[Criminologist Dr. Lonnie] Athens emphasizes and reemphasizes that violentization is a social process, requiring interaction with others, and that as such it changes over time. Psychological processes are obviously involved in the conversion of a brutalized novice into a dangerous violent criminal, but these do not harden into enduring psychological traits: "Psychologists have been caught up for over a half a century in a rather vain quest to discover the psychological traits which distinguish violent and nascent violent criminals from ordinary people. This quest has been stymied in no small part because the psychological traits, or more precisely, psychological processes, which violent criminals manifest do not remain constant, but change as they undergo new social experiences over the course of their violence development."
Richard Rhodes, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist, 1999
Richard Rhodes, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist, 1999
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