Aggravating Factors That Lead to Crimes

Causes of Crime

Natural Causes of Crime

The factors and precursors that are associated in whole or in part with the causes of crime are prolific and many. Many of those causes fall under one of three major categories, those being biological, sociological and psychological. Indeed, many crimes are caused in whole or in part by inherent biological attributes, external factors or a combination thereof. Crimes can be committed of a person knowing better and not caring enough to not do or stop the behavior or they can be committed from a person that is at least temporarily unable to process and realize what they are doing due to being on alcohol, an illicit street drug or prescription medication. This report will cover all of those and provide examples of each, either general or specific. While some people perhaps lean a little too heavily on crimes causing them to commit misdeeds, there are indeed causes of crime that are entirely biological and/or mental in nature and thus inform why a person commits a crime and/or continues to commit crimes.

Literature Review

A total of four scholarly journals were consulted and are cited within this report. The first of those four relates to the age of an offender and the corresponding crimes that a person of a certain age, usually those younger in age, commits during the course of their adolescence and teenage years. Indeed, they assert that age is one of the major correlates but they also note that the fleshing out and explanation of this dynamic is both complex and contradictory at times. They note that the vast majority of crimes, more than two thirds, can be reduced if the procedural justice or social learning aspects of what leads to crime among teens are dealt with before the child reaches the age of 25. They note that there was a drop of 69%, nearly seven out of ten, when those specific dimensions were addressed rather than left to flare up more and create recidivism and/or a lifetime of crime and prison stays. In the end, they state that the relationship between age and committed crimes is something that can indeed be quantified and made tangible but that crime is due in large part, but not entirely, based on some parallel changes that occur during adolescence and the associated developmental changes. If a teen can be reined in and his/her dysfunction corrected and their life focused on better things, then the outcomes tend to be much better the majority of the time (Sweeten, Piquero & Steinberg, 2013).

The next source looks at crime causality in a sociological context. This dovetails a bit with the last subject but focuses more on the environmental causes rather than simply the biological and brain chemistry reasons. These sociological crimes can happen at both the macro and micro levels. Put another way, they can be causes in limited and specific environments or they can take on a very wide geographical and societal scope. For example, one teenager robbing one store would be a micro example. The Los Angeles Riots after the Rodney King verdict would be a macro example. Both of those crimes were caused at least in part by sociological factors but the scope of each is entirely different (Collins, 2013).

Another example of a social criminal uproar was seen during the times of abolition during the United States Civil War in 1863. There was a set of riots in New York City that occurred in July 1863 and lasted for the majority of a week. During that period of time, there were repeated assaults and attacks on the main abolitionist newspaper in New York City, that being the New York Tribune. The police, for their part, were quite aggressive themselves in that they wielded clubs against the accosters and probably made the situation all that more tense. Even so, this is a clear example of a macro sociological criminal even because of the underlying history and societal context that fed that proverbial fire (Collins, 2013).

The third and final cause of crime covered in this report is that of psychological reasons. The psychological issues and/or deficiencies that cause a person to commit crime can be entirely natural and internal an nature or they can be pushed along and egged on a bit via the use of alcohol and drugs, with the latter including both legal and illegally used or possessed drugs. Even ostensibly legal drugs are traded, used and trafficked in illegal ways due to people seeking a fix from drugs that they are not in need of or are otherwise not allowed to have. However, one source makes clear that while drugs can indeed cause or feed criminal behavior, that usually does not absolve the user from responsibility even if they are off-the-charts drunk or high when they commit their acts. Conversely, if a person is naturally unstable when completely sober due to conditions such as paranoia, schizophrenia and others and the person is not taking their medication that keeps them even and medicated, then much the same thing can still occur. Indeed, a person hopped up on PCP (also commonly known as angel dust) can be just as dangerous as a person that is paranoid schizophrenic and is off their needed medication for whatever reason. The crime sprees engaged in by people on drugs (or not on their drugs) manifest in one of four major ways. Those four dimensions and types are psychotic symptoms that are because of intoxication and/or withdrawals (e.g. A crack or meth addict), psychotic symptomology that is briefer in nature (e.g. A person that is drunk and then sobers up relatively quickly), a person whose pervasive use of intoxicating agents has altered their brain chemistry and it remains that way even when the person is not "high" and a person with a preexisting illness that causes them to engage in illicit drug use and/or criminal behavior depending on the instance. (Carroll, 2008). Other times, however, drugs are not remotely involved in a person's psychological causes of committing crime and a perfect example of this would be terrorists, lone-wolf terrorists being a good example and the one cited for the work in this report. Quite often, terrorist acts are the brainchild and are executed by a single person. This is where the term "lone wolf" comes from. One example of this was the shooting death of George Tiller that occurred in the lobby of his own church at the hands of a complete stranger who disagreed with his practice of aborting fetuses at this doctor's office. Another occurred when two soldiers were shot and killed at an Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. In such instances, a person (or persons) with psychological issues not borne of drug use planned, pre-mediated and then executed attacks on complete strangers for ideological and/or other reasons.