James Gilligan

Murderers have often been horribly abused as children-with abuse so punishing that it threatened to destroy the sense of self.

"The sense of shame and humiliation [in the most violent criminals] is so intense that it threatens to wipe out their self-esteem and self-respect so totally that they experience the threat of the death of the self," says James Gilligan, HMS instructor in medicine.

Gilligan has recently published a book, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes , that argues that the solution to violent crime is not punishment but prevention.

Gilligan began studying prison populations over 20 years ago, mostly to earn extra money. To his surprise, he found the work to be intellectually challenging and moving. He became medical director of Bridgewater State Hospital and later served as clinical director of Prison Mental Health Services for Massachusetts. Gilligan is currently a supervisor at Cambridge Hospital.

Most of the inmates-and especially those who had committed the most brutal and atrocious crimes-had suffered extraordinary abuse in their childhoods. "I mean these men had suffered a degree of child abuse that was off the scale of anything I had ever heard of before," Gilligan says.

Many were the victims of attempted murder, often by their own parents. Many were survivors of families in which murder-of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters-had occurred. Almost all had been hideously punished, in some cases to the brink of losing their lives.

For example, one inmate, who had committed a brutal rape and murder of a young woman, came into Gilligan's office with scars on his wrists and his ankles. "I said 'What are those?' And he said 'that's where my mother used to shoot me.'" The inmate's brother, who was also a prisoner in the same jail, confirmed the story: Their mother, instead of spanking the boys when they misbehaved, would take out a pistol and shoot them.

Spiritual Death

Yet Gilligan believes that these abusive acts produce feelings of shame that are so intense that they can lead to a kind of death-the death of the "self." "The most violent men told me that they had 'died'-that their personalities had died, even though their bodies had survived, so that they felt like robots or zombies or vampires," Gilligan says. Virtually all of them said that they felt emotionally dead or numb. Most lacked a capacity for guilt or remorse.

This lack of guilt, coupled with an overabundance of shame, is what triggers many murderers to commit their acts, Gilligan believes. Many of the inmates were from poor families, with little access to education, wealth, social status and prestige. They did not possess skills that are socially rewarded or honored- skills that would bolster their sense of self-esteem.

Gilligan believes that punishment is not the answer to violence-and in fact it may be a large part of the problem. "Considering what we know about the childhoods of these prisoners, I don't know how we can avoid reaching the conclusion that punishment doesn't prevent violence-punishment stimulates violence," he says. "If punishment inhibited violence, these men would never have become violent in the first place-because they have been punished as severely as it is possible to punish a human being without killing them."

Gilligan does agree that people who have committed violent acts must be kept away from the public. "I don't believe in just letting people run free who are doing that. But I would draw a distinction between quarantining somebody versus punishing them," Gilligan says.

He believes the only lasting solution to the problem of violent crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place. "I'm asking what are the causes of violence so we can do a better job of preventing it."

--Misia Landau