Is crime a rational choice or a product of social circumstance?

I take a more moderate stance on this particular subject. While everyone is ultimately responsible for their own actions, we also cannot and must not use this as an excuse to simply dismiss factors of social environments and how they influence people. This just isn't a subject that can boil down to any one factor.

The way I see things is thus: Every crime must be judged based on the facts of the individual case. For some it is simply a matter of someone being an evil mustache-twirling twit, though I rather think this to be somewhat rare. For others social environment plays a rather large role, but as with the other extreme I think this is rare. I would say that for a great deal of crimes, it is a healthy mix of each.

I also feel it is important to point out that the field of criminal psychology does not exist to explain why people should not be held accountable for their actions, only to explain why they have committed their misdeeds. That it does get used for such a purpose is an aberration.

 

Well, unless the criminal is insane and unable to act rationally, any act they do is a rational choice. Likewise, if they are not at a child-like level of mental development, they have some moral system they use to determine their course of action. So yes, in the vast majority of cases crime is a rational choice.

However, that doesn't mean it can't also be influenced by one's circumstances. No matter how rational a person is, their circumstances determine their available scope of actions. Therefore, in many cases criminals were influenced by their environment. When life gives you lemons, you can't make a creme brulee. IMO such circumstances should be taken into account - just as they are taken into account to differentiate between self-defense and murder. If, in extreme circumstances, we are allowed to kill one another, then it makes sense that lesser violations can also be justified in similarly drastic situations.

Note that needn't absolve someone of responsibility. In most cases, criminals from a disadvantaged background aren't in such force majeure situations, and commit a crime - say, stealing - simply because it's easier and more likely to succeed. In such cases, their social, political etc situation should simply be mitigating circumstances. And, well, mitigating circumstances only go so far, especially in cases of serious violations, such as rape or murder. However, we should be aware that there were some social issues that contributed to this end and we have a responsibility to work towards fixing them - both to reduce future cases like that and to help the people who suffer from them and didn't become criminals.

 

My answer to the titular question is an emphatic "Yes!" i.e. I'm with dmc here; I don't really accept the dichotomy either.

The way the questions puts it is one pitted against the other as the so-called debate format suggests it. IMO the reason why it is put that way generally is political, with the Conservatives leaning towards rational choice (suggesting in their eyes crime fighting through repression and deterrence) and the Progressives leaning towards social circumstance (mandating things like social works to prevent crime through societal change). We shouldn't let that dictate our choices, nor let it pollute the debate.

I don't think that the two terms are mutually exclusive. It can be one, or the other and just as well both at the same time, and then it may be something else entirely, say, mere impulse. I think that for many miscreants out there, committing a crime doesn't require cognitive process.

As a rule I think that pure rational choice is something notably absent in human nature. I find absurd the concept of human beings, as Utilitarianism has it, being primarily driven by pleasures and pains, reacting to stimuli, calculating (correctly) what will give maximum pleasure, and act accordingly. We would live in a less messed up world if that was true.

I object to ideological claims to a monopoly on universal explanations for human activity. Man is far more complex and irrational than to allow for that, for one and especially, as dmc has put it so well, what is rational depends heavily on the circumstances. What is rational to A or B may very well appear utterly crazy to a distanced observer. While that doesn't discredit the idea of rational choice per se, it suggests to take it with the proverbial grain of salt. It offers valuable insights, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The same must be said for social circumstances as a factor. One needs to have both eyes open to see three dimensional.

 

I'm with dmc and Ragusa. To use your example Beren of the woman who steals food to feed her children will illustrate this just fine. She is making a rational choice (stealing food to feed her children) based on her social circumstances (living in poverty without enough money to buy food).

 

Most crime is from rational thought (some crime is irrational, generally caused by some form of mental issue). The rationale may not have been well thought out, but it was a conscious decision which involved some form of logical processing.

 

People seem to so often need reasons for things happening that I suspect it pushes them toward assuming that there always or most aften are reasons. But sometimes there are no reasons, or at least no good ones. Sometimes things just happen. The guy who cut off his disabled son's head the other day to make his girlfriend feel bad probably didn't have a good reason (making his girlfriend feel bad was not a good reason), or a logical reason (doing it was not somehow justified, nor was he put in an impossible situation), or a societal reason (no matter how hard I try I can't connect societal pressures or disadvantages to the need to do something like that), and he probably wasn't even insane (he looked and talked very normal - he didn't say aliens made him do it, or the mafia, or that he needed to recover a listening device from in there). But he still did it.

So that crime was neither rational nor irrational, societal nor individual, and even if we could call it any of those it wouldn't have changed the outcome or stopped it from happening. If there's no discernable reason for something happening, you can't predict it or defend against it or prescribe drugs for it or provide jobs for it or anything else.

 

I've never said that circumstances and the environment don't have a huge impact on people. I got a whole lot of grief awhile back for opining that poor people tend to commit a lot of crime. As has been mentioned since, there is a solid correlation between poverty rates and crime rates.

But regardless, circumstances do not determine behaviour, and they most assuredly do not excuse criminal behaviour. It's all well and good to look for the factors that influenced a person into making his decisions, but at the end of the day, people decide, whether rationally or totally lacking in logic, to do the things they do. IMHO, some of these criminals know better, but they figure "oh, if I get caught I'll just lay a sob story on the judge and I'll get off easy in the aftermath of the pity party!"

I mean seriously, how long can some people blame their bad choices on their lousy family lives or bad luck in terms of familial socieo-economic standing?

I'm all for addressing the problem things -- unemployment, poverty, social isolation and alienation, addiction, etc. But in so doing we shouldn't focus only on that and let dangerous people wander around at will to victimize more people. It should be made clear to those who commit crimes that no matter what your reasons, we will not tolerate criminal behaviour!