Changing psychopaths : normal deterrents don't work

A (welcome) exception, perhaps, to Betteridge's Law. I like the approach of thinking of chronically violent offenders (though perhaps not the very worst ones, who the article points out may be unreachable) as having a treatable condition, rather than just trying to punish them for the sake of it. It also suggests that punishment is commonly used not merely for retribution but because in most "normal" people, it really does work. In psychopaths and others, however, it does not.

Psychopaths, though, seem relatively unfazed by punishment, which makes them very difficult to manage. “Our experiments suggest that the key thing that characterises psychopathy is not being able to use punishment information to shape your behaviour,” Blackwood says. “Our study suggests it’s not just that psychopaths are hypo-responsive to punishment, but they are processing it in quite a different way.” He believes this could have important implications for rehabilitation, and that programmes could be tailored for these “separable groups”.

Studies have suggested that such individuals struggle to read facial expressions and show other impairments in “mentalisation”: their capacity to understand both their own, and other people’s actions in terms of their thoughts, feelings, wishes, beliefs and desires. Not only could this cause them to misinterpret actions as more threatening than they are; it could also make it harder for them to regulate these emotions, because they struggle to understand their own feelings.

Slater previously measured the effect of a white person inhabiting a virtual black body and found that it reduced implicit racial bias – an unconscious, often unintentional form of racism. This reduction remained when participants were tested a week later. “It doesn't prove that the effect would hold for gender violence, but it at least points in that direction,” Slater says.

While emotionally reactive children tend to respond well to firm boundaries, unemotional children are less responsive. That’s why interventions could help: recent research suggests that they may be more susceptible to interventions that focus on reinforcing positive behaviour, rather than punishing bad behaviour.

“If you can build that part of the brain that wants the sorts of rewards you get from pleasing other people, rather than just getting what you want, then you’ve probably got a better chance of success,” says Graham Music, a consultant child and adult psychotherapist who works with Blumenthal at the Portman Clinic. Such children also show deficits in the ability to read others’ emotional states, but Australian research suggests that this skill may be improved by directing them to look at the eyes of others, which may boost empathy and emotional bonding.

That’s why early intervention is key: the brain is more malleable during childhood. This has its own challenges, as these children aren’t necessarily the ones who pass through a child psychologist’s door. “The kids that often get referred are the ones who are reacting, throwing things, kicking people, shouting, getting into fights,” says Music. Callous unemotional children, on the other hand, are sometimes referred to as ‘happy aggressives’ because they seem unfazed by violence.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180518-can-you-ever-change-a-violent-psychopaths-mind