin is a brain stimulant.
23:54You'd think the last thing a hyperactive child needs is stimulation, but it's the underactive brain which needs a kickstart to activate the frontal cortex and help him concentrate.
24:03And then I give him his medicine, and about a half hour later he starts to calm down.
24:10Cody wouldn't be able to even go to school.
24:13He gets so excited and stuff, there's no way he could settle down enough for a teacher to teach him.
24:19Without the medicines, he's that out of control.
24:24With the medication and with everything we've been doing with him, he's calm enough where he can go to school, he gets good grades, and they haven't really noticed too much of a problem.
24:36Cody, you're on the other team!
24:39Okay, I got it though. Cody!
24:41I got it!
24:47But the studies show that drugs alone are no magic bullet for delinquency.
24:52Brina reckons a child like Cody will need two to three years of help before he begins to feel and act like other children.
24:58The drugs help Cody concentrate on the learning. It'll take a long time to translate this into being a more considerate and tender child.
25:24I think you like to throw things, right, when you get mad?
25:31Only sometimes I don't want to get mad.
25:34Did you get mad at that cat when you were throwing wood at the cat?
25:38Were you mad at the cat for something?
25:41He didn't do nothing to me.
25:43Well, why did you throw the wood at the cat and kill a cat?
25:46I don't know why.
25:48You don't know why?
25:49I wonder if you were mad about something at that time.
25:53Were you mad at somebody else or about something else?
25:56I wasn't mad at somebody. I don't know why I hit the cat.
26:02A child such as this doesn't have the same set of feelings that you or I would have when we hurt another person.
26:11He doesn't have the sense of shock or horror at what that means.
26:15And then what happened?
26:19On the way home, I threw rocks at him.
26:22You threw rocks at him?
26:23Yeah.
26:24And after that, my dad called me.
26:26Okay, but did you ever think of saying, Kevin, that's making me really angry and I don't want to be your friend if you're going to treat me that way?
26:36Hey, Jimmy, let me use it, please.
26:39Hopefully, treatment will help him to understand how others feel when he hurts them.
26:47Good behaviour in the living room.
26:49How's that in 50?
26:50Okay. Well, here, take your chips.
26:53Okay.
26:54How many do you get for eating all your breakfast?
26:55Three.
26:56Three?
26:58A further layer to Cody's intensive treatment is less sophisticated.
27:02Bribery.
27:03The parents are asked to operate a reward system.
27:06Let's look at how many chips you get.
27:07Come here.
27:09Okay, what did you get for study time?
27:11Uh, everything.
27:12You think you did good?
27:13Three.
27:14You know what?
27:15What?
27:16I think you did so good.
27:17Yeah.
27:18I think you did super good.
27:19I think you did five.
27:20Wow.
27:21That was the best study time you've ever had.
27:22Yeah.
27:23Yeah.
27:24Get dressed.
27:25Get dressed.
27:26Little plastic chips are given to the child for specific good behaviour.
27:31The child can then cash in these chips for the pleasure of watching television, going to play with a friend or whatever.
27:38It's a juvenile capitalism whereby the child sells not his labour but his behaviour.
27:44And the whole family profits.
27:45You'd be surprised what a little piece of plastic does.
27:51He really is motivated to earn those, otherwise he doesn't get to do anything.
27:57And so he works really hard trying to get them.
28:01It's bribery, but it works.
28:04Lauren's family have completed three years of the Satterfield treatment.
28:09She still needs stimulants to help her concentrate, but the mix of therapies have changed her behaviour.
28:15And Francine is no longer afraid of her daughter.
28:18Thank God I don't have that fear anymore.
28:21Lauren's not that child anymore.
28:23She has guilt now.
28:26She has a little fear.
28:29She has a conscience.
28:31She feels sensitive towards other people's pain.
28:35She's the first one over to a child who's hurt themselves in school.
28:39This is not the child that was five years ago who couldn't care less about anybody or anything.
