Sociological Theory Of Crime Causation
“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is also true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on” (Kennedy). Nowadays, there are too many tragic crimes happening in the world every day, such as burglary, larceny-theft, raping, robbery, and shootings, etc. How many people would truly understand the reason behind it? Why do people commit crimes? What makes a criminal a criminal?
The factors of a crime are tremendously effective to the offenders and victims, they include personality, mental health, socio-economic status, family, society, community and political environment. Each of them has a potential lead to a crime. Later, the essay will explain each of the factors and show how they affect the offenders and cause the crimes in our society. While the causes of crime are complex, the factors lead to a crime because crimes happen every day in the world, people could become a criminal from all over the world potentially, and the reasons behind the criminals can affect hugely. Crime is defined as an action or omission which constitutes an offense and is punishable by law. There are several factors that can affect a person into a criminal. Criminal behavior has many different variables and it can lead offenders to recidivate. It has serval traits in criminal behavior, anti-social personality, low self-control, and substance abuse.
Anti-social personality can happen on a young age of fifteen and can include, being introverted, risk-taking behaviors, aggression and lack of restraint. People with low self-control are impulsive and insensitive to the others; they tend to engage in a physical way rather than mental activities which could harm the others, thereby turn into criminals. Substance abuse is a pattern of using drugs or alcohol repeated and often interfere with personal health, emotional control, and social relationships. This can lead to anti-social personality disorder and disregard for the others. According to the official website from FBI, the statistics showed a violent crime occurred every 25. 3 seconds and a property crime happened every 3. 5 seconds in the U. S. from 2010. “Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community” (Wells). Crime is part of the human nature; no crimes could be removed from this world but only prevention. Crime has been there for ages, it has been restricted and punished by different laws and rules at the beginning of time. It also can prevent the crime by killing the chicken to scare the monkey. However, everyone could be involved in crime potentially with all the factors. First, human beings are not perfect creatures without mistakes. Second, each of them individually has a different personality and ideology. There is no child born with criminal characteristics as a criminaloid. Factors have a significant position here. They can change a person to another one.
For example, a child is growing up with a violent and abusing environment, the chance of going astray is way higher than growing up in a normal family. Society is another important factor in this case. There is poverty, discrimination and the collapse of traditional social institutions contribute to crime within a community. The crime itself is a social problem, it is extremely effective to the society. It majorly influenced by bad relationships, desire, and all these social behaviors can be taught to others or learned by the others and form a bad society. Although crime is a problem in our society, in order to resist and prevent crimes, people have to understand the reasons behind the criminals. Mental health is one of the reasons behind crimes. People with mental health issues will increase the chance of taking a risk in crime, risk varies based on other factors, such as low self-control, substance abuse or depression. Mental health could be the reason behind the criminal behaviors in some cases, but it does not mean all criminals have mental health illness or who have mental health illness are criminals. Socio-economic status is another reason behind the criminal behaviors. People with a financial problem may attempt to get money through some inappropriate and illegal ways—such as robbery, shoplifting, dealing drugs, and burglary. Thus, socio-economic status is a significant factor and it can lead to depression to the person; then the rate of crime will increase than before.
Even though crime is the most visible result of a societal failure, it is considered as one of the biggest social problem in our society. Crimes affect our society and it has different factors that are effective to offenders and the reasoning behind those criminals are tremendously important. Sociological theories, then, will become more complex, taking account of individual traits, the immediate social environment, the larger social environment, and situational factors.
