Ideas - Reith Lectures #4: Can we change violent minds?

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

In her final 2024 BBC Reith Lecture, forensic psychiatrist Gwen Adshead assesses how we deal with violent offenders, and assesses the effectiveness and impact of therapeutic interventions with offenders in prisons. *The Reith Lectures originally aired on BBC Radio 4.

My name is John Cullen and I want to tell you a story. It's a story about a scandal, broken relationships, gossip, rumors, money, corporate rivalry and curling. It's the story of Broomgate. How a single broom, yes, a broom, turned friends into foes and almost killed the 500 year old sport of curling. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. This is a CBC podcast. If you are wishing harm to someone right now because they hurt you, you know what it is to be an offender.

Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Some people will argue that violence perpetrators deserve to be isolated, belittled and shamed because of what they have done. But it doesn't work. Gwen Adzett is a forensic psychiatrist with the UK's National Health Service. She works with criminals to try to understand what drives violent behaviour. In fact, the wish to hurt a prisoner is a mirror of the mind of the violence perpetrator.

She is the author of the book, The Devil You Know, Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion, and she is delivering this year's BBC Reith lectures. The Reiths are an annual lecture series examining the critical issues of our time. This year's what drives violence in society and the subject of her fourth and final talk can we change violent minds? I suggest that most of us would want a chance to make good if we can to be shown mercy even if we don't deserve it. The talk comes from Bergen in Norway, a country with a unique approach to violent crime. Here is Gwen Adzett introduced by the BBC's Anita Onand.

Hello and welcome. This is the fourth and final Wreath Lecture by the forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Gwen Adzhead, and her series about violence. We've come to Bergen, lying on the west coast of Norway. And let me tell you, it is a really very beautiful place, surrounded by water and blue-green peaks. In fact, locals call this

the city between the seven mountains. Bergen is a major port, it's famous for its fishing, it is notoriously wet although I haven't seen any sign of it it's been absolutely gorgeous for us. We're here at the Literaturhuset or Literature House, it's a place where people can come together and talk and exchange ideas about books and writers. Now compared to many countries Norway has had a long and distinctive approach to crime and punishment, especially the way it manages violent offenders. Rehabilitation takes priority over incarceration here and this has had broad political and public

support. The Norwegian model is often cited as the gold standard. However recently social change is posing a challenge to that historic approach. Now we've already talked about acts of violence in this series. Today our lecturer is going to consider the violent mind itself. Just how do we change it? Can we change it? She has spent nearly 40 years working in prisons and psychiatric hospitals talking to the perpetrators of violence. So she says that we can better understand what drives destructive impulses. Please will you join me in welcoming Dr. Gwen Adzard. In this lecture, my question is whether people who have been violent to others can really change their minds for the better.

In thinking about this question, I was reminded of a case history about a 55-year-old woman. Let's call her Mrs. Jenkins. Mrs. Jenkins told her family that she was no longer interested in housework. This change of behavior and attitude caused her family concern because in the past Mrs. Jenkins had held traditional views about the roles of a mother and wife and had been hugely house proud. Therefore, to her family, her explanation that she had just had enough of housework was not reassuring. They thought there might be something seriously wrong with her. Plus, this new behaviour was causing a problem for her husband in terms of who was going

to do the housework instead. The GP took the family's concerns seriously and referred Mrs. Jenkins to a neurologist who sent her off for a brain scan. This scan revealed that Mrs. Jenkins had a huge meningioma, a benign brain tumour, in her frontal cortex. The presence of this tumour was thought to explain Mrs. Jenkins' aberrant thoughts about not doing housework, and neurosurgery successfully removed the meningioma. It is not recorded what her husband felt when Mrs Jenkins recovered from her brain surgery and continued to insist that she was no longer interested in carrying out housework.

We can learn two things from this story. First, that if women change their minds about housework, not even brain surgery will change it back. But more seriously, we also learn that humans can and do change their minds about issues that are important to them. Mrs. Jenkin's change of mind may have been relatively trivial, but in this lecture I want to explore whether and how violence perpetrators can change their minds for good about matters that are deadly serious.

