It is an ongoing argument between many camps: is there a predisposition to crime, or does a person’s environment cause a person to lead a life of crime? Every year, lists of laws from the past criminalize behavior in ways that become the joke of the day.
The nature of true crime varies from person to person, from group to group and from legal era to legal era. Suburban citizens have children who abuse prescription and designer drugs, marijuana, cigarettes, powder cocaine, and alcohol. The same citizens call for the most stringent legal sanctions against urban youngsters of color who abuse designer drugs, marijuana, cigarettes, crack cocaine, and alcohol.
There are the same predispositions to the same crimes, but disparate attitudes cause a break in our concept of crime. The “It’s different when WE do it” mentality is so prevalent in America. Differing ideas as to what constitutes “crime” that are based on racism, cultural differences, or an “us vs. them” mentality add to the confusion.
Differing amounts of power, where a minority of Americans can easily influence law, adjudicate the law, and enforce the law with prejudice cause a distorted view of the true nature of crime in America. It is not that poor people necessarily commit more crime, it is that poor people are accused, arrested, and more harshly sentenced, mostly from plea bargaining with American justice.
If arrest rates for actual crimes in “better” communities were closer to the reality of those crimes, then a different picture of crime, and how people come to commit crime in America would appear. Vandalism, arson, joyriding, car theft, shoplifting, petty theft, drunk driving, fighting, rape and other petty and serious crimes go on all of the time, but are never entered into the system.
When it comes to “nurture vs nature”, there is no proof that a well to do, nuclear set of parents, an ethnically superior community, a religious culture in the home, or any other “positive” environmental influence does anything to prevent crime. In communities where crimes are not reported, or suspects are let go with no arrests or prosecutions, there are no statistics to tell us anything about the true nature of crime in America.
When there is no crime on the books, we can not take a look. That leaves the “nurture or nature” argument as a useless exercise as long as racism, economic, social and other disparities in reporting, arresting and prosecuting crimes exist.
Even when there is a known psychological disorder that is related to the type of crime, there is still too much bias and covering up for certain favored sectors of American society, for the facts to be scientifically acceptable for study.
