Originally Posted by Icelander
The only criminals I've met who have zero fear of discovery are those who have absolutely nothing to lose, having no money, social position nor even the vestige of any kind of good name. That's usually people who cannot function in society and who have been inside one institution or another since childhood. Pretty much by definition, wealthy people have a lot more to lose than that.
No child abuser I have defended has been truly wealthy, but some are middle class. In my experience, people who have an education, some assets and a clean criminal records are far more likely to be absolutely terrified at any hint of legal trouble, more or less regardless of their possible guilt or innocence.
Someone who has never been arrested before can actually show PTSD-like symptoms after being detained for questioning about a serious crime, even if they are never charged. In my experience, both innocent and guilty people who have never interacted with law enforcement are very likely to impute something very close to omniscience to agents of the law and to feel shame and terror at being 'treated like a criminal'.
Anywhere up to a third of people will confess to crimes they did not commit simply because detectives ask them to, without any form of threats, violence or coercion, largely because most people feel guilt over something and when removed from familiar surroundings and without their social support structures, many people will default to accepting the authority of police and think they must be guilty of something because they are being treated that way.
The kind of articulate, smart, careful and unrepentant criminals that are the mainstay of popular fiction are in actual fact a vanishingly rare breed. Far more people are terrified and guilty without any good reason to be than there are people who remain calm and cool in the face of possible social condemnation.*
Importantly, this can happen even to people who are mostly cynical and have never shown even a hint of fearful respect for authority. I've seen severe psychological distress even on the part of experienced policemen or attorneys, when they are suddenly put into the position of suspect. It's easy to say on the Internet that you know how to behave when questioned, but the cold hard truth is that most people do not retain that cool rationality when really put to the test.
I don't know how many pedophiles and child abusers you know personally, but while I cannot completely rule out that any of those I've met could kill a child, I can state categorically that not one of them would be completely without fear of consequence after doing so, even if they had been in another country. In fact, I suspect that if any did, they would be nervous wrecks and would probably be easy prey for any potential witnesses, to blackmail them of everything they owned, if they didn't just collapse and prove unable to act rationally in any way.
From what I can tell from sitting at the other side of the table, real police work is mindbogglingly dull and not very demanding in an intellectual capacity, but that's okay, because my clients, the criminals and those alleged to be criminals, generally make the work of those trying to convict them very, very easy. Even those few suspects who are not in dire need of psychiatric help and remedial schooling tend to be in such a psychologically bad place when questioned that they are in no position to clear themselves even when innocent, let alone come up with a plausible story if guilty.
The reason fiction usually doesn't get within a mile of realism when it comes to crime and police work is that showing the reality would be dull, depressing and offensive to all parts of the political spectrum.
*The fear of actual punishment tends to have far less impact on people, except in so far as it reinforces social stigmatization and feelings of ostracization.
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03-26-2019, 08:43 AM
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