I'm going to discuss some research on this subject and why we, the public, might also need to change our minds about offender rehabilitation. The problem of changing violent minds is one that is important to all of us, if only financially. The UK spent £6.4 billion, that's around $8 billion, on the Prisoner's State for the year ending 2023, and an increase is planned. The costs of incarcerating people as a form of risk management are getting bigger, as judges impose longer sentences. The average cost of detention in prison is now £51,000 or US$64,000 per prisoner per year. But economic evaluations suggest that increasing prison terms is not good value for money. Even if there is a deterrent effect,

it is modest at best, and the value outweighed by the huge costs of incarceration. The research on what helps violence perpetrators change their minds for the better is important to me personally, because my role in the hospital where I work is a small part of a much bigger national and international effort to reduce the risk of people reoffending. As a therapist and someone who has sought therapy,

I know that most people who come to therapy are seeking a change of mind, which they hope will change their lives and, crucially, the ways they relate to others. In that sense, I am like those violence perpetrators in hoping that over time therapy will help us change our minds for good. My experience is that most violence perpetrators who come for therapy are hoping that they can let go of their old ways of thinking and can lead a new life as part of a community. Sadly, little media attention is paid to the provision of interventions for offenders,

nor the outcomes which are generally positive, especially for violence perpetrators. This lack of attention causes a risky information bias because it leads to unwarranted pessimism about people's potential for change, and presents an oversimplified view about an issue that is important to us as citizens and taxpayers. So what do we know about studies of prison interventions for violence perpetrators? Some recently published review papers find some grounds for optimism about the efficacy of such programmes. It looks like offering any kind of therapeutic intervention to offenders has a positive effect on reducing the risk of recidivism, and one study from last year

suggests that the effect is particularly strong for young offenders who are convicted of serious violence. Skills training and restorative justice are more effective than interventions that involve surveillance, control, deterrence and discipline. In fact, programs that emphasize punishment and control may actually increase the risk of reoffending on release. One major review by colleagues in Oxford was cautious about the benefits of therapies in prison, pointing out that many studies are too small to make good quality inferences. They also pointed out that these need to be backed up with other programmes that are known to reduce risk of reoffending, such as housing, education, employment

and financial support. But even this most cautious of studies found that one particular kind of intervention was associated with recidivism reduction, namely prison therapeutic communities. These programs have been around for over half a century and are available in prisons in many countries including here in Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and England. In this series we visited HMP Grendon and spoke to prisoners about their experience. They reported how coming to a prison like Grendon gave them a chance to look hard at themselves and their lives. Prisoners used their relationships with each other and professionals to understand how they

came to lead a violent life and explore what they need to do to stay safe in future and to make amends where they can. Not only do they seem to be effective in terms of risk reduction, they are described as one of the few cost-effective mental health interventions for offenders. Changing your mind means being ready to be uncertain about what you believe and know, and to take a chance on having a new thought, which may also be painful. Prisoners know that changing for the good means taking responsibility for what goes on in your mind as well as what

you have done and how you might have deluded yourself. As one prisoner said to me recently, when you're in here you have to look at the truth about yourself and the truth hurts. I'm thinking now of Luke, a man who killed when he was high on drugs. He was probably mentally ill at the time as well. He found participating in group therapy for people who had killed excruciating to start with, saying, I felt so exposed. He ran away after the first session and told me he wouldn't consider going back, but a year

or so later he has found the courage to rejoin. Over the four years I have known him, I have seen his mind change in the way he relates to others, from the silent paranoid man who glowered at anyone who passed him to becoming a warm man who supports others and who values the trust he feels able to place in them. Articulating how bitterly he regrets his offence has expanded his awareness of his human connections, his victim and the family of his victim, as well as his own family from whom he was estranged. Of course, some people will argue that violence perpetrators deserve to be isolated, belittled and shamed because of what they have done, and will be sceptical about the value of rehabilitation programs. rehabilitation programs. I urge those who feel that way to look at the work of Homeboy Industries, which is the largest gang rehabilitation program in the world.

