My two cents

This morning on Good Morning America, they were talking about the wave of "good, upstanding" Americans taking to a path of crime due to the economic crisis. They spoke of three white bank robbers. A deacon of a church who attempted to rob a bank after his real estate company was threatening to collapse. He ended up taking hostages and being arrested. Another recently unemployed man was convicted of robbing 12 banks (how does one get away with one, further more 12???) He said that he did it to ensure that his twin daughters would continue to have all the "nice things, that they'd become accustomed to". The best story was of the granny who had robbed a few banks. They said that she was simply trying to support her son (who, by the way, is a grown man and should be taking care of himself).

The reporter was presenting these happenings as a phenomenon. As though all of a sudden for the first time in the history of man, good people who have lost their resources are turning to crime. Upon hearing this, I turned to my husband baffled.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. So, if these are good people, then are we saying that most of those people in jail for robbing banks, etc are bad people? What makes these three so different from the rest of the criminal population??

While there are a percentage of criminals who participate in deviant behavior due to ant-social personality disorders, the lack of proper guidance growing up, the need for God in their lives, or just for the hell of it, I would argue that there are more people who find themselves on some point along the continuum of: 1.insufficient education or socioeconomic standing→2.limited earning power→ 3.desperation→4.criminal behavior being more profitable. Some of us may not start out at a low socioeconomic standing. We might be fine until things like this recession takes place and we find ourselves at the second pt.The fact is that we are the Human Animal, not all together immune from resorting to brute and downright monstrous behavior once we are pushed into a corner.

I am not advocating robbing banks or doing anything illegal when money gets tight. I am just saying that we need to be careful how we label people good or bad. We must enforce the laws of the land, but we must also continue to strive for the eradication of the slums and the ghettos, which serve as literally a petri dish, harboring the perfect environment in which generations of bank robbers are developed. Neither the guy on the poor side of town, or the soccer mom who lost her nest egg, are justified in breaking the law. To excuse one, we must excuse the other.

It should not take middle class America to lose a home or the means to pay for their Lexus SUV before we are able to look at ourselves and realize that none of us are better than those people in Jail, or any less capable of doing what some of them have done to get there.