Reflection: "Scanning Psychopaths"

 The court should consider assigning a heavier sentence to the psychopaths.  The law is to enforce the order of the society. The sentence should be based on the seriousness of the crime and if the criminal has understood the wrongdoing in their behavior.  According to the article, the psychopathic people show lack of empathy. Lacking empathy makes the psychopaths have a higher tendency of committing serious crime because that will make them make them forget the law - not to hurt others. And that explains why 1/5 of the serious crimes are committed by the psychopaths. In short, psychopathic criminal should be given a heavier sentence because it's hard for them to understanding they are doing wrong, and heavier sentence might help them. Add to that, I think the court should not released the psychopathic criminal back to society again, and they should be permanently kept in some form of treatment institution. 
  Although a lot of people who commit serious crimes such as murders are psychopaths, it is still not appropriate to label all of them serial killer because not all of them will be one. From the article, the "psychopathness" is assessed by a tool called PCL-R in four different aspects: "interpersonal", "affective", "lifestyle" and "anti-social." Each experimenter is given a score out of 40. The higher the score, the higher the "psychopathness."  A criminal who has a sore of 35, claims that he would never be a serial killer. And he thinkst his high score is "a talent, not a sickness - [he] can make good strong decisions, and it's good to have some distance with people." Additionally, a experimenter mentioned in the article says that he agrees to do the experiment on empathy simply because he likes Meffert, the person who carries out the experiment, and he says "if they say the study can help people, it's good."
  Speaking of video games, which is very common among young people nowadays, might diminish the ability to feel empathetic towards others because the environment has a great impact on people's behavior and mindset.  Just like love, empathy is not inborn but acquired through learning, despite the fact that this learning has been done early in one's life. Babies don't appreciate their mothers and fathers' hard work and effort. They cry and only care about themselves. Afterwards, babies gradually understand their parents, and learn how to love and care for other people just like what their parents have done to them. When they fall down, their parents will go and help them get up and console them. When they are sick, their parents will take them to the hospital or stay at home to take care of them. Indeed, we learn to be empathetic and caring in the process like this from parental care(environment). Also, parents and teachers teach us the moral principles in life, what is good and what is wrong, which is also an example of how environment affects us. On the other, the violent video games, act as the opposite environment, they will definitely change the way players think and feel in someway, and empathy will be decreased.