What Makes People Turn to a Life of Crime?

Inspired to make this by this thread.

Anyway, as the title says, what makes people go and be bad? An example includes committing crimes, such as theft, murder, and rape.

I know that in some cases when the crime's relatively small (e.g., stealing some food from a grocery store) it's only because a person is, say, out of work and they are trying to provide for their family and are not actually "bad," though a crime is still a crime.

 

The reasons are as varied as there are people and situations. Some do it for the thrill, the power trip, some for revenge or spite. Most do it for money or direct personal gain. Some people steal compulsively. Some people steal because they are starving. People do bad for the same reasons they do good: because it seems like the best idea at the time.

 

Human beings are such various creatures that I doubt that you can pin it on a reason. In most cases it at least starts somewhere with some kind of pain.

That never has to always be the case though either, since it's a common thing even amongst the youngest of children that they'll test their limits. See how far they can go. What authority will and won't allow them to get away with.



Some people are just born that way. Though I think Makaze hits the nail on the head, I think the deeper reasons are just that it's how some people are. Whether they were brought up that way, learned to be that way, became that way.


Theft is the pull of undermining power. Murder can vary for so many reasons and situations that there's hardly a single point that you can pinpoint it on. I think that the main issue comes down to just how much societal views conflict with that person's personal views. And they will react appropriately to such.

At the most though, there's normally someone to blame for it I think.

 

I don't believe people "are bad," but rather, that some people do bad things (as in, breaking the law since that seems to be what you're talking about here). Minor point but the wording of the title bothers me...

Anyway, crime is tricky. I point out the wording of the title because it's not as though some people plop out of the womb thieves and criminals, and we shouldn't dehumanize those who commit crimes by refusing to recognize the events leading up to the crime. Some fell in with the wrong people, were looking for the thrill, were unsuccessful financially and felt they had no other choice, had troubled childhoods, and so on. We can't attach one reason to cover the entire population of people who commit crimes. It varies, like everyone else has said.

 

I think he might be challenging that idea actually. Whether people are bad or not.


I agree people might not be born bad, but all the same, you can make that same argument for good I think. In which case for the sake of furthering where Mako started, what about people with prejudice actions when it comes to their crimes?

Like people who pull hate crimes against people of different races or sexualities. Recent actions taken in foreign countries where people are slaughtered for sexual preferences. WW2 with religious persecutions. KKK. Even dating back to the Crusades.



Also challenging the original question with this one. We call these things bad or look for sources. Just as it's very human for us to see issues with it, aren't the majority of these crimes that we'd designate as being bad also very human qualities? Things that humans have done naturally even before we began to publicly understand the sources that can go behind them?

 

Couldn't have worded it any better myself

I might as well give it a go, like I said I totally agree with what Misty said. Earlier today I was going to reply to this thread but decided not to so I don't end up going on some long winded rant about how ****** labels are. If you take a look at a crime for at it is at face value. You can easily find that you are going to be a lot harsher to those who committed those said crimes. However if you think for a moment about why they did it, things change.

A child could take food from a grocery store because life at home isn't all that great and he/she goes hungry.

A man could speed down the highway to get his pregnant wife to the hospital.

Teenagers that are passionate about music almost always pirate music.


And this list goes on and on and on. You will find that a good percentage of the time when you see something on TV about some person who committed a crime, people are a lot more judgmental then they normally would be. They almost never get the benefit of the doubt no matter how small the chances are that the person who did it, was actually not so "bad" after all.

But for real tho, labels suck.

 

Actually, there are many reasons ppl turn to a life of crime. People go through things in life. A lavished life w/ no problems can be a problem for a person if they feel like they;re expected to be perfect all the time. A life in poverty can convince a person to do what they need to survive, but that doesn't go to say that everyone having either lifestyle will turn to a life of crime. For example, 2 ppl exposed to the same conditions doesn't mean they'll both be criminals. It's really all about the mind set of a person. I mean my sister and i have the same lives, but i don't steal, unlike her.

Mental illnesses can also lead to a life of crime. also, you can be forced into it, especially if you allow others to make decisions for you. Ppl's families are also usually the driving forces behind their crimes. If it means a better life you know you can't get otherwise, would you do anything too?

 

Perhaps I should have clarified, so I apologize for that.

The crimes I'm talking about here are the more major ones like shootings, murders, rapes, etc.

 

A lot of that can be grouped into the "we have a terrible mental health care system and nobody is doing jack **** about it"

School shootings: "A local boy who was bullied to no end shot up a school this evening". Well gee I wonder why he did that.

 

*enter the Criminology student*

I was studying this a while ago, and there are basically heaps of theories out there as to why people commit crime. While some believe that people are born with a "Criminal gene", others do it because they "have no other choice" and some even do it to keep up with a stereotype they have put on them.

The first one, about the criminal gene, is something that has been looked at for a long time but disproven. In the early 20th century, it was thought that you could tell who would become a criminal by analysing the shape of their face and head and seeing a criminal gene. But physical features do not define criminality. Sure some people are psychopaths, but there is no physically defining gene as to why someone commits a crime.

