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Originally Posted by Tietäjä
"Experts" of ackward calibre that work their way around to understanding just about everything. If we deduct it to a ridiculous extent, any issue one might have (killing his sister, eating his neighbour's dog, alcoholism) is just a symptom of bigger/other problems not caused by the person himself, so he's not really responsible for it, right?
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They are two separate issues I think. We need to understand why someone committed a crime so (if nothing else) we can try to avoid similar things happening again. That's not always easy but clearly certain developments will reduce crime in the long term.
However, all of this "understanding" issue is completely separate from the idea whether someone should be held responsible for their crimes. If someone kills ten people, and we find out they had some sort of mental defect which contributed to their behaviour, it's not like we would set the person free, would we? That line of reasoning would mean the only people who were put in prison would be people who committed crimes for no reason.