Cause Of Crime
Charlie Reese
The true cause of crime committed by rational people is making bad moral decisions. I doubt if there is one lonesome soul in our vast prison system who doesn't know right from wrong and who didn't know, at the time of his crime, that he was choosing to do the wrong thing. It just seemed at the time that doing the wrong thing paid better than doing the right thing. Sometimes it does.
Crime isn't caused by race, either, though you could make a statistical case that it is. Black demagogues who bring up race as an excuse are playing a dangerous game. In these times, somebody might just start arguing that blacks are more prone to crime than whites, and, as I said, you could cite statistics that would appear to prove your case.
But it isn't race that produces criminals. It's bad parenting.
The rightness and wrongness of things are taught by parents or whoever rears a child. That's one of the primary duties of parents, because children, fresh out of the womb, are little savages who don't know anything except their own desires.
My mother wore out several peach-tree switches teaching me the rules of the game. If the switches didn't work, there was always the weapon of mass destruction, my dad's belt. They taught morality and ethics the old-fashioned way. Here, son, are things you can't do, and if you do them, you will pay for your sins both here and in the hereafter. We get the first licks. God will see you later.
Every time we passed a forlorn chain gang working by the side of the road, my dad would say, "If you don't do right, that's where you'll end up."
I was taught grammar and pronunciation by constant corrections, and good hygiene and good manners by brute force. The secret of the success of this method was that there were no exceptions, no plea bargaining, no arguments, no excuses, no rationalizing. If you're going to train a person, you should never give them a choice. The Army knows this, and the Marine Corps knows it even better.
Of course I rebelled and took my licks, but when the sun set, I had a clear concept of right and wrong. To this day, that's why I don't rob banks or rape good-looking women. It's not the government that controls my behavior. It's the lessons implanted by two great parents.
Unfortunately, today many children lack this experience, either because they have no parents in the home or the parents they do have are just sorry and no good. Scientists now know that the human brain wires itself between birth and about age 5. If, because of abuse or neglect, it wires itself the wrong way, then you have trouble just waiting to grow up.
Orphanages run by loving people would be far better than some of the homes children are condemned to live in these days. If we as a nation had any sense, which we obviously don't, we'd be spending far more money taking care of children and teaching good parenting skills than constructing and maintaining a gulag of prisons and jails.