Like most people, I used to think about criminals as those evil non-humans, and if you commit crime, you're a damned soul forever and you don't deserve forgiveness. It took an open mind and engagement to recognize how false that view was, and the rightousness that came with it took a while to get unused to.

I don't expect that attitude to change. I'm not going to pretend I know what causes it, but I suspect it has something to do with vilification of criminals as a whole. Some of the worse offenders definitely deserve bad reputation, but most of them just make mistakes they come to regret later. If one starts to treat every mistake people around them make as a crime, the world becomes full of evil.

We want to discourage our children from moral digressions, but I think the way we do this may actually encourage criminality. We dehumanize criminals in the same way we dehumanize enemy in war to make killing their soldiers much easier. We make them into outliers. For people who feel like they don't belong into mainstream society, the criminal layer may become more of a home to them, and there are few positive reinforcement loops to help them learn and grow.

And when we grow up, we don't get to meet with a view opposing ours. Is it any wonder, then, that we keep thinking criminals are inhuman?

I'm not saying that's all there is to it, but I think it affects the way we see criminals.