Criminal disorders may stem from any or all of the following factors: criminals have usually not adequately internalized the conditioning standards of behaviour which restrain well-adjusted people from expressing anti-social or criminal impulses – they do not possess the ability to say 'no' to themselves, therefore are consumed by their own selfishness; they have chronically low self-esteem, in which is manifest the idea that they themselves are worth little and thus any effort at self-improvement is futile; and they are usually isolated, encapsulated people with the loveless, alienated insensitivity that allows them to operate at a considerable psychological distance from their victims, a state of separative consciousness which atrophies the capacity to experience the humanity of those it victimizes.
An ethos of criminality has permeated all sectors of society, including leading businessmen, police, solicitors and doctors, not just those faced with mass unemployment and poverty.
20% of violent crime is committed by a very small number of men who had difficult births and suffered parental rejection in their early childhood.
Crime is a proxy for disaffection and the degeneration of our adherence to universal morals – the voice inside us that says a criminal act is wrong. To commit a crime is to say you are not a stakeholder in the society to which you belong; and plainly there are very many more non-stakeholders than there used to be. What a doubling of crime in the last decade really means is that there are twice as many people who can explain away to themselves why they can steal; that their need is deserved and their act excusable; that the object of their attentions can deal with what has happened – that he, she, or it is not "a victim".