Incarceration nation
Your placement of the compelling article about Mr. Stevenson right after the article "Incarceration Nation" in the October Monitor was obviously not an accident. And yet, so often it seems we psychologists (who should know better) do not thoroughly appreciate his statement about the need for the word ‘trauma' to be applied more frequently to children who are exposed repeatedly to acts of violence, and who then, not surprisingly, behave violently. To quote Mr. Stevenson, "One of the very hardest things for me to see is children who are clearly traumatized, so clearly disrupted by a level of trauma and violence that it makes it impossible for them to conform to the behavioral expectations of institutions that refuse to see that disability." He goes on to say that when they behave violently, we then call them violent offenders, as if they were the aberration.
Isn't it interesting that nations who have laws against the corporal punishment of children, such as Germany, Sweden and Austria, have some of the lowest rates of incarceration, per your chart in the Incarceration Nation article.
Sally Sexton, PsyD
Loveland, Colorado
