Table Of ContentALSO BY DR. STANTON E. SAMENOW
The Myth of the “Out of Character” Crime
Straight Talk About Criminals
Before It’s Too Late
In the Best Interest of the Child
WITH SAMUEL YOCHELSON, MD
The Criminal Personality: A Profile for Change
The Criminal Personality: The Change Process
The Criminal Personality: The Drug User
Copyright © 1984, 2004, 2014 by Stanton E. Samenow All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a
division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
www.crownpublishing.com
Broadway Books and its logo, B\D\W\Y, are trademarks of Random House LLC.
Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Crown, an
imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Samenow, Stanton E., 1941–
Inside the criminal mind / Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D. — Revised and updated edition, First
paperback edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Criminal psychology. 2. Juvenile delinquents—Psychology. 3. Juvenile delinquents—
Rehabilitation—United States. 4. Criminals—Rehabilitation—United States. I. Title.
HV6080.S22 2014
364.301’9—dc23 2014022399
ISBN 978-0-8041-3990-8
eBook ISBN 978-0-80413991-5
Cover design: FORT
v3.1
In memory of Dr. Samuel Yochelson,
who taught and inspired me so many years ago
and
In memory of my parents,
Charles and Sylvia Samenow
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface to the 2014 Edition
Prologue: Removing a Barrier to Understanding the Criminal Mind
1. The Failure to Identify Causes of Crime
2. Parents Don’t Turn Children into Criminals: The Child Rejects the Parents
3. Peer Pressure: No Excuse for Crime
4. “To Hell with School”
5. Work and the Criminal
6. “Life Is a One-Way Street—My Way”: Thinking Errors and the Criminal Personality
7. Sex for Conquest and a Buildup of the Self
8. Simmering Anger Flaring into Rage
9. Criminality Is Primary, Drugs Secondary
10. The Criminal as Terrorist
11. “Decent People”
12. Mental Illness, or a Criminal Personality?
13. Locked Up
14. “Rehabilitation” Revisited
15. To Change a Criminal
16. “Habilitation” or More Crime?
Notes
I am grateful to the following for reading the manuscript and making
many thoughtful suggestions: Bryan T. Hodges, Senior Judge, State of
Oregon; Terry Leap, Lawson Professor of Business, University of
Tennessee, Knoxville; Joseph C. Lynch, retired attorney; and Joram
Piatigorsky, PhD.
I also thank my wife, Dorothy K. Samenow, who, during forty-three
years of marriage, has unequivocally supported me in everything that I
undertake, while remaining in an ever-cheerful mood.
I also am deeply appreciative of Domenica Alioto, my editor, who has
been keenly interested in this book, made marvelous suggestions in a
positive fashion, and, overall, was a dream to work with throughout the
entire publication process.
I was twenty-eight years old, two years out of graduate school, when,
during January 1970, I joined Dr. Samuel Yochelson to work as a clinical
research psychologist in his Program for the Investigation of Criminal
Behavior at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Little did I
realize that I had embarked on a career path I would follow well into my
seventies. Dr. Yochelson launched in 1961 what remains the longest in-
depth research treatment program of offenders conducted in North
America. When he died on November 12, 1976, I became heir to his
groundbreaking work and have continued evaluating and working with
offenders, from petty thieves to spree killers.
For decades, the prevailing conventional wisdom about criminality has
regarded the offender as a victim of forces over which he has little or no
control. Virtually everything imaginable has been identified as a cause of
criminal behavior, including poverty, bad parenting, peer pressure,
violence in the media, and various types of mental illness. Dr. Yochelson
and I subscribed to this premise when we began our work. From 1961 to
1978, we spent thousands of hours interviewing offenders and others
who knew them well. Contrary to what we initially believed, we learned
that these individuals were not haplessly molded by their environment.
