If trapped in absolute poverty, would you turn to crime?

[Abomination]

Depends where you live but in New Zealand there are so many avenues open to those without income that crime is not a choice of necessity here but of malcontent.

If I was in the US I probably would turn to crime after exhausting all avenues of employment.

 

[Armadox]

Homelessness is already a crime in several parts of Florida (where I live), so whether I help or hurt I'm on the wrong side of the law. Put starvation and thirst in the equation, I'm sure I would be in the darkest side of the criminal underworld in record time.

Yah, another from Florida here, who had been homeless at one point. The cops see you walking after a certain hour (or god forbid sleeping somewhere) and you can't show some id they can cross reference to somewhere. You're looking at a ride with them. Usually they write up a fine first so as to have something on record to run down the clock, because if you can't pay it you're in contempt. But It's basically a homeless tax...

 

[CrystalShadow]

Hard to say... I've been in situations where my food budget has been less than $20 a week (australian), and let me tell you that is a pretty hellish way to live.
I've been on really low incomes many times in my life, and no, it's not made me feel like restoring to crime.
Though it has at times made me do stupid things for the sake of tiny amounts...

Mostly though, it has just made me question why I even bother going on...
I think in all honesty, faced with a situation even worse than the ones I've dealt with at times it feels like I'd just curl up somewhere and wait to die...

I have a hard enough time coping with life even in periods where I'm relatively well off financially...

 

[Lightknight]

As the need increases (poverty) the perceived risk decreases. At some point most people would consider crimes as low risk and high return.

I'd like to think I still wouldn't. But who really knows what lies in their hearts until they face desperation like that? I've had rough times but I just worked harder. At one point I gave plasma to make some ends meet over a few months. But eventually stuff started coming together and now I've got two houses and a steady income less than a decade away from that. But what if things hadn't turned around? I don't know.

I think it's somewhat beneficial that opportunity to make significant gains diminishes along criminal and poverty lines. This is beneficial because as opportunity increases and the risk of getting caught decreases we find crimes occur a lot more. The problem lies if someone sees a weakness and exploits it (weakness = opportunity). Like a gas station with only a high school attendant or whatever.

But the people that are the best at finding exploits are generally also the people who are able to get work. It's an interesting dynamic.

 

[Recusant]

it's not really a legitimate question. you're alive; to a certain extent you don't have a choice in the matter.

you will do what your brain tells you feel is necessary to survive.

It is a completely legitimate question; human beings aren't machines. Yes, your brain will tell you what to do; you are in no way bound to listen. We have suicides, we have martyrs. You can choose to decide that some things are more important than continuing to live, and you can act according to those decisions.

I live in a country with social programs; they're inadequate and underfunded, but they'll keep you alive. I live in a subculture that understands the importance of family, especially in these matters, and I'm lucky enough to have a huge chunk of it still alive. It's quite unlikely I'd wind up in a situation where all of that changed and I was still alive; much less one where "crime" still held any meaning. But assuming it did... Very little. In a society that poor, crime isn't going to be reliable way to put food on the table. Above and beyond the inherent risks, there're going to be times when there's nothing to steal. I've seen what starvation looks like, and can only conclude that a life where you get just enough food to die slower is, if anything worse. I may be willing to run with it myself for a while, chancing that things will get better, but in the long term? There comes a point where you have to simply say that enough's enough; if the only way to stay alive is to lose your humanity, it's probably time to call it a life.

ye that's all very interesting.

i live in a country were the poor are often left with absolutely no means to survive.

its very possibly the same country.

i'm 45 years old and i remember, and lived through the very worst of "thatcherism".
i'm not some child you lecture on the basis of unlived theoreticals.

in the past many of us turned to "crime". stole food from fields. even animals. to feed our families. it became so common it was featured in "kitchen sink dramas" about the former working class and the scale of deprivation was vast. millions upon millions of people living "below the breadline" near wholly sustained by "the grey economy".

you've seen what starvation looks like ? what like Band Aid or some such on the TV ? i have cerebral atrophy because of having lived through prolonged and sustained periods of undernourishment/malnutrition...

"lose your Humanity". ye sure. whatever. do want an award for that level of melodrama ? i don't know what you think "turn to crime" means but unlike on the TV it does not involve dramatic cords or suddenly hooking up with "the criminal underworld" (all of whom are still Human regardless btw).

in the end, like everyone, you'll prefer to survive (unless you've succumbed to mental illness). and no you're not actually "100% free will" or whatever. the truth is you have just enough Human "arrogance" to believe that to be the case but that's a completely different thing.

i read your post and y'know what i think ? i think there speaks someone who's never actually been "hungry". lucky you.

Prefer to survive? Of course. I never said otherwise. But since you seem to think that survival instinct is the ultimate arbiter of human behavior, then apparently yes, you do need some lectures on the basics of human behavior- and if you think that placing anything above pure survival counts as "mental illness", then apparently, at the very least, you and I have very different definitions of "humanity".

You're right in that I've never faced hunger myself. I never said that I did. I didn't, and I'm very grateful for it- just as I am grateful for the fact that in the places where I did see it firsthand (while acting as a relief worker), I was never jumped, robbed, and killed despite being in places where it wasn't safe for a heavily-armed local to wander alone. I've been extremely lucky. And so have you, if you think that Thatcherism is as bad as it gets. Wander on down to Freetown in Sierra Leone sometime.

There's a whole lot of difference between stealing to survive and "turning to crime" in a deeper sense, which is what I meant. Perhaps I wasn't clear. Making off with a couple of chickens does not end with digging a mass grave- but following an ideological path of "survival above all" can all too easily lead to it.

 

[freakonaleash]

I can guarantee you I would be committing alllll the crimes.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Can't know for sure but I'd leave my options open.