Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 16:4 (Fall 1973)
Article: Crime, Individual Culpability And Punishment
Author: G. Roy Sumpter

JETS 16:4 (Fall 1973) p. 223

Crime, Individual Culpability And Punishment

G. Roy Sumpter

Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio 44503

Under the mental illness model of today, the criminal is not held responsible for his behavior, in fact, society is generally censured instead of the criminal. Many blamed Dallas rather than Oswald for President John F. Kennedy’s death. When Charles Whitman, from a tower in Texas, “picked off” innocent passers by with a rifle, it was said that society must be held responsible for the tragedy. When a Jordanian immigrant assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, television was filled with indictments of the American public. And most recently when a Black ex-serviceman shot and killed from a roof-top of a New Orleans’ motel once again it was society that was faulted.

Contemporary theories of human behavior have been fashioned after the deterministic model of classical physics in that human behavior is considered the product of antecedent events. Each psychological event is viewed as fully determined by its antecedent, in the same manner as physical events are by theirs. Under this view, it is entirely natural for a criminal to act as he does, since his criminality is a natural product of prior events. Punishment becomes inappropriate, for it only has justification when the person punished is capable of a meaningful choice of behavior.

Human behavior that deviates substantially from what is commonly expected is considered “abnormal.” In an effort to explain such abnormal behavior, behavioral scientists have been guided by a medical model of behavioral pathology. Behavioral maladjustments have been looked upon as analagous to a kind of organic disease. Just as physical illness is attributed to alien factors that attack the healthy organism, so human misconduct has been viewed as a kind of “mental” illness which stems from a variety of environmental factors that adversely affect the individual’s adjustments to life.

The medical analogy has been carried even further to the point where persons who behave in ways defined as abnormal are considered “sick” and are “treated” in clinics and hospitals in much the same fashion as people suffering from physical (organic) illnesses. Since “sick” people are generally considered helpless victims of their illness, by analogy social deviants are also considered as hapless victims of adverse environmental conditions and should be protected rather than persecuted. Obviously, there is no room for value judgments about their socially unacceptable behavior, since they are really not personally responsible for their condi-

JETS 16:4 (Fall 1973) p. 224

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