Need a criminal to answer this

a reply to: SpecialSauce

muse7 brought up the important question: What is crime?

You mentionend in the OP:

Can someone please explain this to me? Why do people commit crime? If you don't commit crime you can have good beer, good TV, good looking women, good jobs that pay good money, a soft bed, privacy, property, technology and good food.

- good beer is considered a crime, for instance in saudia arabia.
- good looking women - a crime in muslim countries
- good TV (in my books that would be independend, unbiased uncensored news) - a crime in many many states.
- privacy - seems to become more and more suspicous in the US
- good food - you won't get it. because criminal lobbys feed us with GMO. but that's no crime, because the lobbys are making the laws.

Rules and laws are always made by the rulers. It does not have to do with morals or human values.

My own compass is: Treat others like you want to be treated.
Or treat them how they treated you.

I know i don't want to be robbed - so i don't rob other people.

a reply to: svetlana84

That is absolutely spot on. Defining what a "Crime" is can be somewhat subject. What makes you a criminal one place may be completely legal elsewhere. If I would light up a joint where I actually live...that would be commiting a crime. Go to Colorado or Washington and it's perfectly legal. I think you have to first draw a line as to what is a "crime" i.e. breaking some written and enforced legal statute, and what is "victimization' i.e. directly or by method of action harming another person(s) in some fashion. I can see many grey areas where just breaking the law isn't actually victimizing another person.

laws are made to be broken. I have never killed or raped anyone though technically i have been raped..(by a female) and i enjoyed it.

I think it most cases it is as simple as they did an internal cost/benefit analysis and they feel the reward outweighs the risk.

originally posted by: Menrva

originally posted by: viscar
a reply to: SpecialSauce

Studies show a huge portion, I think over 80 or 90 % of crimes are related directly or indirectly to drugs.

Meaning people who commit drugs or are victims are crimes can trace it back to drug use, drug sales, or drug acquisition.

Where did you get the stats you mention? I have not learned anything about the stats being that high regarding being under the influence while committing a crime. According to NIH, 1 in 4 inmates in state prison committed a crime while under the influence, 32% of state prisoners and 26% of federal prisoners said they had committed their current offense while under the influence of drugs."

Menrva, I don't think you fully understand his comment. Yes your stats about crimes being committed while under the influence of drugs might be correct, but that is not what viscar is saying. He is saying that they are related to drugs, either directly or indirectly.

The criminal wants, so he takes - property, life.

The criminal has no conscience, no inhibitions. He does what he wants because he doesn't give a damn about the consequences for himself or others.

a reply to: SpecialSauce

lol r u serious

I've always said that many many laws shouldn't even be needed but alas it seems we humans are little buggers for wanting to constantly push boundaries and see what we can get away with. Outside my house is double yellow lines = no parking and its opposite a junction but of course there are idiots that insist on parking there, and as a result no-one can exit the junction. Why should they need to be told, have yellow lines painted, be threatened with fines when just plain common sense says "ahh if i park there no-one can move and the high street is jammed"?

We have come to completely rely on law to tell us what to do how to act and behave. If there isn't a law against it...its fair game regardless!! And how many times do you hear people cry for MORE laws? "Oh there should be a law against it" "Why don't they make it illegal?" as if passing a law in necessary for people to not do something that's blatantly wrong

Common sense is quickly disappearing

"You're better off rich & guilty than poor & innocent" - IT

Of course, it depends heavily on the "crime" committed and the perspectives taken into account. Where one sees a person as a 'bad guy' another will see them as a 'good guy'. Would you not consider a crime if you were under some unfortunate circumstance? Your parent(s) need medicine, which they nor you can afford, they have 1 weeks to live if they don't get it... you've tried everything to get the resources required. There's but a few options left. Stealing it doesn't seem like a huge leap in this perspective, does it?

originally posted by: CharlieSpeirs
lulz...

I sold illegal things when I couldn't work because I was caring for my disabled mother...
I smoked to forget some horrible things...
I put a policeman into an ambulance for daring to put his filthy pig hands on me...




