Crime has been a vice in the society since the conception of civilization around the world. The society set rules and regulations to govern the limits of behavior within the communities. Currently, these rules and regulations are guised as laws that are set by governments or other legal organizations. Therefore, the society has standards according to which it assesses the behavior of a person to verify if their actions are criminal in nature. The causes of such criminal actions are also formulated by the society. This makes crime an action carried out only by people who are in situations that cause them to commit it. The society has its own perceptions of such situations, and the crime theory empowers these notions further. Most of these situations are insufficient in the scope of their coverage of the causes or types of crimes. The result of this is the formation of misperceptions of the cause of crime and the ignoring of a key section of criminal activities that go unnoticed.
After conducting several interviews with people within the society, it is clear that most individuals believe that crime is borne out of the desperation to acquire the basic needs. This leaves crime as a reserve for the low class fraction of the society. This leads to discrimination in the rule of law. Phantom racism and gender discrimination comes with this, since they form the basis for classification of social and economic status within the society. Furthermore, this focuses the crime control strategies on the areas of society with low economic and social development. Street criminals form the bulk of the offenders within these regions making the judicial system biased towards these perpetrators, while turning a blind eye to high-level, white-collar crimes within corporations and the government.
A considerable number of people regard crime as a situational act that is carried out based on the opportunity to do it. The coincidental placement of a person in a position without stringent supervision or foreseeable consequences tempts one to carry out a crime. The yielding to the temptation to achieve satisfaction wrongfully without any consequences makes one capable of committing crimes. People in authority are a sizeable portion of the criminals induced by opportunity to commit a crime.
The society’s definition of crime is based on the beneficiary of an act that is against the law for whatever reason the offender did it. It revolves around the desperate need to attain satisfaction at the cost of breaking the law. In society, socio-economic status determines the level of an individual’s satisfaction. Therefore, low class and desperate actions are obvious crimes within society. The society has knowledge of general crimes such as assault, rape, trespassing, drunk driving, robbery and other common misconducts. Therefore, the societal regard for crime is an act that has an injurious effect to others and is within the confines of the law. High-level crimes like corporate and white-collar offenses do not receive much attention within the community. This is because people in wealth and power carry out such crimes, but the society believes that they have all their needs catered for; hence, crime is not necessarily prevalent amongst them.
Society defines crime based on the various perceptions they gather from public media. Media plays a fundamental role in enlightening the society on the various crimes. Movies and music have led to the belief that African Americans and Latinos partake in crime more than white Americans. This perception has led to the insight that the law centers on these minority groups due to their poor socio-economic status. This comes with insufficiency in the needs of such people, and thus their high propensity to partake in crime. Statistical inferences also project crime towards the low class citizens rather than the high-class criminals that partake in white-collar and corporate offences. Furthermore, social institutions like schools and religious centers teach the society members to avoid the common crimes that involve street lawbreakers and such. Therefore, the crimes of the powerful and the wealthy are left out of the scope of crime among a significant portion of the society.
A crime is a violation of the laws and regulations of an aspect of society with consequences that aim to rehabilitate the perpetrator of found guilty. The case of Dr. Kevorkian stunned numerous people given that he euthanized several people without being noticed by the authorities. Had he not disclosed his actions personally he would have gone scot-free. The crime was a high-level one involving a qualified professional. The victims’ death was illegal, despite the consent from the ill patients to carry out the procedure. The law does not allow anyone to take one’s or another person’s life voluntarily or otherwise. He was charged with 39 accounts of assisted suicide within the USA because of his wrongdoings. This was a crime given that the patients also did not have the right to take away their own lives. This took place severally without questioning its legal parameters. Therefore, this shows the myths about crime that the patients who were victims of Dr. Kevorkian upheld.
A popular myth about crime is that the wealthy and powerful people do not partake in criminal assaults as much as the low-class society members. The powerful and wealthy have most of their needs at hand, and thus criminal activities that the majority low-class members relate to cannot be linked to them. This myth is so difficult to dissuade given that the two factions rarely intermingle. Furthermore, the society depends on people in high classes, and thus views them as benefactors rather than criminals.