[ 28 May 2003: Message edited by: Francis Mont ]

Among the images I've seen discussed on the internet and in magazines are larger areas connected with some emotions or lack of them, mini-explosions in the brain, variations on section sizes in the brain itself and more. I think this research should be persued.

When you consider the variations of "taste" in the general population, it's no surprise that sexual variations exist. However, the ability to see where choices may be harmful could be missing in pedophiles and certain other people, like habitual rapists and killers who see nothing wrong in their actions.

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Originally posted by Cougyr:
Theft is related to oportunity. Violent crimes are heavily related to alcohol.

One thing that does not deter crime is severity of punishment. The important thing is being caught, prosecuted and dealt with. If the chance of being caught is very low, the crime rate goes up. If there is a guarantee that one will be caught and prosecuted and punished (however lightly) the crime rate goes down.

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I would like to see some evidence with regard to your alcohol comment.

And also I disagree with the latter half. Severity of punishment is a factor. It is why burglars do not carry weapons and why, soon, we all carry less than 19 grams of pot in our pockets.

But I also agree that tougher penalties do not mean less violent crime. If they did, there would be no safer place to live on earth than the US. We knao that isn't true. But I don't think being caught is a factor either primarily because criminals do not plan to be caught.

If we break violent crime down into two categories: premeditated and non-premeditated, it is easier to see. Two guys who get into an argument, drunken or otherwise, and wind up assaulting each other do not consider they could face charges when throwing punches commences.

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Apart from these quibbles, I agree with you, nonesuch. Criminals are made, not born. If the 'misbehaver' is taken behind the barn early enough, by a few of his peers, and explained in a no-nonsense-way what is and what isn't acceptable, and then let go home where he is treated with love and respect by his family and community, very few would persist.

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Alcohol is very certainly directly related to violence. This is an excellent website with a lot of information on the subject:

ariv (alcohol-related injury and violence)
http://www.tf.org/tf/alcohol/ariv/

I also agree with Cougyr that severity of punishment is not so much a deterent as is the likelihood of being caught.

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It is an assumption I lean toward -- I have no proof either for or against it.

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I find it interesting that on the other thread you asked for proof of the opposite side of this discussion, and sort of mocked that position as being rather muddled thinking.

I guess your idea of a sense of humour is resonding to yours and good old Francis's comments with a blush and cast down eyes, as if to say, "Oh no, you got me" with the quip Oscar Wilde himself could have wrote:

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Tommy, why don't you get a life?

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I amvery disappointed in you Francis, has it not occurred to you that maybe this is his life? You could be more sensitive.

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This is a couple of times that, after you've been challenged on some aspect of your obviously stridently held viewpoints, your responses have gotten more and more curt, finally devolving into insults.

While no-one likes to have people disagree with them your petulence in dealing with me and others strikes me as similar to a child grabbing their ball and going home. I can see you standing in front of your computer stamping your feet and waving your fists around.

I know it is hard for you to deal with those who differ on issues. I was only asking why on one page you were so assured on your point, but in a flash, as the page turned so-to-speak you clammed up on what you called a fascinating subject. Out of bounds I guess.

Ah, why do I bother.

[ 28 May 2003: Message edited by: Tommy Shanks ]

Second, we don't seem to care much for the process, preferring instead (and again) to just assume. If it seems to make sense it must be true, right? As a result, we'll explain a bank robber, a mugger and a rapist as "products of their environment", without ever trying to draw the line between, say, alcoholic parents and raping a woman at knifepoint. [i]Exactly how does having parents who drank too much make a person rape a woman?? Why don't we seem to care to investigate this if we're going to use parental alcoholism as a (partial) explanation or excuse for behaviour?

Seems to me that poverty could explain shoplifting a bologna from Safeway, but how does it explain shooting someone in the face after jacking their car? If we just assume "some kind of connection" without actually studying it in depth then we aren't being very scientific.

But for many crimes like rape, murder, white collar crime, etc., I agree Magoo, how does one "learn" or absorb this type of behaviour?
These are the classic types of crime, as Trisha noted, about greed, power, and control.

I once read a great book about Edwin Boyd. The reason he robbed banks, essentially, was he didn't want to be like the schmo's he saw going to work. And robbing banks was exciting and glamourous, being in the paper and all. Even jail, and his many escapes were an adventure.

I would agree that most crime is about power. However, you have to make a distinction between those who have tons of power but can never be satisfied (and this attitude is not confined to what we call criminal dehaviour. There are plenty of legal ways to satisfy a pathological addiction to power) and those who have none at all and desperately are trying to take some back. At a certain point, people just stop caring what means they use to do so.

I think we can all agree that poverty breeds crime and that most crime (in the strict legal definition) is perpetrated by the poor. These people are legitimately disadvantaged by society. Their anger and feelings of powerlessness are valid and real. Of course, two wrongs don't make a right, but it is important to acknowledge that there are TWO wrongs, and not just one.

