Causes of Crime

According to left-wing realist criminology, the immediate causes of crime are relative deprivation (not absolute deprivation). Based on this view, crime can occur in any social class at any time, whether among the poor or the wealthy. Absolute deprivation has no direct link with crime. Relative deprivation exists in all classes, but it affects the poorer sections more strongly because they, along with minorities, are deprived of the benefits of social development. This relative deprivation intensifies the tendency toward crime in such groups.

However, relative deprivation alone is not the sole cause of crime. There are many other causes as well. These may include desires and the lack of opportunities to fulfill them, and also greed, which has no limits and is not confined to any particular class. It has been observed that the wealthier a person is, the greater their greed tends to be. This is also among the motives behind white-collar crimes.

Nevertheless, relative deprivation is a powerful cause of crime because:

It is not limited only to the lower working class but exists at every level of society. Crime is not confined only to economic or financial offenses; just as violence exists among poorer classes, it is also found among affluent groups due to relative economic deprivation.

Poverty and deprivation alone are not the causes of crime. If that were the case, all poor people would be criminals. The needs of poor people are relatively limited and are somehow fulfilled. Rather than poverty itself, young people become deprived when they see others possessing greater luxuries than themselves. They are unable to reconcile with this deprivation and turn toward committing crime.

As discussed above, there are many causes of crime. Each offender has some personal motive, which differs from that of others. In this century, many criminologists have struggled to identify the causes of crime.

Allison has identified several causes of crime. According to social positivism, the causes of crime are absolute deprivation, determinism, and mechanical factors. These three aspects form the central focus of this school of thought. Factors falling within these categories are considered the causes of crime. However, this view is incorrect and fails to provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of crime.

There is no evidence to prove that absolute deprivation (such as unemployment, poverty, lack of education, and poor housing) alone is the cause of crime. For example, in England, despite extreme poverty, the crime rate in 1930 was very low. In contrast, left-wing realist criminology insists that under specific conditions, relative deprivation is the most significant cause of crime.

This situation arises when, in order to correct the unequal distribution of resources, some individuals begin to adopt personal solutions or strategies. This is an unjust reaction against an unjust experience. Therefore, it cannot be said that such individual responses are confined to any particular class; just as crime is not limited to the poor, these responses or actions are also not restricted to any single class.

In different periods, such individual responses become more prominent. During the nineteenth century, under the policy of capitalist free trade, this tendency was very dominant, and the crime rate was also very high. In recent times, it has again become quite noticeable in Britain, where crime rates are increasing. In the highly industrialized United States, crime rates have reached very high levels.

The idea that specific social conditions cause crime is related to the philosophy of determinism. However, saying that people commit crimes due to poverty does not mean that all poor people are criminals. This is not the case. Most poor people respect the law and avoid breaking it. On the other hand, many wealthy individuals also engage in law-breaking and crime. It simply means that under certain conditions, crime rates are higher in particular groups. Like other behaviors, crime is also a form of behavior, and under specific conditions it is not inevitable. However, crime is not merely a matter of moral choice; it is not an evil distributed unequally in the world. In every society, material conditions and resources differ, and in fact, these differences are quite significant. It is this inequality that influences crime rates.

The purpose of searching for the causes of crime is not to suggest that crime has purely mechanical causes, like pushing a table and causing it to move. Rather, it means that subjective factors in the behavior of certain groups in society encourage the commission of crime. However, attempts to link this idea solely with simple social factors (such as unemployment) have been unsuccessful.

No matter how much our study relies on sophisticated statistical methods, people consider unemployment to be unjust, unnecessary, and capable of being remedied. Thus, unemployment becomes a cause of dissatisfaction, and when individuals begin to feel socially and economically excluded from the mainstream of society, this dissatisfaction intensifies, which in turn leads to crime. In the present era, this sense of dissatisfaction is quite evident. Added to this is the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes. People are well aware of the interventions suggested by Keynes. They do not consider poverty and unemployment to be necessary or natural conditions. In their view, unemployment and its consequences are not natural realities but the result of failure of society and government.

The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that it assumes the causes of crime are immediate, which is not the case. People take time to understand their problems and even more time to find solutions. In such a situation, the idea of immediate causes becomes unrealistic. There is often a considerable gap between unemployment and turning toward crime. Young people require time to develop their subcultures and to assess their conditions, and these patterns often emerge only after several years of unemployment. Therefore, directly linking unemployment with crime is flawed reasoning, as it ignores the time people take to evaluate their circumstances and seek solutions.

Human beings determine their priorities in difficult conditions. On this basis, the issue of the causes of crime becomes highly complex. However, new bureaucratic criminology denies this complexity, and left-wing idealist criminology also fails to provide a solution. In contrast, right-wing realist criminology does not deny the process of crime and identifies multiple causes, but it does not consider the unequal distribution of power and wealth to be the most important cause of crime.

The relationship between physical structure and crime is accepted by left-wing realist criminology, but in a somewhat different way. Unlike biological determinists, it does not consider crime to be hereditary; however, from the perspective of crime, it regards physical build, physique, the hormonal system, and age as important factors. In contrast, left-wing idealist criminology and labeling theories completely ignore the relationship between biology and crime. In reality, compared to weak and frail individuals, taller and stronger persons are more likely to commit violent acts. Left-wing realism accepts the strong connection between hormones and violence. Healthy and strong individuals are more inclined toward crime than weaker ones. Compared to women, men—especially young men—are more prone to violence. However, according to left-wing realism, this violence is a product of social conditions rather than biology. In its view, physical strength is only a temporary factor in committing crime.

As mentioned earlier, a school of criminology associated with right-wing thought insists that discipline (order) should be given priority over justice. However, left-wing realism does not agree with this. In its view, social order can only be maintained as long as people perceive society to be based on justice. When key institutions of society (such as the police and the judiciary) undermine this sense of justice through their actions—such as arbitrary arrests (as is happening these days in Pakistan), spreading fear, or imposing punishments disproportionate to the crime—this creates an atmosphere of distrust and alienation regarding law and justice. This is especially true among those who are already part of the lower strata of social control, such as unemployed youth from the working class and marginalized minorities who are already experiencing relative deprivation. Police mistreatment and excesses often push these individuals toward crime. In this way, relative deprivation turns into criminal behavior.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of the police depends on public cooperation. As explained earlier, it is often the public that reports crimes, provides evidence, and participates in court proceedings to achieve justice. Without public cooperation, police performance becomes very limited and ineffective. If people begin to feel that the police and judiciary act arbitrarily and unjustly, then law-abiding citizens—who are crucial for the functioning of these institutions—become disillusioned. They refuse to cooperate and may even be drawn toward crime. While right-wing realism believes that crime can be effectively controlled through strict enforcement, left-wing realism argues that only through justice can order be restored and stabilized.

As repeatedly emphasized above, public cooperation is essential for crime control. This importance has two aspects: first, adherence to law in everyday life and encouraging others to do the same; second, cooperation (or lack of it) with the police. If the public does not willingly cooperate with the police and judiciary, the social order begins to collapse.