Does the reason you behaved in a specific way mitigate the impacts of that behaviour?  Is personal accountablity tanamount to resonsibility or do external factors weigh in?

An example would be a murderer  who was deemed not accountable for their actions.  In these cases, many cultures are sympathetic making allowances for what is terrifically bad behaviour.

The consequences might become psychiatric rehabilitation, forgiveness and reintegration into society.  Or the killer might recieve the death penalty.

Alternatively they may be caged for a long time to protect them from others and or rehabilitate them.  These actions resulting from this murderous behaviour vary, and are principally determined based on motivation.

Pure Personal Accountability

If the determining factor for consequences was soley based on personal accountablity, the reactions to a persons specific behaviour would probably be more consistent,

That is, a killer made the decision to kill, (other factors are irrelevant) the behaviour is theirs and theirs alone).  The contextual and external reasons for the behaviour do not mitigate it.

 You made me do it

The question is, can any factors, ( for example hunger, torture, ridicule, greed), drive your behaviour or are action decisions yours alone to make.

A interesting personal test of this can be tried the next time you are angry.  Simply start with the internal question – Why am I angry?  Usually you will be able to quickly think of the prime causes.

Most likely it will be something like he/she made me mad, or a scenario or circumstances.  These will rarely include; “I chose to be angry or I decided anger was appropriate in this case to address the things that were occurring.”

Part two of this self examination is the question, if I did not choose to be angry, is this acceptable.  Are not my emotions, thoughts and deeds mine to control?

For me, this is a rhetorical question.  The answer is an emphatic yes.  So, I try to learn from this and vow to myself, next time I will conciously decide if I want to be angry.  Owning my actions is so much more satisfying than not.