Essay on ‘Neighbourhood Influences for Crime’ !
Neighbourhood influences also have much to do with the nature of crimes in a particular locality. Thus, thickly inhabited areas, town and cities offer frequent opportunities for sex offences and crimes relating to theft, bootlegging, burglary, kidnapping, cheating, deceit and so on. Cases of pick-pocketing are common in railway stations, bus stands and other halt places. Thefts of footwear are too common in temples and worship places in India.
Ecological study of prisons further reveals that certain types of crime are peculiar to the prison-life. For example, homo-sexuality is common among the prisoners because of their inability to resist sexual impulse due to deprivation of family life. That apart, the convicts quite often indulge in mutual fights and quarrels in an attempt to show their muscle power and establish dominance over other prisoners in regard to their skill in criminality. Violent offenders generally resort to destruction of prison property and offend prison authorities on petty issues.
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Another significant feature of these delinquent areas is the location of certain anti-social institutions in the neighbourhood. These include prostitution houses, gambling dens, brothels and similar other dubious institutions. These areas of vices are delinquency-ridden and offer a fertile ground for organised criminals. The inhabitants of nearby locality are easily influenced by these vicious activities and thus lend themselves into the life of criminality.
W.I. Thomas, the famous sociologist of the Chicago School asserted that inability of a neighbourhood to solve its problems together leads to social disorganisation leading to unconscious motivations for crime. Inability of a group to engage in self-regulation turns them towards delinquency.
More recently, there has been a tendency to correlate certain places of recreation with the ecology of crime. The cinema theatres, swimming pools, sport grounds, and race courses generally offer a favourable atmosphere for delinquencies. But this is rather an oversimplification of facts. As a matter of fact, the frequency of crime in these places has little to do with their location.
In fact, it is the environmental and not the ecological influence which generates crime in these places. Moreover, there are quite a large number of law-abiding members of the society who do not become criminals even after coming into contact with delinquents in these places of recreation and entertainment.