When can you 'rehabilitate' a person, and when do you just c

[fourpawsonthefloor]

I must be in a debatey mood today.

This is something that has been on my mind for years though - and this article (warning - graphic) just brings it up again, particularily this last line:

Their attorney, Timothy Owens, said he had hoped his clients’ sentencing would have focused more on rehabilitation than incarceration.

I honestly have to puzzle at that comment. Rehabilitate? To me these kids, regardless of what they may or may not have already gone through in thier lives, are vicious people. Its not the same as a crime of passion to me - for example stabbing someone in a gang war. A gang member, I could see being rehabilitated. Kids who are capable of this level of torture and planning and then using it to futher torment other kids? I can't see ever being able to make them 'better'.

The other thing that people do not often take into account when dealing with cases of animal abuse such as this is that the animals are often simply a stepping stone. Often, it is only a matter of time before they 'work up' to doing this to other people.

So why let them have that chance?

To me, this is why more stern animal protection laws need to be in place. This is not acceptable. They should have gotten that time simply on the animal cruelty charge, and then had the other charges against them add additional time. It's ridiculous.

Paws

[JSherlock]

I agree, Paws. People who visciously torture animals should be locked away - but also rehabilitated so that they know that that is a terrible thing to have done!

I wish there were more strict animal cruelty laws.

And as for being a stepping stone - that is always brought up in the past history of serial killers and/or people who kill in a horrific way in all my books on the subject. I saw they should definitely not be allowed to progress that far.

[The Drastic Spastic]

That poor puppy.

Originally posted by JSherlock
I agree, Paws. People who visciously torture animals should be locked away - but also rehabilitated so that they know that that is a terrible thing to have done!

They already know it's terrible. They just don't care. I have yet to find a way to make people care about anything. (And boy have I looked.) The closest option is to make an appeal to self-interest, but in this case... they'll just be careful not to get caught next time. It's a common saying that if you try to rehabilitate a psychopath, you just get an educated psychopath. They seem "better" but they're just more careful.

In this case, I would guess that at least one of them is beyond rehabilitation. The other one... maybe not. He's definitely fucked up, but just get him away from the bad influence and he might be fixable.

Some people are just born bad.

[fourpawsonthefloor]

Yep...that's the way I see it too. Call them dark souls, or just bad people, or whatever you will...there is no 'fixing' them.

I like this explination of 'dark souls'. Ones that have turned from the light, and take pleasure in stealing the light from others. They only care about how they are reflected as in the eyes of others - they fake emotion to gain power and control over others. If you do not fall under their influence, they have no interest in you.

That is how I see these people. I do not believe that there is anything that we can do to get them to 'see the light'. They have to want that. And they simply don't.

Paws

[Saint Kurt]

To me aninmal cruelty is the next step towards cruelty to this level to people. Why do we let animals who are damaged by people accused of cruelty continue on at all - especially when we know that know when it will be worse when people go from abuser to serial abuser ( because an animal does't just take up understand that the factor that people may people hit a pet once? It is always seminals who take on words to the worse criminal lines... ) We have signs at the vet school pointing out that a) that an user of animals is probably an abuser of people and b) that signs of child/spouse/animal might me signs of abuse of another - that's why vets are mandatory reporters of animal, child, and elder abuse - it's felt that vets might see signs of this earlier.

I agree with this. In our opthomolgogy with 8 different puppies so that 7 of of us were sharing a very shy puppy as our "demo dog" and he didn't act like a puppy - he was a good little guy but frightened, cowed, wouldn't walk on a leash... That's the way the world works unfortunately. He spent for him an hour - that's for him a frightened hour (even though we weren't hurting him) and then it took 5 minutes for me to play with him out in the snow before he finally figured out what a puppy was supposed to act like - not all cowed and afraid but payful and happy. (It was so cute watching him finally figure out that snow was fun!)

He was a great little guy - it was great showing him what it was it fun was vs. what scary was. Even though we did some "scary" did some opthamalogy stuff on him, we still made sure he had some fun and did a little bit of "real fun" puppy playing in the snow. So he was a good little guy even with his his many blocks to "normal". (It was cool to see him go from afraid in the corner to wanting to play with the other puppies and rolling in the snow. )

This little puppy is going to make a good dog for someone some day. He was a great little guy. It was great to see him wake up and want to play in the snow rather than be afraid than how he was when he started - so scared that I had to carry him. He may have had a lot have scarey stuff to get over - but he was a great little guy in the end. I hope group #2, after we were done learning the in's and out's of the opthamology exam and how you do it, who had to to deal with puppy number #1 - I hope we learned some opthamology and at the same time we taught little puppy #1 that the build that the world isn't such a very scary place when you're brave and you pee in the snow. - that even if stuff is weird you can still go outside and and it's okay to play and have fun....

Any way it was a nice lab with a puppy that needed some love - we had a good time and learned a lot. And if any one wants to adopt a fuzzy little black puppy who is mega-cute: that's an option too.

-e

[JSherlock]

Originally posted by fourpawsonthefloor
Yep...that's the way I see it too. Call them dark souls, or just bad people, or whatever you will...there is no 'fixing' them.

I like this explination of 'dark souls'. Ones that have turned from the light, and take pleasure in stealing the light from others. They only care about how they are reflected as in the eyes of others - they fake emotion to gain power and control over others. If you do not fall under their influence, they have no interest in you.

That is how I see these people. I do not believe that there is anything that we can do to get them to 'see the light'. They have to want that. And they simply don't.

Paws

That is the perfect description!