Criminal Minds By Hugh Fischman Analysis

Throughout Josh Fischman’s “Criminal Minds” there is an astounding amount of transitional phrases between paragraphs. However, there are three that stood out to me among the others. The first transition to attract my attention was in the beginning of the story while Adrian Raine was explaining that there might be a possibility of detecting if a child has a chance of becoming a criminal in adulthood. Raine begins by saying “So if I could tell you, as a parent, that your child has a 75-percent chance of becoming a criminal, wouldn’t you want to know and maybe have the chance to do something about it?” This quote immediately grasped my attention and I became anxious to see what was coming next. Fischman then transitions into the next paragraph …show more content…
However, as I continued on I found that the amount of quotes decreased throughout the body. This story begins with Adrian Raine discussing his past work experience with criminals and all of the psychological tests he would administer. He then goes into explain how he has spent a career trying to spot early signs of dangerous minds and how we can try to stop the bad behavior of a criminal before it happens. Afterwards, Fischman begins to describe all of the research and experiments that Raine and other experts have put into testing the brains of a wide variety of individuals to see if it is possible to predict dangerous behavior in the future. As he goes deeper into explaining the different research groups, the quotes become fewer and farther in between. I think Fischman did this to open the reader to the topic of research in the beginning, with the help of all of Raine’s quotes and explanations, and then slowly moved away from Raine’s thoughts and begin to explain the research in general and all of its results. This in depth information of the research and results gives the readers a better understanding of Raine’s theory by providing several examples of research that show a connection between brain patterns in childhood and criminal behavior in adulthood. I believe Fischman used less quotes in the body because his main goal was to get the point across and help the readers …show more content…
It reads “One swallow does not a summer make. But together, this is a message in the sky.” I believe this quote could possibly have different meanings for different readers. In my opinion I believe this quote is saying that one instance of something is just that; it does not indicate a trend. However, once this instance occurs repeatedly, one can only assume that it is now a trend waiting to emerge. In regards to this story, this quote can relate to the idea that just because one individual’s test accurately predicts criminal behavior, it does not necessarily mean that all of these tests will be correct in their predictions. Although, once accurate predictions are consistently being made, one can only assume that this is a science we can now place our trust in. As Fischman comes to a close with a quote, he leaves us with just that; no author or explanation. Just as with the interpretation of the quote, I think different readers could have different opinions as to why he did this. I believe he left out the name of the author to help the readers become more intrigued and think about the meaning behind the quote. This is a quote that sounds more obscure than what some might be used to hearing and requires more thought, and I believe that by leaving out the name of the author, the readers will be more willing to figure out its