A well-known quote from Mark Twain appeared on my Tumblr dashboard today:

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Many use this as a quote to foster atheistic belief, but I see this as being quite applicable to the psychopath as well.  Not that praying would help save society from those that are antisocial, but in that society does not think of rehabilitating the antisocial, merely condemning and punishing.  With the modern prison system, society tries to forget what they fear.

Imagine that the psychopath could be rehabilitated – and that she would want to be, for that matter.  Imagine that she could learn to play nice with the neurotypicals that surround her each day.  What if she could feel a compunction to stay away from her behaviors of the past?  Would the neurotypicals of the world welcome her with open arms or would they treat her as an eternal pariah, much as many governments do with convicted sex offenders, for instance.  Would she be cursed to wear the mark signifying her past for the rest of her days?  I do not mean this literally, but before we consider the question of whether neurotypicals could even accept the rehabilitation of the criminally antisocial we must consider what society would do if presented with such an option.

I do not believe society would welcome a reformed antisocial.  The evidence of this seems to be clear with the tent villages composed of sex offenders and of the unemployed and homeless felons that walk the streets.  Society wants to brand the sinner as irredeemable and abhorrent.  I cannot be anything but puzzled by this desire.  The neurotypical is not immune from the realm of antisocial behavior; they merely seek justifications for such.  However, they demonize those without empathy simply as a means of asserting their own supposed dominance.

So if society will not accept the reformed antisocial, then what purpose is the punishment they enforce for those that are not entirely dissimilar from them?  Simple.  Neurotypicals want to see us rot out of sight and safely out of mind.  It does not matter to them whether our criminality is chronic or fleeting; they want the antisocial removed from the pool of people they surround themselves with even though those they envelop themselves with are just as guilty of sin.  Bloodthirsty mobs call for executions and life sentences.  It is clear that rehabilitation is not on their minds at all.  But for the “good” people that were guilty of a weak “moment,” neurotypicals open their arms an eventual reunion.

Who prays for the devil?  No one.  Who wants the antisocial back within arm’s length once “justice” is served?  No one.