WHY CRIME EXISTS?

Murderers, thieves, drug dealers… Why these people move from honest persons to criminals? Jack the Ripper, Ed Gein, Charles Manson… we all know their names, they are famous because of the atrocity of their crime, they were even sometimes nicknamed “Devil” but when we look at their face, they just look like you and me. What makes those people become so dangerous for the society?
There are three main reasons for committing crime, the first is the natural cause which has been largely developed by the Italian thinker Cesar Lombroso, the second is the socio-economical cause and last one is the culture.

The first cause of crime which has been developed by criminologists* was the biologic (or natural) cause. This biological cause can understand on the genetic side or psychological side.
The famous Italian criminologist Cesar Lombroso had made a huge quantity of researches to prove the genetic cause of criminality. Lombroso describes the typical shape of a criminal man. He also compares the heredity of crime to the heredity of alcoholism or mental disease (Lombroso, The Criminal Man, 1887, p 115). The Italian author went further by studying the body of criminals part by part. He claims that “Generally the jaw is more developed on criminals; on them it can weight 84g, while on crazy people the average weight is 78g, and on honest people it is 80g” (Lombroso, The Criminal Man, 1887, p 134). On more recent studies, some scientists found that some people are naturally more able to commit crime than others. Usually men between 15 and 25 years old commit more crime than the rest of the population and this because of hormones.

*A criminologist is a person who studies criminology, which is the science that studies the crime and the behaviors of criminals.
The second point of the natural cause is the psychological side. The human behaviors can be affected by psychological illnesses such as schizophrenia. The persons who suffer from this kind of disease