In this blog post, we will look at the causes of crime through various examples to see if they are due to an individual’s innate temperament or environmental factors.
Everyone must have heard the story of “Jean Valjean” at least once in their childhood. “Jean Valjean,” who was suffering from hunger, could not afford bread due to poverty, so he ended up stealing bread and was imprisoned for it. After that, “Jean Valjean” escaped from prison and built a reputation in society by doing good deeds under a new name. The question we need to ask here is whether Jean Valjean stole the bread because of his inherently evil character. If he were not poor and had enough money to buy bread, would he have committed the same crime? If not, we need to look at the root cause of why he had no choice but to commit the crime, rather than simply viewing the crime as an individual problem, so that similar crimes will not recur.
The approach that views the cause of stealing bread as the character of Jean Valjean is called the dispositional approach, which is a traditional perspective that looks for the cause of behavior in an individual’s character or nature. In contrast, the situational approach looks for the cause of a crime in the situation. Let’s apply this concept to everyday life, not crime. For example, if a non-smoking woman develops lung cancer, the temperamental approach is to think that she has the disease because she has a family history and therefore carries the DNA for cancer. On the other hand, the situational approach is to find the cause of the disease not in heredity, but in secondhand smoke from her spouse or family members.
A typical example of a crime that can be caused by a congenital cause is the case of Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was a handsome man with a good reputation, but he was a murderer who killed dozens of women. These people are called psychopaths, and they are said to have damage to the frontal lobe or neurological disorders and lack the ability to empathize with the feelings of others.
An example of a crime that occurred due to situational causes is the Rwandan genocide. The Hutus brutally murdered the Tutsis, a different tribe, regardless of age or gender. Some of the murders were rape, and some involved killing neighbors who had greeted each other happily just the day before. The reason why the Hutu killed so brutally was probably not because they were particularly evil. Before this happened, the Hutu were probably just ordinary people. If the situation had changed and the Tutsi were in the same situation, we cannot be sure that they would not have killed just as brutally as the Hutu.
However, before discussing how to approach crime, there is an issue that must be considered first. It is whether it is possible to distinguish whether the crime was caused by a constitutional problem or a situational problem. Even in the case of ‘Ted Bundy,’ it cannot be concluded that his childhood environment did not affect the cause of him becoming a psychopath. There were also people who were Hutu but did not commit murder. However, since personality is something that is innate, there will be limits to preventing crime through acquired efforts. Therefore, it would be much more efficient to fundamentally solve the causes of crime by approaching it from a situational perspective rather than focusing on the causes that are difficult to change.
The effectiveness of this approach can be seen in the cases where crime is interpreted from the perspective of the situation rather than the personality. A representative example is the “broken window theory.” The “broken window theory” is the theory that a car with a broken window is more likely to be robbed or damaged than a car without a broken window. The point of this theory is that if you leave a small crime unchecked, it can lead to a major crime. A successful example of this theory is the case where the crime rate dropped sharply simply by removing graffiti from the subway in the United States. Just as people tend to throw away their trash on dirty streets rather than clean streets, improving the subway environment has reduced violent crime and the number of serious crimes. This is an example of how improving the environment can reduce the crime rate.
One might think that reducing the crime rate through a situational approach is minimal and that changing one’s disposition is the only way to reduce crime. In particular, if the damage to the frontal lobe is inherited in the case of psychopaths, the crime rate will increase in the same family, so it can be argued that crime will not be reduced unless the gene is eliminated. However, as mentioned earlier, crimes caused by psychopathic traits are also mostly caused by situational factors such as incorrect socialization in childhood. Therefore, crime prevention through a situational approach is the best option.
If we cannot be sure that someone will not commit a crime when placed in the same situation, we cannot be sure that they will commit a crime. This raises the question of whether the cause of crime cannot be concluded from the situation. Let’s look at the case of a criminal who committed theft in an unfortunate environment. Because theft is a clear criminal act, he will go to prison and will vow never to steal again and reflect on his actions. However, if he does not improve his circumstances no matter how hard he tries after being released, he will eventually steal again. To prevent this person from committing another crime, individual reflection and effort are not enough, and national-level help is needed to improve his poor circumstances. As can be seen from this, the reason why we should approach criminal behavior based on the situation and not on the individual’s disposition is not simply to determine whether the cause of crime is disposition or situation. We want to go beyond the traditional disposition approach and analyze the causes of crime from a new perspective to find a fundamental solution to reduce crime rates.
If crime is more influenced by circumstances than by an individual’s disposition, one might think that individuals should not be held responsible for their actions. However, two conditions are required for an individual not to be held responsible for a crime when imposing punishment. First, the circumstances must be exactly the same for the same crime. Second, all individuals must commit the same crime under the same circumstances without exception.
However, these conditions have limitations. First, the first condition has the limitation that there can never be a completely identical situation. This is because even if the circumstances that led to the crime are the same, the environment before that may affect the crime. Therefore, there is no clear standard for where to start considering the circumstances, and if the circumstances before the specific point in time when the crime occurred are considered, it is almost impossible to have a completely identical situation. The second condition has the limitation that it cannot determine whether the proposition is true or false. This is because it is impossible to put everyone in the same situation, and even if they are in the same situation, if even one exception occurs, the proposition becomes false.
Changing the current legal system may be problematic due to these limitations. Furthermore, the ultimate goal of punishing criminals is to reduce the likelihood of recidivism through rehabilitation. Professor Philip George Zimbardo, who published the “Broken Window Theory,” was the warden in the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” and he himself did not recognize the violence of the experimenters. The professor was able to realize his mistake and stop the experiment thanks to the information provided by an outsider who had accidentally witnessed the experiment. As such, a crime can be committed depending on the situation, but it may take outside interference to realize that it is a crime. This is the role of the police, and it is the reason why criminals are punished and confined to prison. However, this measure alone is not enough. This is because crime is not an individual problem, but a problem of circumstances. If the environment does not change, the same crimes will continue to occur, and there will be no change. Efforts are needed to approach crime from a situational perspective and change the situation. This is welfare, and it is the job of the state. It is also our responsibility to put an ordinary person in a situation where they have no choice but to commit a crime.