Working in southern Los Angeles since 1988, it offers hope to thousands of men and women coming out of prison having served time for serious violence. The homeboy vision is that radical acceptance and compassion are the most effective ways to help people rediscover their capacity for goodness and reduce their risk of violence. This attitude of kinship, not exclusion, is supported by a variety of social enterprises, including employment opportunities, help with housing and education, and especially help with mental health and addiction. The success of the Homeboy approach is consistent with what the research says, that the risk of people re-offending generally decreases when they feel socially connected and valued and if offered a chance to contribute like other people. This is because

despair and hopelessness increases the risk of violence rather than decreasing it. The founder of Homeboy Industries reckons that all the young people he sees who join gangs do so because they are suicidal. This is why the World Health Organization has emphasized preventing childhood trauma and improving young people's mental health as a way of decreasing violence. Conversely, denigrating and shaming offenders is not only ineffective psychologically, it may increase violence risk in future by setting the emotions of anger and despair like concrete in the minds of prisoners.

These bad outcomes are especially obvious in young men incarcerated at an early age, and some US research suggests that increasing the dose of incarceration decreases the chance of positive outcomes. It may be argued that it is natural for victims of violence to feel vengeful, and that justice for victims involves making sure that perpetrators have a horrible time in prison. I understand those arguments, and I'm familiar with vengeful and angry feelings. They are not alien to me in any way. But what I think is striking is that such feelings are not universal or inevitable.

Over the last three decades, a different kind of justice has been tried, restorative justice, which brings victims and perpetrators together and which has been shown to be beneficial for both parties and to reduce reoffending. It is a deep and delicate process involving both victims and perpetrators in a dialogue of dignity and tragedy. Although neither party is required to give apology or forgiveness, it happens more frequently. The UK Restorative Justice Council found that 90% of victims receive an apology from the perpetrator. Compare this to the usual criminal justice process where only 19% of perpetrators offer an apology. I have seen firsthand how complex and painful a restorative justice process can be. I

remember Kenny who killed his mother when he was mentally unwell. As he recovered he became highly suicidal but he made good use of the homicide group by exploring his feelings of guilt, shame and deep, deep remorse. He also brought to the group the anxiety he felt when his father wrote to him expressing a wish to meet. This meeting took months to prepare for and I think everyone was anxious about how it would go and from what we heard the meeting was very hard for both Kenny and his father. Their speech together was halting and the pain between them was palpable.

It could hardly be otherwise but Kenny was able to tell his father that he was sorry, and how he knew that alone could not make up for his loss. And Kenny could listen to his father's story, and especially his father's confusion about both loving and hating his son in equal measure. It was not a Hollywood ideal of tears, embraces and forgiveness, but rather the beginning of a conversation which I imagine is still ongoing. So prison, therapeutic communities and restorative justice are examples of programmes that can help individual offenders change their minds for good. I want now to think about the change of mind we might need to make as a society.

What we might need to think about as communities of citizens who contribute a lot of money to offender management and have a big stake in making it work. Let's start big with national happiness. Each year there is an international analysis of which countries of the world are happiest. This year Finland wins the number one spot but Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and wait for it yes Norway are all in the top ten. Out of interest, I checked the imprisonment rates for these countries and found that they were all well below the European average, let alone the international average.

I wonder if there's a link between national happiness and less imprisonment of offenders, less emphasis on lengthy incarceration and more rehabilitation. Intriguingly, these countries also have lower recidivism rates despite not sending people to prison so much. If you're wondering, the UK was at number 20, so not bad, but I wonder if we could do better. Another change we could make is by enhancing the training of our prison officers. A recent review of what makes prison programs really effective in reducing reoffending is having trained prison staff run the programs, not just

specialist psychological professionals. His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service states clearly that offender rehabilitation is part of its mission, but at present only a fraction of our prison officers get any training in mental health, or on how imprisonment might affect people who have experienced lots of childhood trauma, or even the best ways of managing prisoner anger and distress. Given the known levels of mental disorder in prisoners, not training prison staff to help them must put those staff at a disadvantage and may increase their anxiety. A recent study of women prisoners suggests that a lack of training might

explain why a few prison officers act in abusive ways towards vulnerable inmates. Compare the UK situation with that of Norway, whose correctional department also states that offender rehabilitation is a priority. To become a correctional officer, not a guard, in a Norwegian prison, you must complete two years of academic study, then do a training year in a prison, after which you can go on to complete a university degree in correctional studies.

