What makes a criminal?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Answers

What do you mean, exactly? There are many levels to being a criminal. Do you mean the petty kind or the heinous kind or both or in between?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I'd say a conviction does it.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I think Tom's hit that one on the head!

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Surely breaking the law does it. With or without a conviction?

I would consider a murderer a criminal - whether or not he has been caught, same for rapists or muggers.

But that's based on my thoughts rahter then the exact definition of the word.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

What about the Platonic view of injustice applied to society/politics? If your actions don't portray wisdome, courage, and moderation acting in unity to produce justice, then your actions could be an injustice. The worst of these are criminal?

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Here's a question: why is it that we occasionally have a spate of concern for victims of accidental death caused by negligence in the form of drunk driving with calls for the driver to be prosecuted as a criminal, but we almost never have a spate of concern for victims of accidental death caused by negligence in the form of poor workplace safety standards?

Why are drunk drivers "criminals" but bosses aren't?

Who gets to define crime and criminal behavior?

Why is it legal to force a dowsized worker and her family out onto the street but it is illegal for that family to sleep there, or god forbid, take over and fix up property that has been abandoned for twenty years?

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Actually, I do have a lot of concern for the victims of industrial hazards, and feel the bosses who allow those conditions are as much to blame as a drunk driver.

Society gets to decide who's a criminal and what is a crime. Determinations of whether particular behavior is criminal changes over the years, through legislation.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

I have a big problem with defining a person as a 'criminal'. Even if they have committed the worst crimes, labeling them as a 'criminal' implies that that is their entire identity and thus, they can never, ever escape that destiny of being criminal. Even for example when someone is convicted and is thus a criminal, when they are released and they have 'paid their debt to society' they still carry that label, there are no ceremonies which tell the world that this person is no longer a criminal.

So, what makes a criminal is the society who labels someone as such, without that label I think many more people can find a way out of lives of crime.

This is a subject that I'm very passionate about, I am a criminology graduate and am continuing on this fall, not that that makes me an expert or anything, but I do definately have opinions that I'm willing to share! :)

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

A great book that should be mandatory reading anyway, The Gift of Fear by Gavin deBecker, addresses this question quite extensively. I'm too lazy to recount any of what the guy says, but basically he's a very smart man from whom everyone could learn a thing or two thousand. Go get his book.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

certain experiences.. being pushed off the edge.. mental shit.

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2000

Speaking of criminals, although he has not yet been indicted for his obvious perjury, a committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court has recommended that Bill Clinton be disbarred. This recommendation will go to a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge for a decision.

About damn time.

-- Anonymous, May 22, 2000