At 04:01 PM 03/29/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Charles: Most poor people are not "criminals". But is economic condition a
>factor in causing criminal activity of some criminals ? If not, what are
>we left with as explanations of causes of criminality ? Phrenology ?
Well "crime" usually goes up when unemployment goes up.
The problem here is that we only call crime what the poor do. What the rich do, which also involves crime (explicitly or implicitly) and violence (that of armies) is not called crime. Therefore these statistics/studies/etc. are worse than useless.
^^^^^^^^^
CB: I agree, except I think that the crimes of the poor are ultimately blamable on capitalism, so I do want to keep track of the stats as a measure of the lowering of the quality of life under capitalism.
A further complication in what you say is that the rich make the laws, and thereby legalize a lot of their stealing. There seems to be much doubt as to whether Enron execs committed an crimes , technically.