The starting pay is actually less than in the UK, but the rate of dropout is also less, because Norwegian prison officers see the value of staying in their roles to build relationships with prisoners and develop greater skills in rehabilitation of offenders. Helping prisoners succeed on release is seen as vocational in terms of helping people become better citizens and also an investment in making sure that their societies are safer for everyone. In Norway, offenders are punished by losing their liberty. This is the only punishment.

Imprisonment does not lead to loss of ordinary human and citizen rights, and inflicting further suffering on prisoners is seen as ethically and legally unjustifiable. Contrast this attitude with the one we have in the UK where prisoners are not seen as citizens and where making them suffer in prison is seen as justice. We all understand that revenge is a powerful human emotion but there is little evidence that it facilitates justice. We only have to look at the current wars across the world to see how inflicting revenge on those who hurt us leads to more violence, not less. Treating prisoners badly may superficially

look like solace to a grieving, rageful survivor or family of a victim, but it doesn't work. In fact, the wish to hurt a prisoner is a mirror of the mind of the violence perpetrator. If you are wishing harm to someone right now because they hurt you, you know what it is to be an offender. That hatred, rage and wish to hurt leads to further suffering and hopelessness and the loss of happiness. I know this because I see it in the men and women I work with, whose violence in a waste of rage leads to loss of all that makes life happy. I also know that we urgently need more research to identify those people who can't be rehabilitated and will never be safe enough to release because they will be our biggest cost. And because human hearts and minds are unpredictable,

And because human hearts and minds are unpredictable, sometimes people we think have changed their minds for good may re-offend. But that kind of catastrophe is rare. The cost-benefit analysis is clear that we can no longer afford to create huge populations of people whose experience in prison shames, denigrates and belittles them, and then spend billions locking them up because we fear them. Instead, we could try having faith in the published evidence that violence perpetrators can change for good. We also need to have a bit more faith in ourselves, that we could let our vengefulness go

and find other ways to transform our grief and pain. For me, this is why it is vital that we offer much more long-term care and support for victims of violence. Living with feelings of grievance, resentment, murderous rage and vengefulness is grim, and it can poison people's lives and minds in ways that hurt themselves and others. You're listening to the Wreath Lectures, the annual flagship lecture series from the BBC.

Brief Lectures, the annual flagship lecture series from the BBC. Gwen Adset is a forensic psychiatrist with the UK's National Health Service and author of the book The Devil You Know, Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion. Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast, heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America, on SiriusXM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca. Find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news.

So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get This year's Wreath lectures focus on violence and what drives people to cause harm to others. In this talk, Gwen Adzett, Forensic Psychiatrist with the NHS in the UK, asks the question, can we change violent minds?

The talk comes from Norway, a country where the focus of incarceration isn't punishment, but rehabilitation. From Bergen, Norway, here is the second part of the talk, followed by a Q&A hosted by the BBC's Anita Anand. I want to end by reminding you of the experience of Jacob Dunn, who told his story in our first program.

He killed a young man with a single punch when he was 19. Jacob is clear that his years in prison did not change his mind for good at all. In fact, when he left, he still justified what he had done. He is also clear that it was his participation in a restorative justice program that enabled him to re-evaluate who he was and the kind of person he wanted to be in the future. He now offers time and support to young men like himself who might be at risk of violence. He has changed his mind for good and the good of others.

There is so much more that could be said, but we really do know what we need to do to change violent minds. We know that we need to identify vulnerable young people early and support them with family distress and better ways of managing anger and despair so that they do not turn to addiction nor the industry that supports it. If they are imprisoned, we need to ensure that all violence perpetrators get access to programs that have been shown to be effective. And we need to think about sentencing in terms of risk management rather than revenge. The evidence tells us that a range of interventions can make a difference in terms of risk reduction and reoffending. The investment is worth it. I passionately believe that if we spent less on building bigger and bigger places to treat people badly,

we might have more money to support those who as victims suffer and rage and grieve. One last question to ask ourselves. What would I want for my son or daughter if they did a terrible thing? What would I want for myself? I suggest that most of us would want a chance to make good if we can, to be shown mercy even if we don't deserve it. We ask offenders what kind of people they want to be in the future. We could ask ourselves the same question.