Well, with that out of the way, let's look at Opportunity Theory. As @Mako pointed out earlier, theft for food or money to get by is very much one of the most common reasons for someone to commit a crime. Crimes from theft to drug dealing can be attributed to this opportunity theory. Why is it called the opportunity theory, though? Well, in a classed society, lower classes have most likely been born and raised in an environment with less opportunities for financial success than higher classes. It is thus easier for higher classes to obtain their financial goals than it is for a lower class citizen. These people who have the same goals must find other alternatives to get the same amount of money (without working), so they turn to theft and in severe cases drug dealing.

Why then, do we see higher classes also commit crime? Well the answer there is greed. To be quite well off, but hear that your rich friend is even better off and has more money and is more able to get the things they want than you are, well that's motive enough for crime.

Now with the stereo-type thing, that's a theory people have called "labelling". It's not quite so solid, but basically for a group of people being labelled as criminals, it gives them motive to actually commit the crime. Another way of looking at this is over-representation, which ultimately comes from racism/classism/etc. its really quite awful.

Murder is a tricky one. It takes a certain type of person with a specific motive and a real anger problem to commit a murder. This is why murder rates are really quite low in comparison to other crimes. Murder is irrespective of class, race, gender etc and is usually accidental. Legally speaking, murder requires an Actus Reus(the act) and the Mens Rea (the intention) (that's reeeeaaaaallllyyyy basic) to be considered a murder. Accidental murders are where the act happens but the intention isn't there. This could be from an argument or an assault. Take for example a couple whose argument has become physical. The man's anger intensifies so much that he ends up having the mens rea to kill the woman. during their fight, the phone rings, and the man pushes the woman out of the way to answer the phone, but here he does not have the intention to kill. When he pushes her, her head hits the corner of the coffee table and she dies, but that was not the man's intention. In Australian law, he would be charged with assault, not murder.

For intentional murder, the motive is usually emotionally or financially driven. There was a murder earlier this week in Sydney-one guy stabbed the other over an ex-girlfriend. that would be an emotional motive. Another example is killing someone and making it look like an accident for the insurance benefits (which I've only seen on TV shows but whatever). Serial killers also seem to be very emotionally driven (with Criminal Minds as my source here). Financially driven murders are usually arguments that have spun out of control from someone who owes the other person/s money. That is the most common cause for murder.

Now then, rape. Rape is even more complicated. There are religious reasons, there are men who need to feel dominated, there are serial rapists who are just sick freaks. The male domination thing seems to be the most common and complex. When a guy feels inadequate or incapable or just not as masculine as the rest of his friends...and it REALLY affects him, that could also be a reason to find a pretty girl and "make her love him" (i.e. force her to do that thing with him) to prove his worth. Of course with rape I am just speculating. I have no hard evidence for this, it's just something I've come up with through observation.

So in terms of the crimes you described, that would be why people commit them. Theft is mostly attributed to lack of opportunity, murder is an escalation from an argument/assault, and rape is to show dominance. Hope that helps a little bit :)

EDIT: For shootings, like the school ones, it's usually bullying. And feeling like nobody wants you around. Eventually this boils up in a pot of rage and you can explode, get yourself a gun and take revenge into your own hands. Another reason (which is total crap, but people choose to believe it) is violent video games. But I don't like that. No research has actually conclusively proven that violent video games lead to this stuff, so don't believe it.

 

Amethyst pretty much covered everything in her post, but I'm not understanding why a bad health care system would want to make people rape other people.

Now, what about age? Because in an episode of World's Wildest Police Videos, I saw a 16-year-old son partake in a shooting that killed cops with his father, both of which had a known history for being violent toward law enforcement.

 

Age is not as common a factor, so I decided to leave it out. In this case, I would attribute that to upringing. If that is something that the father has been doing then the son has learnt the same way, that would be it.

 

i agree, age isn't a factor. Anyone at any point in their lives can commit a crime.

 

bad mental health care, that's what i meant

 

Well, sort of. I couldn't see a five-yea old committing a crime.

 

not saying age restricts ability b/c it doesn't, we're all capable of committing crime, even a 5 year old, it's just u understand it's wrong the older u get, unless ur' mentally ill of course. And sometimes even then.

 

If I recall correctly, there has been a report that a kid (I don't remember the age, but he was very young, below 7) shot his younger sister with a gun. Sure it was on accident, but that's still a crime in my book.

Bleh this is a tricky topic. Crime can originate from so many points such as living area, income, public influence, accessibility to dangerous objects, all those lovely things.

 

Legally speaking, at least over here, if you're under 10 you can't be held criminally liable for your actions. Between ages 10 and 14, the prosecution must prove that you knew what you were doing was "seriously wrong" in order for you to be convicted of a crime. :)

 

That's not like here. Here, if u did the crime and r proven guilty you must do the time. Is jail good for someone under the age of 10, no, but that doesn't stop the syste from tossing 8 year olds into juvie.

#Merica

 

I live in the United States and I don't see very many infant prisons...