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This chapter reviews the theoretical foundations of the bounded choice theory and suggests its relevance to ongoing research on cults, the true-believer mentality, and to other manifestations of single-mindedness in our society, including our present-day concern with terrorism and fanaticism. The prevailing theories at both end of the spectrum are challenged. Bounded choice is connected to other theories on conformity and cognitive dissonance, yet is different from them. The framework offers a new perspective on the identity shift and resultant behavior of the true believers. The chapter considers individual choice in the context of an authoritarian, transcendent, closed system, and addresses the person who has internalized the group worldview to such a degree that on those occasions when he is in full alignment with the cult mind-set, he no longer experiences a particular activity or pronouncement as wrong or questionable. The boundaries of his perceptions and his choices are tightly drawn and sealed by the interlocking nature of the cultic structure, its social system, and his role in it. In Heaven's Gate, as well as the DWP, the boundaries of knowledge were shut tight and reinforced in three specific ways: through the process of resocialization, through the use of ideology, and through social controls. Thus, in closed, self-sealing groups not only is rationality bounded, as it is in all environments, but further choices are bounded.

America is not totally alone in performing harsh practices of criminal punishment as such practices have also been observed in many Islamic and European communities. Similar to in the United States, in many other cultures certain demands are passed that assert for the removing of individualization and resocialization and integrating reprisal, disqualification or incapacitation, and sentencing. However, the period in the history of punishment in the United States which was marked by a greater degree of harshness is matched by a greater degree of mildness in Europe. In Europe, especially in Germany and possibly in outher countries, during this time there was a growing awareness about victims's rights and this resulted in an increase in milder sanctions that involve mediation and safeguarding victims. This chapter discusses this developing sense of mildness that is dominating European punishment practices.

This chapter examines the process of socialization, of becoming a person—the way we become aware of the social world we are a part of and learn to participate in it. It first considers the lessons of early childhood and how a child learns a particular language before discussing George Herbert Mead's views on childhood learning. It then analyzes the processes that occur when people are removed from the larger social order and confined to total institutions and “becoming a person once again,” also known as “secondary socialization” or “resocialization.” It suggests that, whether one is speaking of “becoming a person” in the early years or repeating some part of that process later, members of a society live by an informal grammar.

Although a suspect’s name and other identifying details are part of the public record or supplied to reporters by police, news media in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany routinely protect suspects and even convicted criminals from public exposure. We group these countries in a Protector model. Journalists said they weigh their obligation to inform the public against (1) protecting the defendants’ families—especially if they have children; (2) respecting the right to the presumption of innocence; and (3) avoiding dissemination of information that could damage the defendant’s reputation and/or chance for reintegration. Protector countries share a faith that many criminals can successfully reintegrate into society. Journalists are most likely to protect the private person accused of a crime in the private sector and least likely to protect a public figure or official accused of a public crime.

This chapter leaves aside the structure of the institution (discussed in Chapter 3) and considers the personal experience of a single inhabitant who lived in such a monastic world. It looks at the role that monastic rules play in the everyday life of a monk, and the character of that everyday monastic life. The most striking personal feature of monastic life is the absolute abandonment of one’s life in the civilian world, along with its web of social supports, and the acquisition of a strange new “normal” life, the life of a monk or nun, obliterating the old life of non‐monastic reality. This can be called world replacement and resocialization—or in traditional Christian terms, renunciation of the world and its consequences.