I think this figure comes from a review article Peter Linebaugh wrote in NLR 20 years or so ago: 95% of the men on death rows suffered child abuse. I can't vouch for it.
Carrol
Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> At 11:45 AM 6/29/2010, Joseph Catron wrote:
>
> >After learning his violent family history, he examined the images and
> >compared them with the brains of psychopaths. His wife's scan was
> >normal. His mother: normal. His siblings: normal. His children:
> >normal.
> >
> >"And I took a look at my own PET scan and saw something disturbing
> >that I did not talk about," he says.
> >
> >What he didn't want to reveal was that his orbital cortex looks inactive.
> >
> >"If you look at the PET scan, I look just like one of those killers."
>
> The article says you need one more thing though:
>
> >according to scientists who study this area.
> >They believe that brain patterns and genetic
> >makeup are not enough to make anyone a
> >psychopath. You need a third ingredient: abuse or violence in one's childhood.
>
> That looks to be what happened with Willie Bosket:
>
> http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780307280336
>
> A timely reissue of Fox Butterfields masterpiece,
> All Gods Children, a searing examination of the
> caustic cumulative effect of racism and violence
> over 5 generations of black Americans.
>
> Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who
> began his criminal career at age five; his
> slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to
> the passage of the first law in the nation
> allowing teenagers to be tried as adults.
> Butterfield traces the Bosket family back to
> their days as South Carolina slaves and documents
> how Willie is the culmination of generations of
> neglect, cruelty, discrimination and brutality
> directed at black Americans. From the terrifying
> scourge of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction
> to the brutal streets of 1970s New York, this is
> an unforgettable examination of the painful roots
> of violence and racism in America.
>
> Review:
>
> “A heartbreaking and terrifying chronicle of
> violence passed from one African-American
> generation to the next. . . . The force of the
> narrative is extraordinary.” The New Yorker
>
> Review:
>
> “If posterity knows what it is doing, this book
> will be considered a classic of the violent decades.” The Atlantic Monthly
>
> Review:
>
> “An extraordinary book. . . . A stimulating and
> chilling account of violence in America.” The Boston Globe
>
> About the Author
>
> Fox Butterfield is the author of China: Alive in
> the Bitter Sea, which won the National Book
> Award. He was a mamember of the New York Times
> reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for
> its publication of the Pentagon Papers, and has
> served as a correspondant for the newspaper in
> Boston, Washington, DC, New York, South Vietnam,
> Japan, Hong Kong, and China--where he opened the
> Beijing bureau in 1979. He is currently a
> national correspondant for the Times, writing
> about crime and violence. He lives near Boston with his family.
>
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