Happy New Year, San Francisco Zoo

When I was a little girl, a friendly keeper at the San Francisco Zoo invited me into a cage and let me hold a koala bear. It was a thrilling moment. And one not likely to be repeated in today's climate of institutional fear over "deep-pocket" lawsuits.

Because the topic of my doctoral research and subsequent publications was public exhibitions of masculinity among young male humans, my antenna went up on Christmas when I heard about the tiger attack at the S.F. Zoo.

What caught my interest was the initial news report that the tiger attacked three young men who had been lingering by the tiger's cage after the zoo had closed - possibly ignoring other potential victims.

Another detail increased my professional interest. The two surviving victims, brothers age 23 and 19, were hostile and uncooperative with police. Think about it: If you were stalked and mauled by a rampaging tiger, why would you try to mislead and obstruct investigators?

A third revelation of note was that these brothers, Kulbir and Amritpal Dhaliwal, were awaiting trial for a recent display of alleged drunken aggression. In that Oct. 9 incident, police caught the brothers chasing two men; after their arrest they allegedly cursed police and kicked the police car's security partition. They are scheduled to appear in court in a couple of weeks on misdemeanor charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Interestingly, it was the older of these belligerent brothers that Tatiana the tiger first attacked; the unfortunate Carlos Sousa Jr. was apparently killed when he intervened to save his friend.

While speculation persists about the victims' potential contribution to the attack, the media are focusing more on the height of the wall outside of the tiger grotto's moat. Is it built to the height of the recommended standards of the 21st century? Of course not. It is 67 years old. And in all those years, not one tiger has escaped. Indeed, experts say that around the world thousands of tigers are kept in enclosures of roughly the same height, and they don't escape.

As one wildlife expert commented, the ultimate explanation for Tatiana's attack is not the height of the wall, but the "stimulus" she was reacting to. "Tigers around the world are perfectly safe behind 10-foot or 12-foot walls," said Martine Colette, founder of a wildlife refuge in Southern California. "There had to have been a tremendous stimulus that made the tiger react the way she did."

In a state of extreme fear or anger, a tiger - like a human - is capable of extraordinary feats of strength that otherwise would not have been possible. Based on this, professor of medicine Mark Siegel commented, "It seems clear that Tatiana was provoked or taunted to such a state of anger or agitation that her hyper-drive took over."

If indeed the tiger was provoked, this would conform with a typical display of masculine aggression. These displays - which often take the form of sexual aggression or antigay harassment - serve the functions of proving masculinity, social bonding, and the celebration of male power. In these forms of participatory theater, the targets - whether they be women, gay men, or even, as in this case, a tiger - serve as interchangeable dramatic props. (See my article on this topic.)

While no avenue of investigation should be ignored, I hope the media and investigators will focus as much attention on the likely provocation as in Monday morning quarterbacking of the zoo's response. As a struggling public institution whose aim is to educate the public about wildlife conservation and endangered species, the S.F. Zoo can ill afford a deep-pocket verdict based on misplaced castigation.

Also see my update of Jan. 1, 2008.

Photo credit: Kurt Rogers, S.F. Chronicle

Serial killers stalking South Africa

The darker side of international "necrocapitalism"?

Serial killers are trendy. They are the topic of an ever-increasing array of movies, books, and TV shows. One theorist has gone so far to suggest that they are the "gothic double" of the zombie-like consumers wandering the malls of a "necrocapitalist" world, in perpetual quest for another purchase. Indeed, argues Brian Jarvis in "Monsters Inc.: Serial killers and consumer culture," the commodification of violence is an integral aspect of the violence inherent in commodification.

If that is so, then it is no surprise that the United States – where millions of consumers stagger under crippling loads of credit card debt – would lead the world in serial murders. Although I don’t know of a central repository of such data, that is what I've always heard (with Russia following closely on our heels).

How, then, to explain South Africa's claim of passing us by as the world's largest producer of serial killers, surpassing both the United States and Russia?

For one thing, South Africa has a much higher overall murder rate than do either the United States or Russia.

But perhaps a more precise answer will come out of the largest-scale research project on serial murders in the world. The research is being conducted by the specialized Investigative Psychology Unit (IPU) – the South African equivalent of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit – and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice from the City University of New York.

The IPU was established in 1994 by investigative psychologist Micki Pistorius, who became notorious in South Africa and earned praise from legendary FBI profiler Robert Ressler (see my blog essay on profiling). According to a news story this month in South Africa's Daily Star, however, "her methods raised eyebrows in some quarters, and may have contributed to the common public perception that serial killer profiling involves more 'mumbo jumbo' than scientific compilation and analysis of data."

Pistorius theorized that interruption of the normal stages of psychosexual development as posited by Freud could generate a serial killer. She was well known for spending time at the scene of a murder in order to experience the residual energy field the killer left behind.

"I want to retrace the steps of the killer, and it is a place where I can get into his mind. These are the places where they act out their most secret fantasies and I believe the atmosphere is still laden with emotion, waiting for me to tap into it," she once said.

It may have been her emotional approach that caused her to develop post-traumatic stress disorder a few years ago. Such vicarious traumatization is not uncommon among professionals whose work brings them close to trauma survivors and perpetrators.

