Low self-control also explains why most criminals do not specialize. Hirischi and Gottfredson explain that, “offenders commit a wide variety of criminal acts, with no strong inclination to pursue a specific criminal act or a pattern of criminal acts to the exclusion of others…Thus, for example, the ‘rapeist’ will tend also to use drugs, [and] commit robberies and burglaries.” Knowing that self-control is to blame it easy to see how one person would commit such varied illegal acts. A lack of self-control can account for almost any type of crime. Both petty theft and white collar crime can be the result of a lack of self-control. In almost all situations low self-control is evident.
Many criminologists blame crime’s roots on rather vague origins such as moral poverty. Yet this and other “causes” of crime lead back to the even greater and more expansive problem of poor parenting. Research on the relation between family conditions and delinquency “reports that discipline, supervision,, and affection tend to be missing in the homes of delinquents, that the behavior of the parents is often ‘poor’ (e.g., excessive drinking and poor supervision) and that the parents of delinquents are unusually likely to have criminal records themselves.” “Of the parental characteristics associated with delinquency, criminality is the most striking and most consistent.” Parents who themselves cannot curb their own wants in-order to lead what are considered socially acceptable lives can by no means teach their children how to do so. Almost all of the personality based theories on crimes causation are a result of poor parenting in some form. Bennett explains that “it is no surprise that the rise in serious youth violence has coincided with a rise in instances of child abuse and neglect.” This is partially true because people are becoming more likely to recognize and report such problems. However, abuse (alcohol, physical, emotional etc.) of any sort can impale a parents ability to teach their children how to be successful in life.
In many cases low self-control and parenting are not the sole reasons for people committing criminal acts. Many people are forced into crime by outside influences such as a shortage of good jobs. Ann Dryden Witte explains it rather clearly, “It is not so much individual unemployment per se which causes crime, but rather the failure to find relatively high wage, satisfying employment.” In other word the issue at hand is “economic viability, rather than just employment.” Though people may be capable of attaining a job or two it maybe difficult to impossible for them to live off of the salary they receive. What is the point in working if one cannot make enough money to support oneself? Such realizations can easily lead someone to a life of crime. These street jobs may often demand the same commitment of a normal legal job, yet they provide better for the worker and sometimes earn more respect. If one can make close to 300 dollars a night selling drugs why should they work at a job that demands low respect in order to rake in minimum wage? “It is the condition of being locked into what some economists call the “secondary labor market”- low level, poorly paying, unstable jobs that cannot support a family and that offer little opportunity for advancement- that is most likely to breed crime.”
A study was conducted at the New York’s Vera Institute of Justice on inmates from Riker’s Island prison who were released in the late seventies. Of the men who employed at the time that they commited their crime, Two –thirds of them were paid less than $125 a week. Just 14 percent were were paid more than $175. This shows that the majority of the men where in the so called secondary labor market and supports Witte’s explanation.
There are many causes of crime. Some are internal, where as others are external. Yet none of these act alone. It is the mix of such problems that lead a person to commit a crime. A lack of self-control a scarcity of good jobs, and poor parenting are only a couple of the innumerable causes of crime today. However, they are some of the most encompassing of those troubles which exist.
, Micheal R. Gottfredson and Travis Hischi, Lack of Self-Control Causes Crime (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1990), 176.
Gottfredson and Hirschi, Lack of Self-Control Causes Crime, 172.
William J. Bennett, John Dilulio Jr., John P. Walters, Body Count: Moral Poverty and How to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996) , 77-78.
, Elliot Currie, Confronting Crime: An American Challenge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 112