Wanna know something...
I'd do it all over again.

I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

originally posted by: UnBreakable
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

I'm not quite dead yet.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: UnBreakable
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

I'm not quite dead yet.

Darn. That's what I get from attempting a Johnny Cash lyric. I didn't do it right.

a reply to: UnBreakable

I see your Johnny Cash and raise you a Monty Python.

I think the simplest answer is because there are too many laws.

Don't know all the laws? That's probably a crime too.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

We want...A SHRUBBERY!

a reply to: SpecialSauce

Have you been living on Mars -some people are better off in the jail

They have more there than on the outside / more respect / more food , i kid you not

Well in the U.K anyway where the prisons are a hole lot easier

Platstations /Xboxes and your own room

and jon q public picking up the tab

With social transparency being the past decades mantra, seems less transparency through governments happened yet far more tattletelling when it fit the agenda was all the outcry garnered.

Interesting how the largest part of this thread addressees poor crime... and it makes sense because when you think of the largest city in any country and the crime rate there it is always the poor that come to mind.

One link:
The Decade's 10 Biggest Financial Crimes

www.businessinsider.com...

How bigger crimes take longer to be faced and go unchecked :

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: SpecialSauce

1. Desperation.

2. A sense of entitlement.

3. An inability to be accountable for their own actions.

4. Thrill seeking.

5. A complex mix of any or all of the above.

a reply to: SpecialSauce

Is creating money from nothing, devaluing all of the money in an economy, not a crime somehow?.

You see, criminals don't always get caught, and what they do is not always considered to be a crime, even if it is an honest to goodness real live crime.

Those of you who think of physical abuse and sexual abuse being the only cause of crime are being somewhat naive, there are many more things that happen to people which cause them to become demoralized and make the wrong decisions regarding all sorts of things.

Reaction to undue force and exploitation are frequent causes of demoralization and illogical reaction to these demoralizing abuses forces is not so uncommon....

Those ranchers in Oregon, having their peaceful and harmless enough protest are protesting the loss of livelihood and the theft of land without due process or consideration by the government. The government has been over reaching in it's legal authority for quite some time now, and people are starting to notice. People who are effected directly at least, like most people aren't....Yet.

Excessive legal force.
Unfair treatment and low pay by employers.
Constantly rising prices for things we all need.
Being forced to do business with businesses you would prefer not to patronize.
Constantly rising tax obligations on everything.
Constantly shrinking services for those tax dollars we pay.

Just a few things that effect the decision making processes of people and demoralize some into making the wrong choice and reacting in ways that are considered to be criminal.

If the one pushing one into not caring to do things the right way because there is no real benefit to doing things the right way, who then is the actual criminal?.

Most people who are accused of being criminals are not criminals, not really.

They are victims of punishment for committing infractions against a nameless and faceless, non-living code. They didn't harm any person, they didn't harm the code because the code doesn't really exist in reality.

the only thing that is real in most cases is the time taken from people as punishment for breaking the code and the money they pay for supposedly breaking the code.

Victimless crime?, not exactly.

The code doesn't care, it can't be harmed in any way, it can't feel or bleed or get hurt or injured or imprisoned for something.

The code is written to harm and steal from the people masquerading as some kind of law or something, when in actuality it is a legal trick that too many stupid people are too intimidated to fight to correct.

I could go on but I won't.

I became a criminal through discovering certain banned substances made me feel "normal" (not even high, mind you... just functional- though it did expand to varied sampling and determined experimentation).

Now I'm on a daily, legal, more expensive analog of the very same substance that normalized me, though with a felony record... but at least I feel "normal" ... or as normal as weirdos feel, anyway.

Everyone breaks some law, these days, and are thus "criminal" ... exactly because the laws are so massive and unknowable, and precisely that way to give the power structure.. .wait for it... power.

As far as theft (in most cases), corruption and violence of any sort but self defense... I find that detestable.

It's all perspective, though, and NOTHING is simple.