It Takes a Village to Raise a Thief

A society’s criminal justice system punishes crimes. In many cases, however, the system misses the target. Many crimes go unreported. The victims are unwilling to cooperate with authorities, leaving law enforcers with cases that are not legally offensive for the courts of law to chew on. Often, the criminal justice system is prejudiced.

These reasons make criminals continue to prosper in their nefarious affairs. Petty criminals such as those that commit street crimes persist to roam and proliferate. The common thief is one such that enjoys a lucrative career when the criminal justice system fails to haul malefactors of its kind to court.

The thief has become a stereotype – a product of a criminal justice system that is biased. If you’re a thief and you look impoverished, bedraggled, and generally unkempt, you have a higher chance of being arrested, convicted, and sentenced in court. That’s because, being shabby and scruffy, you are most likely more apparent to the police and citizens who may complain to them. Biased law enforcers blindly blame crimes on certain demographics as people of color, lower-class out-of-school youth, or desperate unemployed.

Theft, however, knows no social or economic classification. It’s as pandemic as flu. You can meet a well-clad thief right down the street corner, or somewhere in the august halls of congress.

Theft, after all, simply means the felonious taking of private property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. Simply put, it’s taking another person’s property without permission.

So, a stereotypical thief is caught and caged in prison for some time. The relatives come to post bail (family is family, no matter what). They will believe the thief’s explanation, no matter how flimsy, that will point to either him being framed up or was in the wrong place at the wrong time (family is family, no matter what). Defendants who pay their bail are more likely to be acquitted than those who do not. So, the thief is free. He goes back to his usual ways, will get caught again, brought behind bars again, bailed out by condoning relatives again, and so on and so forth.

Prisons ideally serve to rehabilitate criminals into productive citizens who no longer commit crimes. Programs within prisons designed to rehabilitate prisoners include education, personal counseling, and vocational training to prepare them for eventual release and parole. Prisons are successful in punishing and isolating inmates, but they seem to be less successful at rehabilitating inmates and deterring future crimes.

It is the community that can best address crime prevention at the sociocultural root of crime. At the very least, it’s the citizens who can watch over their locale, observe any dubious activities they sense, and report posthaste to law enforcers.

The community, however, has gone docile on thieves. Some people do not care to report a thief if they’re not the ones being thieved. Concern for others is slowly waning. If they do report, they lose interest during the investigation process and quit the complaint. Too much hassle on their schedules! It’s only a thief! Somebody else can do the complaining! Still, some are afraid of the reprisal that can befall them upon reporting a criminal.

A thief is bred. Most children have a basic concept of “mine” and “not mine.” So, if a child takes somebody else’s crayons without permission, he should be told that what he did was stealing right from the start (thereby introducing him to the broader concept of something that is utterly wrong). If the child is just told, “Don’t take Jaiyant’s crayons, that’s bad,” he will believe that only taking Jaiyant’s crayons is wrong, while taking Graeme’s crayons or Celso’s cookie is okay.

However, a true understanding of the harmful nature of stealing does not begin to develop until about age five to seven. Internal motivations of conscience and guilt do not develop until the middle childhood years. Once the recognition of property boundaries develops, stealing becomes an intentional act that must be addressed more deliberately.

Double talk, therefore, will not teach the child what is right and wrong at the soonest possible time and the quickest possible chance. The phrase, “That’s bad,” is so generic that you will only confuse the child and will not meet your objective.

Double talk, heaps of insular attitude, and fear make for some healthy ground that gives life to the unhealthy. Something grows in the soil that’s right for it.

Now, take this scenario on the world stage and let your imagination soar. Think global and you will glean the allegory.

We breed the thief. We let him go. We let him be.