Thank you. APPLAUSE Gwen, thank you very much indeed. There's so much to think about there. Can I start by asking something very simple? Is Norway doing it right? Is Britain doing it wrong? Or the rest of the world in fact doing it wrong? I was just looking at some of the recidivism numbers and Norway has one of the lowest rates of reoffending in the entire world I think it's about 20 to 25 percent and compare that to America And this is an eye-watering difference according to the National Institute of Justice almost 44 percent of criminals According to the National Institute of Justice, almost 44% of criminals released return before the first year is out

When they get released from prison. So is it a mindset thing? Is it a money thing? Is it where the money is being spent and are they just better than we are? Well, I think it's obvious that the Norwegians are better than we are In the top 10 for national happiness, that's a good thing. And I honestly think that that really is very interesting, that there could be a link between national happiness and incarceration rates. Because I wonder whether those very high incarceration rates reflect a sense of hopelessness or despair.

Although I do think we have to be careful about the kinds of statistics we look at at because different kinds of offenders Reoffend in different ways at different times. So it's sometimes not always clear What kinds of offenses we're talking about so very violent offenders rarely get called back to prison in that kind of timescale Whereas offenders who are dealing in drugs or kind of theft offenses They're the kind of offenses that come back to prison quite quickly. Okay but what about the money question? I mean do they just throw more money at it than others? Well, I don't know. As we've just heard the UK spends 6.4 billion on its prison estate.

So that's quite a lot of money for still quite a high recidivism rate. And I think it's well known of course, I'm no economist, but I understand that the Norwegian economy does have a certain amount of money behind it. Tenth richest country in the world? The tenth richest country in the world. I think there's likely to be an intersection of factors here, isn't there? And that's something to do also with public attitudes

to rule breaking and also public attitudes to offenders. I'm going to open it up to the audience. And I really want somebody's help here because there's often a phrase that's used, the Scandi state of mind. There is a different way of thinking, you know, the fact that you do so well on the happiness index. What is that about? Can somebody encapsulate to me what it is to think like a Norwegian and why that might make a difference? Tell us who you are and where you're from first of all. Okay.

Okay, my name is Frode Halmikmig Pedersen and I'm a professor of literature at the University of Bergen. I've done work on the relationship between legal culture and literary culture and so I would point out if you go back to the early 19th century you have in Norway you have scattered villages with a relatively low mobility rate. That means it's not very easy to get from place to place. So you have a close-knit community, and if you have a criminal offender there, that person is not so easily replaced.

So it makes sense to rehabilitate rather than to incarcerate for a long period of time. And then after that you have the advent of Norwegian social democracy with its emphasis on rationality. And if you believe that people can be rehabilitated, it makes a lot of sense to rehabilitate them, it's the rational thing to do. And our system is cheaper in the long run than the British system. It's less costly to rehabilitate than in to incarcerate

Okay, can I just actually just to take that a little bit further that historic assessment by the way fascinating But is that changing because Norway is not the same Norway? That it was back when these isolated villages where you knew that it was your Cousin had committed the crime or the carpenter had committed the crime you can't do without them. Hands up who thinks that that is changing now? Okay so I think there's about maybe a fifth of the audience has put their hand. Let's come to one of the people here. Thank you my name is Mahmoud Faraman, I'm a member of parliament. Which party do you represent? The Conservative Party ma'am. Thank you for a great lecture right away. What we see is that the recurrence rate is increasing in Norway.

