Crime, and Society
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Why are crime rates higher among some social groups than the others? Are some groups more prone to crime, or are they in situations more conducive to crime? Many factors can influence a person to commit a crime, but is there a common trait that lead people down the road to actually committing a crime. Some traits that can influence criminal behavior are: Families, Economic status, Gender, Race, and Age.
FAMILIES:
MARRIAGE
Married life domesticates but also can cause strain and difficulties. There are new conflicts that arise from people getting married. Often it is the first major decision of ones life and soon there are more bills, more relatives, conflicting plans, children, your spouse might die, and annoying habits that your spouse may have emerge, in most relationships these can all be overcome in time as divorce stats indicate, society is not yet to the point where for every marriage there is a coinciding divorce. “A correlation rises from low incomes, increased uncertainty and fear, and increased personal frustration. These factors put family life under a strain and lead to an increase in child and spouse abuse.”1 If these new challenges can not be overcome then a broken home is the most common result. A broken family can generate in different ways, death, separation, divorce. These are the most common but not all possible reasons for a broken home. There are two ways to observe a break in a family: Husband-wife and Parent- Child. “In addition, less than one-third (31%) of the inmates were married at the time of admission to a correctional facility, compared with almost two-thirds (63%) of adults aged 18 and over in the general population.”2
DEATH
The death of a partner can cause an unstable mind in a surviving spouse and their children. Widowed people are chiefly older, so crime is a smaller more limited problem with the survivors. Younger widows tend to migrate to different cities, females generally moving west and males moving east. This migration, as we will call it, of widowed women overcrowding cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington cause desperate males to follow women to these cities. Knowing that widows are usually left with money through life insurance policies and inheritance from their deceased partners, less fortunate people envy the cash and see the dense population of female widows as being easy victims. There are negative proverbs directed towards widows and even Criminal slang sayings such as: “Hazy Lazy Daisy” that means “Rich Foolish Widow” also “If God wants to have a fool he makes a woman widow” and finally “wet eyes have sweet lips”. 3 All of these sayings depict widows as being an easy target for criminals. DIVORCE/SEPERATION
When a family is going through a separation there is a strong possibility that a divorce will follow. If there is only a separation, over time, this can prove to be a stress provider as the person that you could not live with is still a part of your life. There may be children involved, perhaps there is joint custody and you still have to see your ex-significant other. Divorce is a more final way of ending your relationship but there still may be children involved. If you get divorced you may feel as though you are a failure and can not make even the simplest of tasks a success. For a married couple to get a divorce something insurmountable must occur, maybe one of, or both the husband and wife have a change in their personality traits, temper, sexual desires, possibly some economic problems arise, mental and physical illnesses or an addiction or overuse of drugs or alcohol. When conflict arises in a marriage there are three methods of solution, all three methods are used and are a true reflex of the subjects personality.
Escape is one method. Types of escape are divorce, separation or possibly suicide. The infamous “silent treatment” is also a method of escape, one partner will not make any conversation with the other no matter what the circumstances, for an undetermined period of time. An employed spouse may turn to the office for shelter from their hardships at home and become a workaholic, an unemployed spouse may decide to spend most of the couples time together daydreaming and fantasizing. Religion is a possible alternative as are substances such as alcohol and drugs are as a form of escape.
One can “Make a stand” in attempts to not be taken lightly when conflict arises in a relationship. Arguing and fighting over disagreements prove to be very stressful for both people and can cause problems away from the home.
The final option is to attack which is usually some form of a criminal or illegal activity against society. Crime rates of married men between eighteen to twenty-five surpass single men of the same age. Figures are higher in larceny and fraud but not in crimes of violence. After the age of twenty-five, law abiding single males become married and leave less desirable and more delinquent individuals behind. Females, on the other hand, show higher crime rates for married than single, with a vast age range of eighteen to sixty years of age. This fact does not hold true in economic and propery crimes because this burden usually rests upon the husband, but for small offenses such as assault or infringement of the peace.
BORN CRIMINAL
The born criminal can be identified as someone who usually commits a crime at a tender age, this out of character conduct for a young, innocent, child is passed down and is a result of an undefined series of hereditary influences that build up and pass on from one generation to the next. These crime committing children do not know any better due to the environment they are raised in. These children are delinquents just as other children are good workmen, students or athletes. They are unable to tell the difference between committing crimes, honest industry, or developing a trade. With crime a part of their life at an early age, a born criminal will find prison as a place where food and shelter are guaranteed without having to do much work and more often than not, they are usually forced to sit and do nothing, therefore making prison more comfortable than the community or city that they are from. Society may force people to fall back into crime, with institutions, segregation and surveillance, these constant reassurances of their not being able to function outside of prison deprived them of any chance of leading a normal life. The only way these individuals know to survive is to simply return to the so called houses of correction and prisons.
ECONOMICS
“There has always been a reluctance