Crime Among Social Groups Essay -- Crime Social Class Society Violence

Crime Among Social Groups Why are crime rates higher among some social groups than the others? Are some groups more prone to crime, or are they in situations more conducive to crime? Many factors can influence a person to commit a crime, but is there a common trait that leads people down the road to actually committing a crime. Some traits that can influence criminal behavior are: Families, Economic status, Gender, Race, and Age. Married life domesticates but also can cause strain and difficulties. There are new conflicts that arise from people getting married. Often it is the first major decision of one's life and soon there are more bills, more relatives, conflicting plans, children, your spouse might die, and annoying habits that your spouse may have emerge, in most relationships these can all be overcome in time as divorce stats indicate, society is not yet to the point where for every marriage there is a coinciding divorce. "A correlation rises from low incomes, increased uncertainty and fear, and increased personal frustration. These factors put family life under a strain and lead to an increase in child and spouse abuse."1 If these new challenges cannot be overcome then a broken home is the most common result. A broken family can generate in different ways, death, separation, divorce. These are the most common but not all possible reasons for a broken home. There are two ways to observe a break in a fa mily: Husband-wife and Parent- Child. "In addition, less than one-third (31%) of the inmates were married at the time of admission to a correctional facility, compared with almost two-thirds (63%) of adults aged 18 and over in the general population."2 The death of a partner can cause an unstable mind in a surviving spouse and their children. Widowed people are chiefly older, so crime is a smaller more limited problem with the survivors. Younger widows tend to migrate to different cities, females generally moving west and males moving east. This migration, as we will call it, of widowed women overcrowding cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington cause desperate males to follow women to these cities. Knowing that widows are usually left with money through life insurance policies and inheritance from their deceased partners, less fortunate people envy the cash and see the dense population of female widows as being easy victims. Th... ...d Bade, Robin Macroeconomics Canada in the Global Environment Addison - Wesley Publishers Limited Don Mills, ONT. 1997 pg. 505 Sylvester Jr. Sawyer F. The Heritage of Modern Criminology Schenkam Publishing Company Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1972 Sinclair, Roberta L. and Boe, Roger Male Young Offenders in Canada: Recent Trends Research Branch Correctional Services Canada. 1998 Taylor, Jo-Anne and Atkins, Christine Models of Family among Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Offenders. Correctional Research and Development Correctional Services Canada. 1993 Tierney, John Criminology: theory & context Prentice Hall/ Harvester Wheatsheaf Hertfordshire 1996 Uzoaba, Julius H. E. Managing Older Offenders; Where Do We Stand? Research Branch Correctional Services Canada. 1998 Vanderburg, Susan A. Weekes, John R. and Millson,William A. Native Offender Substance Abuse Assessment: The Computerized Lifestyle Assessment Instrument Research and Statistics Branch Correctional Services Canada. 1994 Author Unknown A Profile of Inmates in Adult Correctional Facilities Statistics Canada, The Daily, Thursday, June 4, 1998 http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/980604/d980604.htm#ART2