A lot of the crime is done by youngsters around the age of 15 or lower. With regards to that point, do you see any help in using incarceration as a tool to control the rehabilitation process for these youngsters in any way, shape or form? That's question number one. And there's a second thing. We also see a risk here because if we do not use the penal system in a good way, do we not risk that we lose the populations trust in the penal system, which we are kind of dependent on. Can you answer your own question? Do you think the public is asking, or do the Conservatives think the public is asking for something else in Norway today? I think one of the keys to happiness

here in the Nordics is the trust as well. We are high trust societies. If crime rises and we cannot control it that affects the trust within the society and also the happiness. I think if the government or the state cannot give an answer to a population with regards to the fighting of crime that will affect the trust within the society. Thank you very much. Gwen? I don't think there is really much evidence that incarcerating teenagers actually prevents recidivism. In fact, quite the reverse. And that's partly because we know that a lot of young people who commit offences, and of course we've got to be careful about what kinds of

offences we're talking about, because not all crime is the same. There's a world of difference between people who are stealing regularly to support a drug habit and people who commit acts of serious violence and they really are different populations and you need different interventions for the different groups and similarly for young men particularly who are part of gangs. Long term incarceration just doesn't help these young men. And your point about trust is an interesting one. Governments and communities works on trust and the relationship of trust. And of course the trust has to go both ways.

And I think we have to trust that the state is not going to treat us badly if we make a mess. Okay, thank you. A question from that side. Yeah. Hello, I'm Teresa Grøtan and I'm the director of the Bergen International Literary Festival. And I would like to follow up on the type of crimes you're talking about, the serious violent crimes, and specifically when it comes to sexual violence compared to other types of violence. I mean the examples you used were all murders and it sounded like it was a one-time offense, but how about

sexual offenders when it comes to these questions of rehabilitation? I think it's fair to say that there's a bit less research in relation to sexual offenders and of course, they are also not a uniform group. There's a group of sexual offenders, and for convenience, I'll refer to them all as male, because they nearly are all male, although there are some female sex offenders. There's a young group, and there's an older group.

And there are also the men who offend within relationships and families, and men who offend outside. and families and men who offend outside. So when you're making a plan for interventions for sex offenders, you need to bring all these factors into your planning. I mean, the best evidence we have, I think, comes from places like Holland, where again they've developed therapeutic programs in their prisons, which also have a therapeutic

aspect to them. And I think that they have good evidence that the kind of therapeutic programs they offer to those men can be effective. But again, I think we have to be wary about assuming that all sex offenses are the same and that all sex offenders are the same same because the meaning of the offense is very different I think for different kinds of sexual offenders. When I used to work with child sex offenders it was very striking to me that there was there was a great difference between those child sex offenders who offend within the family

and those who offend against strangers. Just on that, the last program that we did together was at Grendan where we had some prisoners who were on very long tariffs who talked about the fact that it was the idea of masculinity that had contributed to their violent state of mind which had led to them being in prison. Does a country's notion of what it is to be a man play a part in how much crime takes place? I mean, is it an actual thing to talk about? Oh no, the concept of toxic masculinity has been around for about fifty years at least

and it's the concept that there are some accounts of masculinity which denigrate vulnerability and can then run a risk of seeing women as being legitimate targets because they're vulnerable. This is a subgroup of men only. For many men, it will be people who have had an absence of a father when they were growing up. But there's an intersection about childhood experience for boys growing up and cultural beliefs about what a successful man looks like.

Thank you. There was a woman here on this side. Okay, my name is Nina Antonsen and I'm a psychologist and I work in Alternative to Violence here in Bergen, one out of 15 offices in Norway who treat domestic violence, giving psychotherapy for male perpetrators. Do you have any treatment centres in order to prevent more serious violence in the UK? The answer is no. And that's partly because I think that there has been a tendency in Great Britain to see domestic violence is unpleasant, but normal Which brings a kind of shrugging of the shoulders?

Whereas I think what's become very clear is again. It's only a minority of men who behave this way towards their partners I don't think it's natural or inevitable at all, and therefore it demands much greater scrutiny and attention. Just going back to you for one second, when I say, what is it to be a man here in Norway, what is it to be a man in Norway? Well, I'm not sure if I'm the right one to answer that one, actually. All right, no, no, no, let me ask somebody else.

There's a gentleman behind you who had his hand up for a question. What is it to be a man in Norway? What does that mean? My name is Thor Johnson. I'm in the Committee of Justice in the Norwegian Parliament. Even better. OK.

Right. OK. I am in the Progress Party on the right side. And it's very nice to be a man in Norway. We enjoy life. But I think I understand your question. And if I can combine that into the immigration question, because nobody answered your challenge to us.

