Look, I understand the appeal of an argument that paints criminals as simply having poor morals, but it is a completely false and reductive argument that does not capture the complexity behind why people commit crimes. It’s easy to ‘be ethical’ when your needs are taken care of and you’re in an environment that supports you and guides you into being a healthy member of society.

When I say “need”, I don’t mean literally in the sense of “I need to steal that thing or I will die”. I mean it in the sense of a person being satisfied in enough aspects of their life, and having the necessary skills, to turn themselves away from committing crime.

>having the necessary skills, to turn themselves away from committing crime.

I grew up running with a sketchy crowd. I knew several people who stole things on a recurring basis. None of them did it because they were desperate or had “poor morals”.

You’re deriving this from an incorrect mental model where nobody “wants to steal” and they do it out of desperation. This leaves out people who steal for the thrill, steal because they literally have no moral problem with taking from huge corporations, etc.,

I think you’ll find nearly identical justifications between a guy that votes for someone to raise taxes on mega corporations and an anarchist who just steals from them directly.

> You’re deriving this from an incorrect mental model where nobody “wants to steal” and they do it out of desperation.

Wow, I’m not thinking that way at all. If that’s how it came across, I did a really bad job at explaining myself!

I don’t want to get into a huge thing, especially on an old thread, but what I was trying to get across is that I don’t think it’s good enough to just look at someone who commits a crime and say that it happened because they are ‘bad’, that all the blame is theirs, that society has no culpability.

When I say “need”, I don’t mean destitution. So take your example of stealing for a thrill. Why aren’t they getting enough thrill in other parts of their life? What easier or better thrill could be offered instead that doesn’t involve hurting other people? They clearly have an unfulfilled need for a thrill, and they are fulfilling it by stealing.

When I say “skills”, I don’t mean like job skills. I mean things like the skill of knowing how to talk through anger instead of physically attacking somebody. The skills of emotional regulation. Stuff that may be natural and intuitive for some, but foreign and unknown to others.

I believe that if we handled crime the same way we handle things like plane crashes—investigate without judging, look at more than just the individual, and help people instead of punishing them—there would be much less crime, it would be less serious, and suffering would be immensely reduced. But it’s way harder than just going “well, this person’s a piece of shit and they deserve be imprisoned until they’re 80 years old”.