28:45Brain abnormalities such as Lauren's can strike in the ghettos as they can in middle class suburbia.
29:00The difference is a privileged family can afford to invest the money and the time in treatment.
29:04Other children who completed the Satterfield course are now law-abiding adults.
29:15Love you. Be a good girl.
29:18In our multi-modality intervention study, we found that we could reduce the criminal arrest rate by about 50%.
29:31And this is a cost-effective treatment.
29:38A year's treatment costs 2,000 pounds.
29:42A year in a juvenile detention centre like this one costs 17,000.
29:47A life of crime for one repeat offender can cost the taxpayer more than a million pounds.
29:53But there's no complete guarantee of success.
29:56The ethical dilemma is this.
29:57As a parent, what do you do?
30:00Do you risk putting your child into these intervention programmes
30:04and risk labelling your child as a future violent offender even though your child has committed no violent crimes right now?
30:12That's one side of the scenario.
30:14The other side is if you ignore that possibility and don't put your child into intervention programmes,
30:20there's an 80% chance that he will become a violent criminal offender.
30:25And he'll not only destroy his own life, he'll destroy your life, the lives of his brothers and sisters,
30:33and more importantly, the lives of innocent victims of his violent crimes.
30:38Danny is too old for the Satterfield treatment.
30:42But is it too late to correct the biology that makes him a wrecker?
30:47After release from detention, Danny's parents in desperation tried a new, untested method to correct abnormal brain patterns.
30:55It's called biofeedback.
30:56My behaviour was so bad in the past that we didn't think that we could change it and we didn't think there was anything I could change it.
31:03And when I started, I mean, we just tried it out basically just to see if it would help at all.
31:10The first stage was clinically to assess whether or not Danny had the classic abnormal brain pattern.
31:18The evaluation of EEG showed us a predominant theta activity that means low arousal.
31:29And low arousal is bound to conduct disorder.
31:31He had incredible conduct disorder such as using drugs and selling drugs, stealing cars, threatening the family members, sometimes even becoming violent in the family.
31:51The scientific evidence is that under the right conditions, we can retrain our own brains to change our own arousal levels.
31:58And I'd like you now to look in front of you and focus on Pac-Man.
32:04Be as relaxed as you can be.
32:09That's very good. Just be very, very relaxed.
32:12Biofeedback sounds like fringe science.
32:15It involves, in this case, a simple video game.
32:18The difference is that it's the patient's own brainwaves, not his hands, that control how well the game is played.
32:24If you focus more, the Pac-Man will be eating more of the pellets.
32:29When you get unfocused, you can see that he slows down and he stops eating the pellets less.
32:34So it is a really good game because it really keeps your attention focused.
32:38And as you're concentrating on them, that is making your brain concentrate.
32:41The more sessions you have done, the faster the results will be.
32:49So if you do three times a week, in about a year, you have a complete and permanent change in your brain activity.
32:59Danny's brainwaves have changed. And so has his fearless, selfish quest for sensation.
33:04Now, his brainwaves are in a normal range. So it's a normalization of his electrical brain activity that leads to, of course, a normal behavior.
33:21And within three weeks, a total miracle had happened.
33:26He went from making, first of all, from being interested, not interested in school, to becoming interested.
33:32And from making F's to bringing home A's. Perfect scores on tests and reports.
33:39About feedback is a miracle to me. It's just the most amazing thing.
33:45For me, as long as I stay focused, and I stay off drugs, and I'm staying clean and sober,
33:51then those 30 sessions are going to stay with me for a long time.
33:54And so far, it's worked. My concentration is already up.
33:58It's almost like taking a pill that cures you for the rest of your life.
34:00It's too early to claim a miracle fix for 20-year-old Danny's delinquency.
34:13But he recently attended his sister's wedding, the first family event he'd been to in years,
34:18played a song he'd written, and passed his exams with distinction.
34:22When I go to the music school in the future, and try to get a good degree,
34:28and lead somewhere to a good career in the future.
34:35There's been no systematic assessment of biofeedback.
