The Circle of Life of a criminal
An inmate lifecycle explained
People become criminals through a lifetime of bad circumstances, bad decisions, and bad use of the snapchat geotracking system.
Most criminals are born to criminals. Rare is the serial killer raised with two supportive parents. Usually they are born to a one parent household, with dad off committing crimes or impregnating other women.
Unfortunately the person who thinks sex with a criminal is a good idea is someone who makes other bad choices. Many of my former juvenile delinquents had moms with pending criminal cases. It was an interesting argument to let the kid come home when mom had an outstanding felony warrant.
Bad things happen where Grandparents have or choose to step in. Unfortunately Grandparents are older and they struggle with rearing a second generation. For every Clarence Thomas, there are 100 inmate #4189. Even Clarence Thomas will tell you he could have been one of those inmates. Don’t believe me? He tells you in Created Equal.
One parent or no parents is a recipe for disaster. The child is rarely supervised. One parent or grandparents on fixed income usually involves poverty. You’ll never believe this, but poor people commit many crimes. Does not matter the race or ethnicity - poor people do poor people things, and a lot of that is crime. (Side note - my jurisdiction has housing projects which are mostly African-American. It is striking how often housing projects are poor African-Americans, there needs to be a way to fix that. Not many Asian American housing projects.)
Poor kids have poor kid friends, they get into trouble. It usually starts with them acting out due to no parents and no money - fights, theft. It escalates from there.
Juvenile crime is an epidemic in this country. When I heard about the 14 year old committing murder in Philly, I shrugged. It is EVERYWHERE. Many major cities are not charging juvenile crimes because they are so understaffed.
I know for a fact that Cook County, IL (aka Chicago) is horrible at holding minors accountable for anything. I may know it because I work have worked there, who knows? Either way, juveniles get away, literally, with murder.
Services are offered to the juveniles, who usually do nothing. They ‘age out’ of the juvenile system, meaning they turn 18.
By then Juveniles have usually graduated to car thefts and shootouts by 18. From there it is a circle down the drain of being in and out of jail for everything imaginable, until they kill someone or are killed via gunfire or OD. I have had dozens of cases settled because defendant is found dead with a bullet to the head.
What about your casual middle of the road criminals?
Most crimes are one offs; however, I do think 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crimes. Why? I recognize names on the daily arrest email. Some of the names are like seeing an old friend.
“I see so and so is here, oh now they are getting into guns. Sad.”
“Looks like someone did not realize person X is violent before the second date. Hope they are ok, that’s a horrible PC statement.”
Violent criminals are usually repeaters as well. How is this possible? Because the US is soft on crime. The entire system gives criminals the benefit of the doubt over victims.
Criminals have the upper hand with persuasion in 2022. “I was born in poverty”, “I was abused”, “Judge it’ll never happen again!” Meanwhile the victims occasionally get to speak to the prosecutor about what happened, or make a statement after the fact. Judges see the defendants and seeing someone frequently is persuasive. I started liking AOC after someone put her as my computer background in 2019 and I left it there for a few months. That’s actually a great way to like someone - change your computer background to their face.
TL:DL - criminals usually are raised by criminals or by no one, hang out with criminals, then commit progressively more violent crimes until their untimely demise.
Yay! Let me know if you have any questions on the above or have a legal issue of your own you want to discuss.
Much Love,
Kong