If's funny to say that after admitting that we're animals driven by instinct.
Making morality and punishment a priority won't change a thing when people have to choose between making rent/eating lunch/buying meds or committing crimes. The easiest way to prevent criminality, is feeding people, housing, healthcare, and education on a longer timeline.
Also people tend to underestimate punishment and overestimate rewards, especially desperate people, people everywhere are routinely risking years of jail for a hundred dollars.
Most humans have a morality system to the extent that they'd rather starve to death than engage in cannibalism, for example. It requires more effort, but they can also be socialized to endure reduced access to drugs in exchange for not stealing.
If you disagree with this please let me know why. Most people are raised to believe they are fundamentally good which causes a lot of harm and suffering. Challenging that preconception and learning to do good is the best way to defeat evil and let justice and equality prevail for all in my opinion.
This would be much more effective if we start with crimes of educated, wealthier segments of the population. Starting the "Operation Restore Morality" with the poorest sections of the public is where things come off as hollow.
Elite corruption is also directly responsible for creating circumstances that foster street crimes.
If you're making 6 figures and breaking the law because you're greedy, you should go to jail before the desperate unemployed street kids living one day at a time, risking their lives and freedom to make rent and buy groceries.
By the way, the branch of my family that would count as poor are uniformly much more conservative than I am.
This type of article may help you understand:
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-...
We live in a society where the rich and elites - the ones running our governments and corporations, are all greedily exploiting and cheating the entire populace. They’re all getting away with it too, with ever increasing wealth gaps and wages that don’t match inflation.
So, when people display such ire for low level petty theft by people with nothing in their lives, and claim they’re the ones “fraying apart society” - I find it hard to take seriously.
So, is it /really/ just the poor crime that creates this culture?
You misread. The ones who are letting society come apart are all of us who let ourselves be apathetic enough to be deceived by people who think a total lack of morality is the way to run society.
To the rest of your response, my post could be generalized to any social level. No need to whatabout wage gaps and inflation. Everything I said applies there too: lack of morality and lack of deterring punishment.
this is just a plain old run of the mill conspiracy theory.
reality unfortunately is never black and white, and that’s because modern societies are extremely complex systems:
https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th...
This kind of naivete is plaguing so many leaders. If only criminals could examine themselves and introspect their actions, then they would understand! It's like people forget that we are still essentially animals, and when the reward of opportunity outweighs the risk of punishment, there is slim chance that the moral mind will prevail. Even slimmer if the person in question does not have a foundation of morality guiding them.
Restore morality and revamp the idea of punishment to actually be a deterrent in the 21st century and these things will go away. Unfortunately we are inundated with weakness to a degree that we consider morality as undefinable and punishment a faux pas. "Punish a criminal? How unacceptable. Who are you to say what is right and wrong?" It seems we'd rather society fray apart into nothing than re-establish any kind of order.