What Goes On In a Criminal Mind

It’s no surprise that we view criminals as lawbreakers, culprits and as someone who intend to hurt someone on purpose. But do they? What if they are mentally ill? If they are not in right state of mind? Many people believe that criminals should be in jail and of course, everyone have the right to say so. What’s alarming is that the so called “criminals” can be one of our friends, relatives or even our family. No one can really predict what a human body and its mind can do.

For decades, researchers have studied as well as interviewed criminals to find out how and why they break the law. According to the American Criminal Justice system, there are 2.3 million people locked up in prison. It’s absurd to think that there are probably more who aren’t caught by the police yet. There are countless of cases each year that deals with a criminal.

In one recent study, scientists examined 21 people with antisocial personality disorder. It’s a condition that characterizes many convicted criminals. Those with the disorder “typically have no regard for right and wrong. They may often violate the law and the rights of others," stated by the Mayo Clinic. Brain scans of the antisocial people, compared with a control group of individuals without any mental disorders, showed on average an 18-percent reduction in the volume of the brain's middle frontal gyrus, and a 9 percent reduction in the volume of the orbital frontal gyrus – two sections in the brain's frontal lobe. Another brain study, published in the September 2009 Archives of General Psychiatry, compared 27 psychopaths people with severe antisocial personality disorder to 32 non-psychopaths. In the psychopaths, the researchers observed deformations in another part of the brain called the amygdala, with the psychopaths showing a thinning of the outer layer of that region called the cortex and on average, an 18-percent volume reduction in this part of brain.

Want to know a few interesting facts about the brain of a criminal? One fact would be that a male brain has a killer gene. About 90% of killers in the United States are male compared to 9% of females. They have a form of a MAO-A gene often known as the warrior gene. Most criminals put on the “mask of sanity.” Based on researchers, It means they act or play dumb by using words such as “uhs, ums, because, so that.” It allows time for the person to gather thoughts or to simply create a lie. Psychologists then call these speech patterns as putting on a sanity mask. Nature and nurture are important to a person. The environment and childhood of a person can trigger many different personalities especially at a young age. It will develop to a point where if a child experience a traumatic event does not indicate that they have a potential to hurt, it just increases their vulnerability.