The brisk business of serial killing in South Africa is keeping the new head of the IPU, psychologist and criminologist Gérard Labuschagne, quite busy. In addition to handling two dozen serial murder investigations over the past six years, he conducts research and provides training to others in South Africa and around the world.

Profiling in South Africa is based not on hunches or emotions but on science and research, taking into account the uniquely South African perspective, Labuschagne insists.

"Our situation is unique in terms of socio-economic and cultural factors," he told the Daily News. "Our high unemployment rate, for instance, makes it easy for killers to lure victims with promises of work."

For a different, and very intriguing, perspective on serial killers, I recommend anthropologist Elliott Leyton's class-based analysis, Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer. (My review of the book is on its Amazon page.)

Hat tip to Psychology & Crime News for alerting me to the "Monsters Inc." article, which (along with thousands of other articles) is available for free from Sage Publications through the end of November.

Claim in 15-year-old girl's stabbing will highlight prison failures

The family of a 15-year-old San Francisco girl who was severely stabbed by a paroled prisoner plans to file a claim against prison officials next Monday.

Scott Thomas, who was accidentally paroled from San Quentin Prison due to a clerical blunder, had a documented history of bipolar disorder and was flagged by guards as needing treatment that he never received, two prison clinicians secretly told the San Francisco Chronicle. He randomly stabbed the 15-year-old girl and a man who came to her rescue at a bakery. After his arrest, he mumbled, "I'm taking on the world" before breaking into incoherent song, according to a police report.

Accidental releases are lawsuits waiting to happen. And it is lamentable when prisoners slip through the cracks of psychiatric treatment. But these issues miss the bigger picture: Thomas, a repeat theft offender who was only violent when in prison, was released to the streets straight out of solitary confinement.

Recipe for violence

Imagine being locked up all by yourself in a windowless cement box no bigger than a bathroom. Imagine being all by yourself in that box for months on end. (Thomas was only in "the hole" for four months; some prisoners in supermax prisons are kept in isolation for decades).

As depicted in the 1973 Steve McQueen film Papillon, based on a true story about an escape from a prison colony in French Guiana, it doesn't take long to have a mental breakdown under these conditions. Just a couple of days of solitary confinement with sensory deprivation can trigger psychotic hallucinations. Ellectroencephalogram research shows that after only a few days in solitary confinement, prisoners' brain waves shift into a stuporous, delirious pattern.

Now imagine that you are locked up in that windowless little box when you are already mentally ill and tormented by demons inside of your head.

Many prisoners, such as Thomas, are already fragile and unstable. They are even more prone to psychiatric breakdown than are healthy people who did not undergo severe childhood trauma. Putting mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement is like putting an asthmatic person in a room with no air, as a federal judge once put it.

When I worked in a segregation housing unit (SHU) for the mentally ill, I saw these effects first-hand. After a short time on the unit, many prisoners began to babble incoherently or to lie semi-comatose in a fetal ball. They screamed and yelled and hurled excrement and urine through the narrow slits in their cell doors. They tried to kill or mutilate themselves.

Further demolishing the psyches of these vulnerable prisoners is not only cruel, it is also a surefire recipe for community endangerment when they get released, as most eventually will. Some prison administrations have realized that discharging convicts straight from the hole to the streets is a dangerous practice. Oregon, for example, integrates prisoners back into the prison mainstream through classes and jobs before releasing them.

Despite the demonstrated, permanent harm to prisoners' psyches – which ultimately translates into harm to vulnerable victims such as the 15-year-old San Francisco girl – solitary confinement is on the rise. From 1995-2000, its use rose by a dramatic 40%, surpassing the overall prison population rise of 28% during that period.

"We have to ask ourselves why we're doing this," psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, a Harvard professor and expert on segregation psychosis, told Time magazine. (For more on Grassian and his research, see my web page on "segregation psychosis.")

Wouldn’t it be great if rationality and community safety prevailed, and this barbaric practice was put to rest? Perhaps more lawsuits like this family's will get the attention of prison officials.

National Public Radio has an excellent, three-part series by Laura Sullivan on solitary confinement. In one episode, she spends the day with Daud Tulam, a New Jersey man adjusting to life on the outside after 18 years in solitary confinement. Tulam struggles with the common everyday things that we all take for granted, such as smalltalk, noise, and mere human companionship.

Tragic end for Texas hate crime victim

David Ritcheson was a popular 16-year-old at his Houston high school. He played football and was featured in a fashion layout in the school yearbook.

Then, last April, the young Mexican-American made the mistake of attending a party at which racist skinheads were present.

Ostensibly because Ritcheson had drunkenly tried to kiss a 12-year-old girl, two white supremacists shouting “White Power!” viciously beat and sodomized him with the pipe of a plastic umbrella stand. The attack lasted over an hour. Ritcheson was knocked unconscious and internally injured. He barely survived.

After months of hospitalization and dozens of surgeries, he physically recovered enough to testify before a Congressional committee in support of a hate crimes bill.

But psychologically, he never recovered. He declined counseling, and he never talked about his experience. In an interview earlier this year, he said it was hard to handle being known as “the kid” – the victim of an infamous hate crime.

Last week, the small, quiet young man leapt to his death from a cruise ship.

His attackers, David Tuck and Keith Turner, are serving prison terms of life and 90 years, respectively.

For more on the psychosocial motivations underlying these types of crimes, see my article, "Enacting Masculinity."

Hat tip to Jane for alerting me to this report.