34:39Even so, the Texas Correctional Center, hardly soft on crime or woolly on the causes of it,
34:45is giving the system a trial, and provisional results are encouraging for delinquent young men like Danny.
34:50But treatment is the exception.
34:54No one in Britain, for instance, is trying the Satterfield approach.
34:58Not many children are able to get appropriate treatment.
35:02Many children go on without treatment to failure in school, failure with peers and in society,
35:13and usually they become the outcasts, and some of them become predatory
35:17and attack other people physically.
35:21Others just drop out from society, and they drop out from school,
35:26and they don't have very useful lives.
35:30And it's among those, the persistent criminals whose lives have been wasted in jail,
35:35that will find more evidence of the link between brain abnormality and crime.
35:41Could earlier treatment have helped them escape the prison of their criminal minds?
35:47Britain's prisons house more than 50,000 inmates.
35:51How many of them are incapable of controlling their actions?
35:54For some, can the very notion of guilt apply?
35:58Hundreds of studies have measured the brain arousal levels of persistent offenders.
36:05And the clinical tests, including those from British prisons, all tell the same story.
36:09For at least the last 50 years, we've been finding that criminals or antisocial individuals tend to evidence low arousal, low physiological arousal.
36:19Low arousal, as we've seen, means the intelligent frontal areas of the cortex are not instructing the limbic system of the brain
36:26to generate the appropriate responses a normal person feels.
36:29A person with high arousal is liable to panic and fall to pieces, while an individual with very low arousal will simply deal with the situation rationally.
36:40And so this maybe gives you a clinical idea of why low arousal may be useful for a criminal,
36:48and why it may predispose an individual to become a criminal.
36:51It's very good, just be very, very relaxed.
36:53The recidivist criminal, or persistent offender, suffers from the same brain abnormality that we saw in Danny.
37:03Tony is a classic repeat offender. He's spent most of his adult life in prison.
37:09As with Danny, his upbringing doesn't explain why he took to crime.
37:16My family upbringing was very good, actually. I came from a very loving and caring home.
37:20I have no excuses.
37:23Tony was born into a morally upright, lower middle class family.
37:28Just like Danny's parents, Tony's father can't see what went wrong.
37:32The upbringing we gave him, we didn't teach him to steal, or he didn't have to steal.
37:37He got what he wanted, more or less, from us that we could give him.
37:41I don't really know why he went off the rails, no idea.
37:43Is there a biological answer to the puzzle of Tony's offending?
37:50How much of Danny's pattern does he fit?
37:53As a child, Tony's pattern of behaviour was similar to Danny's.
37:58He had all the symptoms of attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity.
38:03When you look back now, it might have been hyperactive.
38:05I was always an active child.
38:08I was always doing something.
38:12I had to be active.
38:15I could get distracted very, very easily, especially from the boring things in life.
38:22So I can't sit still.
38:23I don't think I ever remember him reading a book.
38:26That wouldn't be enough for him to keep him occupied.
38:29But just sit quietly, I think, was unheard of.
38:33Other, more exciting temptations beckoned.
38:36A younger person showed me how to steal cars.
38:39If I couldn't afford it, oh, I'll steal it.
38:42And that was kind of a breakdown of the law and order situation,
38:46which started at about 11 and got out of control by about 17, I suppose.
38:50And it broke my heart, really, when I first found out he was in prison.
38:58I thought, his mother, it nearly killed her.
39:01Well, it certainly did.
39:05Come on, Jane, keep him with it.
39:08This is Frank, a career villain.
39:11He served 15 years for robbing a silver bullion van.
39:14His pathway to crime is perhaps more understandable.
39:17Unlike Philip, he grew up in disadvantage.
39:21Crime, to some in the east end of those days, was a way of life.
39:26Frank started to steal in a small way when he was only a child.
39:31I used to thieve out of Stratford Market.
39:34It's a few boxes of cabbages and cauliflowers, carrots, onions, thingy, but not to sell.
