What leads to crime?

[Luís Henrique]

Cool story (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline) here.

I actually have no idea of what to think about it. Seems too simplistic, and something else is missing - some research on why would lead make people violent.

So, for your thoughts.

Luís Henrique

[brigadista]

all these biologically driven answers are a cop out

and as for new york are they talking about Manhattan?

would the change in demographic[eg gentrification] affect this ?

just asking because im not in the US so I dont' know - but are the crime rate figures increased by the methods (targeting)
of policing black and white working class communities..

[Jimmie Higgins]

Could chemicals in an environment lead to people feeling more irritable? Sure and ergot fungus made entire feudal communities trip their asses off.

But it's absurd to say that something will lead to "crime": which is a social understanding with no direct link to biology in a meaningful way. It may be slightly less absurd, but I think still incorrect, to say that it could lead to widespread general anti-social behavior in a way that could be attributed to US crime rates. More common but probably no less absurd are the ideas of the "broken windows theory" or "crack-epidemic" so I guess an element seems plausible in comparison.

Really, it's the economy and precariousness and daily competition that is creating most of this sort of thing in everyday life.

[Monkeyboy]

Nice pun in the title.

I find it hard to believe, because of that I should not just disagree with it or call it nonsense, but I would need more evidence. How? Why? Biology may play a role, but I think sociology and evolutionary psychology play the biggest role.

I learned the broken windows effect when I did a study about safety, which included crime. Now that I think about it, evolutionary it does not seem to make much sense. But not everything of course can be explained by evolutionary psychology (I do think a lot).

But I do think we get teached a lot of psuedoscience nonsense in college (in Europe that is) - but that's for another thread.

[Kenco Smooth]

But it's absurd to say that something will lead to "crime": which is a social understanding with no direct link to biology in a meaningful way.

Not sure I follow the reasoning here, sure crime is defined according to social norms but the behaviours that are defined as crimes typically still fall into rough behavioural categories (violent acts for example) with clear links to biological facts.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I've read elsewhere that one thing which might be contributing towards a drop in crime (somehow I doubt there is a singular cause) is an increase over generations of generally pro-social (or at least non anti-social) behavioural tendencies since roughly the beginning of the industrial revolution, brought about by a increase in urban living, a lifestyle which generally requires that people tolerate one another to some degree in order to avoid a bloodbath.

[Regicollis]

Biological factors such as pollutants can constitute a secondary cause of crime but when discussing public safety and crime we should not avoid the elephant in the room - economic inequality.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Not sure I follow the reasoning here, sure crime is defined according to social norms but the behaviours that are defined as crimes typically still fall into rough behavioural categories (violent acts for example) with clear links to biological facts.

I once took a history class on criminology and all the texts basically said it's nearly impossible to determine actual levels of "crime" historically or any meaningful crime rates or rates of violence because culture and law and such play a much more significant role than any sort of possible inherent causes of such behavior. For example, rape has gone up, but that could also be that some kinds of rape were simply acceptable in the past and not even seen as "violence" because husbands "owned" their wives and could demand sex (and beat wives) legally.

And in the US for example, a great deal of the so-called crime explosion was not actually a result of just random violence but changes to the black market and criminal laws. The real criminal "violence" explosion in the US happened in the 1960s and this violence has generally decreased ever since - but crime rates and moreso the incarceration and policing rates have skyrocketed. This is due to policing changes as well as increasing penalties for drugs which made the black market more volitile (and profits higher). As another example, violence in Mexico has dramnatically increased - is this due to circumstances in the drug trade and border policies and internal migration from rural areas to cities and border towns, or due to some biological thing?

In short I think it's just way too convinient for a liberal magazine to point the finger on petrol and lead than deal with much more systematic problems tied to the nature of the entire system. I guess the right blames "bad morals" and sometimes "bad people (groups of people)" for crime and the liberals blame gasoline like the blame most things on.

[Thelonious]

If you want to observe crime in New York City there is a street where you can go: Wall St. It is the source that many other crimes spring from.

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

"Crime" is such a broad and nebulous category. It attempts to equate things that, on their own, have nothing in common other than their relation to existing laws. So I think to answer this question, we first have to determine what we mean by crime. For example, sexual assault, petty theft, and wildcat strikes are all crimes in the United States, but we (hopefully) would never try to find one singular phenomenon that leads to all three because they are all so different from each other. So I really think that we have to examine each action individually, within its broader social context, rather than try to ascertain a general rule regarding the cause of crime. Certainly, though, physiology, economic inequality, alienation, racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnocentrism etc are all factors that influence many crimes.

[cyu]

These guys must be exposed to a lot of lead then http://i.imgur.com/G6Ug1.png


One chapter regaled me with the "exciting possibility" that it's mostly a matter of economics: Crime goes down when the economy is booming and goes up when it's in a slump. Unfortunately, the theory doesn't seem to hold water—for example, crime rates have continued to drop recently despite our prolonged downturn.

Depends on what surrounds the economic downturn - if it's accompanied by political movements (like Occupy, Anonymous, anti-austerity movements, or the so-called Arab Spring) - then people have some hope for change and an outlet for their anger. On the other hand, if those political movements are destroyed, then instead of collective action, the only recourse is individual action in the form of grabbing what you can to save yourself.

The stronger and more widespread the political movements, the more aggressive energy is redirected into them - energy that might have otherwise been focused into other actions. If you define those political movements as "legal" - then there is no crime. If your government declares them "illegal" then of course there's suddenly a huge increase in crime.

If these political movements reach the point of revolution or civil war, then the government might define it as a huge increase in crime. On the other hand, if the revolutions succeed, then the revolutionaries would of course say none of it was criminal behavior.

As they say, "Revolution is not a crime if the government is overthrown."