In the Fallout series, Ghouls are human beings who were horribly irradiated. Some of them are just disfigured humans who age very slowly and are immune to radiations, and are called intelligent ghouls, and others got their brain so irradiated that they fell into madness and attack any non-ghoul they see, and those are called feral ghouls.
If your ghoul even looks like it's going feral, I'm putting it down.
Diamond City doesn't allow ghouls in the city.