39:44Just take them in the street and let the people in the street have them.
39:48Rita Strange lived next door to Frank.
39:51She feels the real trouble started when he got a job managing the local billiard hall.
39:56The hall had something of a reputation.
39:59We knew there was all crooks in there.
40:01Everybody knew there was all crooks in there.
40:03I suppose he heard about the money you could get.
40:06I suppose that's what really started him.
40:08He thought, oh, I have a bit of money.
40:10Frank and George were best friends.
40:14We weren't rich.
40:16We were always ordinary street kids.
40:18But if you see someone else making it, however they've made it,
40:23whether it's through villainy or whether it's through honest means,
40:26sometimes you think, cool, I want a bit of that cake.
40:29I think that's how frank he was.
40:31But George resisted stealing the cake and joined the Navy.
40:35As for Frank, he enjoyed the frenzy and action of boxing.
40:39But so do a lot of East End children and they don't grow up to be criminal.
40:43Did Frank box because of an underactive brain which couldn't concentrate at school
40:48and craved sensation?
40:50When I'd done the bullying and robbery, it was the thrill of it.
40:56I would say more so than the money.
40:58So they'd tell us more about nouns.
41:01They'd make writing more interesting.
41:03Frank is only now learning his ABC.
41:05He found reading and writing impossible as a lad.
41:08Over a hundred studies show that career criminals have a low verbal IQ.
41:13Was Frank's disadvantage another bias of the brain to crime?
41:18You have a far better idea of what the sentence is about.
41:21Yeah.
41:23There's another clue deep in the furrows of the brain.
41:25When scientists compared the brains of non-criminals with persistent offenders,
41:31they found that the language side of the criminals wasn't working as well.
41:35We found the left hemisphere to be much poorer in terms of processing verbal material.
41:41And it just may be that processing verbal material is very important in terms of learning social rules.
41:47A conversation between the two hemispheres of the brain is essential if the left side is to control the impulsive and emotional right side of the brain.
41:59An internal moral code is critically important in the development of a conscience.
42:03And effectively, if you don't have that internal regulation of verbal processes, then one may be less able to generate that internal verbal code which guides and regulate your social behaviour.
42:17But there's still more to the new discoveries of the link between crime and the brain.
42:23There may be a fault in the very structure of the brain of the persistent offender.
42:28Two thousand such criminals were submitted to a battery of neurological tests.
42:32The recidivists we've studied over the years, the probability is probably over 90% that he has an abnormality of his brain.
42:43From the neurological tests, the brain's functions could be mapped.
42:48The grey area indicates low activity.
42:51The normal brain is on the left.
42:55And this is the brain of the career criminal.
42:57The frontal cortex in the repeat offender isn't working properly.
43:03The rational area of the brain isn't controlling the instinctive and impulsive limbic area.
43:09We have urges, a gas pedal go system, and we have a braking system to put the brakes on, the inhibition.
43:17And what most of these recidivists appear to lack is the braking system.
43:22So when that part of the brain is dysfunctional or damaged in some cases, those brakes are gone.
43:31And the individual is a victim of their urges and will continue to commit crimes, often silly crimes, and of no real substance in terms of gain for them.
43:45Tony's crimes fit the pattern of criminal brake failure.
43:49His wife knows that failing well.
43:51He just does so many things on impulse that he never stops to think about a thing.
43:58If it's what he wants to do, he does it. End of.
44:01And he won't stop to think of the consequences.
44:04Never mind. Never mind.
44:06Tony and his wife, married for 20 years, have spent just three of them together.
44:11She's stood by him and pays him regular visits along with the grandchildren.
44:15She's never understood why, with so much to lose, Tony took to crime.
44:24In fact, I'd say that I was a bit vulnerable, really, because at the times he's promised not to do it and still gone and done it.
44:31Even at the fault of losing the marriage, losing the children, we wasn't in a bad financial way. We've got a nice home. He really didn't need to do it.
44:44But you did it, so.
