Why People Commit Crimes

886 Words4 Pages
Why People Commit Crimes Elsa Franco DeVry University Why People Commit Crimes Why do people commit crimes? This is a question which many people wonder about every day. Although we will never know the exact reasons, people like Siegmund Freud, August Aichorn, and Albert Bandura have their theories on why a person becomes a criminal. In the following I will consider why people commit crimes using these theories. There are a variety of reasons for a person to commit a crime including greed, pleasure, need for money, pure hate, insanity, etc. In the next paragraphs I will be discussing some of these reasons and explaining how they get to this point. Let’s begin with Siegmund Freud’s theory. One of his theories was the “pleasure principle. This basically means that humans have basic unconscious biological urges and a desire for immediate gratification and satisfaction. Freud believed that if gratification and satisfaction could not be acquired legally, people would instinctively try to do so illegally. (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/why_do_people_commit_crime.htm) Freud also believed that we learn right from wrong when we are children and we also learn to control our desires. He believed that “people primarily get moral principles as a young child from their parents and that if these were missing it’s because of poor parenting. (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/why_do_people_commit_crime.htm) So in essence he is saying that if our parents teach us as children to control our desires and properly teach us right from wrong, we wouldn’t have desires to acquire things illegally. For example, a “gangster,” his desire is to have money. So what he does is goes out and robs someone. He illegally acquired what he wanted. Now let’s look at another perspective. In the next paragraph we will talk about August Aichorn and his theory. August Aichorn had a similar
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