None of the widely accepted causes of crime withstood scrutiny. In
addition, the offenders with whom we were working exploited our
search for causes to offer even more excuses for their crimes. Referring
to many months of psychiatric treatment, one man said to Dr. Yochelson
in a moment of rare candor, “Doctor, if I didn’t have enough excuses for
crime before psychiatry, I now have more than enough after all these
years.” Once we extricated ourselves from the miasma of searching for
“causes” of criminal behavior, we were able to develop a detailed
understanding of how criminals think in all aspects of life, and to
develop a process to help some of them change. Behavior is a product of
thinking, and so it is incumbent upon anyone formulating policy or
working with offenders to understand how criminals think.
After our work at St. Elizabeths Hospital was featured during a
segment of CBS News’s 60 Minutes on February 17, 1977, I began
receiving invitations to speak to professional groups in corrections,
mental health, social work, substance abuse counseling, law
enforcement, and the judiciary. Responses from my audiences included
personal attacks (I was even denounced as dangerous) because I
challenged the almost sacred theories about what causes criminal
behavior and, further, asserted that a “criminal personality” does, in
fact, exist. There seemed to be a difference of opinion between armchair
theorists with little or no face-to-face contact with criminals and those
who interacted daily with offenders. The latter group—correctional
officers, counselors, law enforcement officials, and psychologists—
embraced our work because it was in line with what they encountered
every day on the job, and because it provided insights that helped them
do their work more effectively.
The first edition of Inside the Criminal Mind was published in 1984, and
a second edition in 2004. Now, a decade later, it is time to bring this
work up to date. In this edition, you will come to understand in detail
the thought processes and tactics common to offenders, regardless of
their background or the crimes for which they are arrested.
Human nature does not change, and thus the criminal mind that I
described in earlier editions of this book has not changed. However, a
constantly changing society provides new avenues for the criminal mind
to express itself. For example, bullying is not new, but cyberbullying is,
and offers criminally inclined adolescents and adults a vast new arena in
which to inflict great suffering.
The Internet provides a speedy and efficient means to conduct
research, shop, plan travel, and communicate with others. Technology
has opened this same world to criminals so they can conduct their
“research” and implement their schemes. Using the Internet, criminals
gain immediate access to do what they have always done—deceive,
defraud, steal, and intimidate. Cybercrime has become an increasing
menace to individuals, businesses, and governments. Thousands of miles
from their victims and out of the reach of law enforcement authorities,
criminals can hack into government computer systems, steal personal
information, commit identity theft, and destroy a company’s valuable
software or business records.
The 2004 edition of Inside the Criminal Mind included a chapter on the
criminal’s immersion in the drug world. This edition expands that
discussion to include the alarming abuse of prescription drugs, and the
manufacture and use of new synthetic drugs that add to an already
enormous social problem. Drug manufacturing, distribution, and use
provide the criminal intrigue, excitement, and financial gain.
In line with offering more detailed information about the criminal’s
patterns of thought and action (and less about alleged causes of criminal
behavior), I devote a chapter to two cases in which two young men from
very different backgrounds commit homicides. You will see that the
thinking processes were extremely similar in the young man who came
from a wealthy family and the youth who grew up in a chaotic inner-city
home. Throughout this book, you will see a similarity in thinking
patterns between white-collar criminals who commit multimilliondollar
crimes and street thugs who threaten an elderly person at knife point in
order to steal twenty dollars.
I have added a chapter on sex in the life of the criminal. The pursuit of
sex and the commission of sex offenses have little to do with sexual
fulfillment. Rather, through sexual activity the criminal exercises power,
nurtures his ego, and confirms his perception that he is irresistible. This
concept is important to understanding the mentality of clergymen,
coaches, counselors, and educators who manipulate others to gain their
trust and then exploit their positions to sexually prey upon children.
The criminal simmers with anger because people do not satisfy his
expectations. They fail to confirm his perception of himself as powerful,
unique, and superior. What most of us find to be routine annoyances, the
criminal personalizes as threats to his entire self-image. A chapter is
devoted to discussing anger that, in a criminal, is like a cancer,
metastasizing so that anyone or anything in his path can become a
target.
