This is an important question. Abusing a child increases the chances that that child too, once they have their own, will continue the cycle. For my experience, I was able to hedge against perpetuating it by recognizing that this threat existed. Over time I've come to see the truth of this "cycle"; and yes, It's quite real. As far as that excusing abuse? No, it can't, not imho. Thanks

I am sure there are people in this world that would say that the criminal should not be punished at all, the one(s) who should be punished are his/her guardian(s). This idea is flawed as certain instances are out of the guardians control. Take for example a child in an orphanage as well as my next point.

There are also those who would say that his child hood had no affect on his future as an adult. There are many examples of children who had awful parents and horrendous childhoods yet grew up to be very sucessfull individuals. The parents in these situations would not be the cause of the childs success. The child succeeded by other means, so to say that in a situation where the parents are abusive one can not say that the childs future is a result of their treatment as a child.

On this I would say that abuse is not an ultimate cause to a life of crime so to use it as an excuse is pretty flimsy.

I do not think that should a criminal convicted of child molestation have been molested himself/herself as a child detracts from the nature of the crime itself, nor should it necessarily regarded as a mitigating factor. What I do think it should show is that perhaps such acts are not as pathological or explained purely in the discourse of a "criminal act" and hopefully should suggest that rehabilitation might appropriate in some cases.

Yea, there's a big difference in explaining a potential cause for a condition and excusing it. I'm not sure anyone's trying to excuse it here.

Mitigation of punishment would be a form of excusing it, no?

Depends on how it's viewed. The better question would be: Should there be any mitigation at all?

I'm predisposed to emotionally and physically abuse my children based on my experiences as a child. I didn't; but if I did, should any punishment I receive be lessened? No, I don't think so.

But this isn't intent; predisposition to do <insert bad action here> is a distinctly different aspect.

And no, I don't think so either. In my eyes, intent should hold more weight than 'predisposition' in the legal system. If we let the whole 'predisposition' concept fly, nearly everyone could argue this contention. And then, where would we be? Everyone could just play the 'predispostion' card and have punishment mitigated.

Again, because there's a big difference between understanding the reason for something (or potential reason) and excuse. One speaks to causal factors, the other speaks to whether or not something justifies punishment. Two related but not synonymous concepts.

This may need its own thread but speaking of predispositions to violent and violent sexual acts. There was a paper written a few years ago about the evolutionary naturalness of Rape, which brings to mind much the same line of questioning here. What if predisposition to child abuse was genetic or an evolutionary adaptation of some sort. If it were genetic could it still be a crime of the same proportions as if it had no genetic influences at all?

http://www.nyas.org/publications/sciences/pdf/ts_01_00.pdf

The free download of the article loads the whole journal issue, scroll to page 30.

While I entirely agree with others that prior child abuse is not a sufficient cause for later crimes, it does seem to me that if past child abuse led to a high enough probability toward committing other crimes, that some degree of mitigation might be reasonable.