Special Guest: Life as a criminal psychologist: conversations with murderers and rapists

*note: this post was posted on 07/02/20 as it was copied from my post with Human Library session three to make it a separate post

Appearances are so deceiving. This was probably the most important thing I learnt from Mr Perrin’s talk. You cannot find a person guilty of murder or any crime, for that matter, purely based on their appearance. For this reason, Mr Perrin stated that he never reads case files of the accused before he goes in to interview a convict. This would prejudice his view of the person. However, he said it was quite difficult for him to comprehend that all these perfectly normal, even pleasant people committed such heinous crimes.

When asked whether it impacted his mindset in daily life, he explained that for a while, the stereotype he ‘stored’ in his head for these convicts, was completely turned upside down. He remembered that for a time, he was a “nervous wreck” because all he could think about was how anyone, anyone around him could be a criminal. This showed me how unnerving it can be when stereotypes are sort of torn down from our brains. This brought into my head the question – where do we get these prejudices, or stereotypes in our heads for these criminals? Is it because we seek comfort within them? I think what Mr Perrin’s talk suggested was that it was a safety net for him because when it was gone he was thrown into a harsh world, where his mind had to adapt to this new reality. I also used to think that convicts of a certain crime should look a certain way but throughout this talk, Mr Perrin, who had talked and shared stories with these people stressed how there was no stereotype for convicts. Anyone could commit or be accused of committing a crime. I think it was because of the media, and different types of information that I received from various sources in my life, such as friends and family, my mind is prejudiced in terms of appearances. And appearances are important, because why should we judge those who we interact with based on their appearances? This means we will likely treat people differently, based on something that we can only see on the surface, which may sometimes get us out of danger, but is really not a good way to go through life.

This talk meant I had to rethink the stereotypes I had in my head already, and realise that they’re all wrong. And I think that is the first step to reducing these stereotypes, and how they colour our perception of people. Identifying that we have them. From there, we can work on removing them completely. This was the biggest thing that I took away from Mr Perrin’s talk, and it completely changed my thinking about stereotypes and how I should and shouldn’t perceive a person.