All of the Norwegian society has been changing. And you see with immigration, it has changed a little bit in the way you look at man, maybe, because a lot of the cultures and the background, especially immigration from Middle East and Africa, they have a different view of the being a man. The man is the big man, you know, he's the head of the family and he is the big strong person. This has changed a little bit in Norway where women and men are more equal. But what I really want to say about Norwegian society is changing and as the professor said, something about the absence of the father.

Because we see that we have a huge increase in youth crime in Norway now. More and more drugs, more and more violent youth crime, brutal youth crime. And you see that unfortunately, most of these teenagers, they come from single mother parents. They don't really have a father as a role model. And they also unfortunately are quite young. A lot of them are even under 15 and the minimum age for being punished in Norway is 15. It's a criminal age, 15. And also you see it's a majority of immigration. But I have a good advice for you Englishmen. We have a nice system that you haven't talked

about so far. It's the special institution for the teenagers, under 18. We only have two of these correctional services so far. There's one in Bergen, you should visit it, and there's one close to Oslo. As far as we can see, it makes good results. Okay, Gwen. We tried this in England and it just didn't work. We tried to have medium secure facilities for young people who'd been violent.

And we thought that we'd be able to admit lots of disturbed young men and treat them because we have exactly the same problems as you do, exactly the same. So we tried it, we just couldn't make it work. Now my eye has been caught by the shiny epaulettes of a police uniform. Is the fear of crime growing in this country or is crime

growing, violent crime growing in this country? Yes my name is Toulouse Alvesen and I'm the assistant chief of the police here in the Western Police District and I head of the department that investigate the homicide, aggravated assault and sexual offences. In our region, we see, as we do nationally, an increase of domestic violence being reported. We also see an increase in the number of cases that end in the worst possible way, women being murdered by their partners and ex-partners. We find this development deeply worrying and we are constantly looking for better and more safer ways to protect

women living under these threats. What would you say is the most efficient way the police can participate in preventing repetitive domestic violence. And with that I thought I answered your question too. Sort of. So I understand that you're talking about sort of domestic violence, but is the fear rising faster than the rate of crime? Or are they linked? Because we've had two political voices here saying, actually you know what, this is new Norway, it's not old Norway, and we have to do something to maintain the trust of people because

we've got rising tides of violence in this country. I think the fear is rising more than the numbers but there are much domestic violence that we not know about and that is dangerous. Okay, thank you. I think that last point is a good place to start, that domestic violence is dangerous. It's a kind of slippery slope. I think the very first strike is where we have to act straight off the bat. But I always find myself puzzled as to why if a woman was being beaten, why she had to move to a refuge and he stayed home.

Whereas wouldn't it be better to pick him up, take him out, put him in a men's refuge where he has to stay and complete a number of programs and actually just start to take his own violence seriously. And women have to play their part in reporting men who hit them. And I know that that's not easy but nevertheless as citizens that's what they have to take responsibility for. In Norway for many years we have provided for the women telephones that they can call the police if they are in danger.

Now we are changing over to device on the ankle of the perpetrator. So putting the onus on him, not her. Okay, very interesting. When we're talking about the violent mind, and we are in Norway, for many of the people listening around the world, there is one name that is going to come up. And you're all nodding and you're all murmuring in the audience and it's Anders Breivik We have somebody in the audience who survived that attack in Utoja And I wonder Magnus Hakkensson you were one of the Very young people 18 who tried to get away from the bullets by jumping into the water

How close did you come to this man? I was as close that I could see him did you come to this man? I was as close that I could see him taking his rifle and aiming it at me and was able to survive just by pure luck, basically. And some of the people that you knew, well, were not so lucky. They were not. When somebody utters the name Anders Breivik, what does it make you feel?

The name in itself doesn't really mean that much to me. And I try to keep my distance from the perpetrator as much as I can. And it is hard whenever the retrials and the trials come up. And it is hard, but we still firmly believe in the rule of law. No human being can ever forfeit their human rights. So it's important for us to recognize that how a society deals with terrorism and violent extremism, that is one of their toughest tasks. But do we respond to that hate with more hate or do we respond to that by keeping our dignity

and sticking to our principles? And that is what I believe we should. We should keep our dignity and stick to our principles, which are shown to work. And thank you for indulging me me but you also had a question. Sure. How can we work internationally to create penal systems that better validates the wants and needs of the survivors and the bereaved while still having penal systems that work for rehabilitation and reintegration into society? Thank you so much. I don't have a clever answer to it beyond the idea that dialogue is really important and sharing ideas is very important.