I'm sure people don't mean the original question the way it sounds. "born or made" is a false dichotomy that leaves no room for free will. Are we helpless pawns of our genetics or our environment? The answer, of course, is a little bit of both but ultimately neither, as people here seem to be saying. To suggest that anyone is "born" a criminal leads us down a dysopian "gattaca"-style road of an engineered humanity. Well worth avoiding, I think. What we're really wondering is to what degree are criminals responsible for their actions, given the clear correlation between certain societal factors and criminal behaviour.

Once again, it comes down to the difference between individuals and society, and the different mindset required to deal with each. As an individual, everyone is ultimately responsible for their own actions. Clear enough. But many go on from here to assert that because of this, the idea of a unified entity called society is nonsense and that you can only deal with individuals, which just isn't true. Humans are social animals and pretending you live in a bubble, unrelated to the behaviour of everyone else, is just putting your head in the sand.

As a part of society, we also bear the responsibility of what our society does, and the factors that we allow to exist which promote crime by promoting injustice and deprivation. We force them outside the social contract (which proports to include everyone), and they act accordingly.

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How does a foetus know what's going to be illegal when it grows up?

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It doesn't. In fact it doesn't know anything. It's developing its own particular neural pathways, but it will have to wait until it's born to find out if these pathways are going to promote behaviours that we would call illegal, or not.

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if criminals are born, one would expect roughly the same crime-rate in all societies, in all periods.

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Except that all societies across time and space have not defined crime in the same way. BTW, if capitalism indeed causes poverty, then as you say, wouldn't we expect exactly the same level of poverty in all capitalist countries throughout time as well??

Personally I don't believe that crime is genetic (although studies of disorders like Kleinfelter's Syndrome suggest that it may be), and I don't believe that criminals are made by their surroundings either (or we'd expect everybody from a certain neighbourhood/skin color/financial status to become a criminal or not become a criminal.

Me, I think a criminal is born the moment someone decides that their immediate gain is more important than the rules we agree to live by in society. I don't think you need to be poor, nor a certain ethnicity, to decide you want to molest a child, rape a woman, rob a bank, etc.

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BTW, if capitalism indeed causes poverty, then as you say, wouldn't we expect exactly the same level of poverty in all capitalist countries throughout time as well??

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Capitalism doesn't cause poverty: it causes disparity. Poverty doesn't cause crime: disparity does.

First. It's perfectly possible for a community to be poor and honest - in fact, it's easier to be honest when everyone is poor. It becomes difficult to stay honest when you are poor and somebody else's wealth is constantly shoved in your face.

Second. All 'capitalist' countries do not handle their economies the same way; nor does the same country handle it the same way at all times. When the economy is strong and employment is high, people feel they have a chance to improve their circumstances by legal means. When all segments of the population (including the differently-hued) have similar opportunities, there is less disaffection and anger. When taxation is fair and social services readily available, people don't lose hope.

Third. Cultural differences exist. This is partly why i divided crimes into categories.

Basically when you are speaking of criminal behaviour you are talking about something that is incredibly varied, diverse and also quite frequent. To try to reduce all of these actions to a single cause would be absurd.

Criminal behaviour is also something as socially defined by competing interests with diffferent degrees of power. You will not have a consensus as to what constitutes criminal behaviour even within a single culture at a particular time let alone across culture and history.

[ 30 May 2003: Message edited by: N.R.KISSED ]

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It doesn't. In fact it doesn't know anything. It's developing its own particular neural pathways, but it will have to wait until it's born to find out if these pathways are going to promote behaviours that we would call illegal, or not.

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The wonderful world of neurology doesn't quite work that way. You will not have complex neural pathways developed at birth, the brain goes through a process of radical transormation and growth in the first few years of birth and there remains a significant amount of neural plasticity throughout childhood and into adolescence.
A certain degree of plasiticity continues in adulthood, afterall learning is expressed physiologically in chnges in neural pathways.

Nobody on this thread has defined crime, criminal or even antisocial behaviour. I have suggested classifying antisocial behaviour, so that jaywalking and rape, armed robbery, tax evasion and noise after midnight are not all equated.
Obviously, different crimes are differently motivated and have widely differing aeteologies.

Yet, i submit that every society has in its power to prevent the majority of crime in all categories.

[ 30 May 2003: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

There is a small percentage of the population who test as psychopathic or sociopathic ie do not have a concience, cannot tell the difference between right and wrong or do not care. Generally, my understanding is that this condition is something one is born with. I don't know if there's been any success in attempts to "teach" individuals how to be empathetic. However, what a sociopathic individual does tends to differ. Those who don't learn how to succeed in society may become murderers, rapists etc. Those who do may become corporate executives (I kid you not, I wouldn't be suprised to find that a high number of people who "succeed" do so because they don't empathise with others, don't care about hurting others and are able to focus on their goals and not let anyone or anything stand in their way and are adept at manipulating the people around them).

[ 31 May 2003: Message edited by: Mycroft ]

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there seems to be some genetic disposition towards alcoholism

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Mycroft you also make the important point that anti-social behaviour can be rewarded(or at least rareley punished in one context(corporate crime) and punished in another( street crime).

Which also raises the question of what is a violent crime. People genuinely think of individual assaults or murders while not considering full-scale despoilation of the environment, destruction of a community , faulty and dangerous products or working conditions. All OF these things result in a greater degree of suffering than most individual assaults.