44:51Tony and Frank fit the criminal brain pattern revealed by new research.
44:55The rough and tumble of growing up, the inevitable accidents of youth, can compromise the brain.
45:01Another weight on the scales of disadvantage to add to the social or economic ones tilting the balance to crime.
45:08You need a combination of factors to become a criminal.
45:11It's a little like a poker game.
45:14It doesn't help to have a ten-jack-queen-king, you also need the ace.
45:19And every one of those is equally important, because if you don't have one, you're not going to have the flush,
45:24and you won't have the criminal behaviour, as an analogy.
45:27Get it out of ya!
45:29So are they both the victims of their brains, the prisoners of their biology?
45:33Are they guilty?
45:35One could argue that they are victims of their brain dysfunction, and don't have the same control that a normal person does.
45:48But if you say that the psychologists are saying that if it's a brain disorder, you're not guilty,
45:54I'd love to go along on that one.
45:56But that's the easy way out.
45:58I mean, I know what is right and what is wrong.
46:01The fact that I act before I think, is that an excuse?
46:07I'd love to think it was, but I don't think it'll be accepted.
46:10If we were to diagnose some career criminals as suffering from a disorder,
46:14doesn't this give a carte blanche towards excusing such behaviour?
46:18No, absolutely not.
46:20Even though they may be suffering from a disorder, we still need to institutionalise them,
46:24we need to protect society.
46:26Treatment in prison is virtually unknown.
46:30But what if Frank had been offered the help that Cody, Lauren and Danny had?
46:35Could he have avoided a lifetime of failure and disappointment?
46:38I think if I'd have been good at anything, if I could train properly, I think that would have been my life.
46:45If I'd have been able to box, I don't think I'd have took to crime.
46:48I think it's because I was a failure, then I took to crime, I was a failure to crime and all.
46:53And what about Tony? Would we recognise the danger signs in another young Tony today?
47:02When I look back now, my inability to sit still, or concentration, could be or may be one of the reasons I'm sat here now.
47:10If we could have spotted that, perhaps, but we're looking now and I'm 50 years of age, it's a bit late.
47:16We just want to see where the future goes from here.
47:18One prays and honestly and genuinely believes that this is it.
47:27But I said that last time and totally convinced myself last time that the last time was enough.
47:34You've got a funny face all the time.
47:35The temptations of freedom are a long way off.
47:38Tony has still got four years of his sentence to serve.
47:43I'll translate it.
47:44Oh, that's why I think it's so sad.
47:51He's such a nice, I know he's my brother and perhaps I'm a bit biased, but then he's such a nice guy to have wasted his life like this.
48:00It really is so sad.
48:01I'm not used to babies.
48:06Could what we know today have salvaged that wasted life and spared us all the misery and expense of Tony's criminality?
48:16Recognising the biological roots of crime seems to have worked for our American children, breaking the chains that bound them to a seemingly inevitable delinquent career.
48:25Lauren is growing up to be a normal little girl in a family that had the courage to recognise that she was ill and needed help.
48:36And what Brina taught me is that I could hate this disorder and love the child.
48:41And I fell in love with Lauren.
48:43I mean, she really was a beautiful child with an ugly disease.
48:50R-E-D.
48:52Cody, too, is showing signs that the treatment is beginning to work.
48:58Cody is very intelligent for his age and since we've been working with him I know that he's not going to go to prison.
49:07He's going to go to college and become a doctor, a lawyer.
49:13Not one thousandth of the cost of criminal justice has been spent on trying new methods like raising arousal levels with adult criminals.
49:22But at least we now know that biology need not set our destinies, unless we let it.
49:28We didn't really understand it, but we just saw the results of it, which were astonishing, amazing.
49:39I don't know if he would have lived without it.
49:43That's how strongly I feel about it.
49:45And I was so skeptical in the beginning that, thank God, I took a chance and he did it.
49:53I would have never known.
49:58Danny can now look forward to the rest of his life.
50:02Danny can now look forward to the rest of his life.
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