The problem of terrorist offences is growing and it is tricky to know how best to respond because traditionally our ideas about offender rehabilitation have been very focused on the individual as a person and that's still I think valid. But I think what's tricky is when you have a person who is very committed to an ideology and you can't necessarily make that into a problem because it's easy sometimes and in fact I believe it happened with Bravick. there was quite a debate about whether he was mentally unwell or not. And that debate about when does an ideological position become so bizarre that it's actually a derailment of mental function is a question that is way, way too big for me to answer. Thank you. I think we've got time for one more question. Hi, I'm Rasa. I'm a data scientist here in Bergen and I

wanted to ask do I understand correctly that the main difference between the average person and perpetrators of violent crimes are childhood traumas and family instability including domestic violence or poverty and if so do you think we're placing enough importance on supporting children and those families as a first preventative measure to such crimes? What a great question thank you very much. I think it is a major differentiator in the sense that it is rare I think to meet a violence perpetrator who hasn't had some kind of exposure to childhood trauma.

But I have to say that it's not impossible. And that's because human violence takes lots of different forms, as we've just been hearing. And we need to be careful not to apply uniformity or homogeneity that isn't there. But I think it's undoubtedly the case that some violence perpetrators have been exposed to very high levels of childhood traumas. And I think what that means is that we have to intervene much earlier where we see children who are experiencing childhood abuse and neglect and especially neglect because it looks like neglect and emotional abuse turn out to be quite potent predictors of later violence. We're coming to the end of our time together but you've spent your

whole life dealing with some of the most violent people in society but it's worth saying that actually the levels of violence or violent crime in in Britain at least are coming down so I mean should somebody leave this series feeling optimistic I mean I'm are you optimistic about the future oh yes no I am optimistic about the future because I think there is much more interest in taking violence seriously and not just kind of waving it away as something normal and inevitable for humans. I think just the fact that we're having this conversation today

about how best to rehabilitate violent offenders means that we're beginning to have sensible conversations about people's capacities for violence and what we might do about it. And I wanted to ask you this all the way through the series. Do you remember that first moment that you looked at somebody who had done something terrible and violent, and that first moment when you thought, I know you can change, and if you can change, people can change?

Yes, I do. I remember working with a man who had nearly killed one person and had brutally assaulted another. And I remember the first time that he brought me a picture from his art therapy class to talk about. And I took that to mean that this was someone who was engaged in the process. I know it doesn't sound very much, but the fact that he was keen to show me what was going on in his mind was a major step forward

from sitting in silence wondering what was going to happen next. So these small kinds of indications are sometimes all that there is. We've come to the end and I just want to thank you so much for what has been an absolutely fascinating series of lectures, compelling, sometimes harrowing, often moving, always thought provoking and also the way in which you have dealt

with a myriad of questions from very different audiences. All of Gwen's lectures I should tell you are available on BBC Sounds and on the Reith lectures website. You can find a tremendous archive by the way of previous lectures on that website so please do dig through our treasure trove. Thank you very much to our hosts here at Literittlertur House in Bergen, in Norway, to our audience, but most of all to the BBC Reith Lecturer for 2024, Dr. Gwen Adzhead. Thank you. You were listening to Ideas and to the annual Wreath Lectures from the BBC featuring Gwen

Adzett, forensic psychiatrist and author of the book The Devil You Know, stories of human cruelty and compassion. If you'd like to comment on anything you've heard in this episode or in any other, you can do that on our website cbc.ca slash ideas, where of course you can always get our podcast. This series was adapted for ideas by Matthew Lason Ryder. Special thanks to Laura Lawrence and the BBC World Service. Lisa Ayuso is the web producer of ideas. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval, senior producer Nikola Lukcic. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly and I'm

Nala Ayed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.