Why are certain crimes so rare despite the relative ease of committing them?

Great Debates
1

This has always puzzled me and I’d like some Dopers who are experts in sociology or criminology to pitch in as much.

People are driven to crimes like stealing, murder, rape to satisfy basic psychical, emotional and psychological desires which in their mind cannot be achieved through acceptable social conventions with the same ease.

Now, laws along with better avenues and sometimes just social condemnation of certain crimes ‘Rape is cowardly/rapists are cowards’, is enough to ‘deter’ a large majority. But even then, I’m sure that crimes like terrorism aren’t common not because of strict laws but rather that that the means to carry out attacks are almost impossible for an average person due to intense regulations and controls on industrial chemicals, explosives and military-grade weapons across most nations.

However, with crimes like Parricide, the statistics show it’s a rare crime; even among abused kids. There are far more parents who kill kids than vice versa; and I wonder why? I hear loads of stories of serious parental abuse online, in life and by celebrities, yet the kids never seem to go down this route or even contemplated that. Teens seem to be more likely to attack classmates and strangers than ever consider attacking their parents. Even when they have the means (same strength as father/mother, access to handguns) it’s very uncommon. Similarly with school shooters (specifically in the US), There aren’t too many yet from watching documentaries on their lives, thousands of kids would fit the profile of extreme social isolation, bullying from students, teachers and parents. Guns are easily accessible in the US and the average social isolated angry person probably doesn’t have a criminal record or is thrown in extreme poverty that would bar them from weapons of destruction…Yet how many occur in the average high school across the US?

What theories might explain this phenomena?

2

You are asking why more people don’t kill their parents or go on a school shooting rampage?

3

How many school shootings do you consider to be too many?

4

I think that you would find the book On Killing by Lt. Col. David Grossman, a very interesting read. It’s primarily about the psychological issues that soldiers face in combat, but much of what he says applies to things like this.

For people who are more or less normal, i.e. not psychopaths, it’s actually very difficult most of the time to kill somebody. And the closer you are, both physically and psychologically, to the person you’re wanting/trying to kill, the harder it is.

Modern soldiers go through a specific conditioning process during training, so that when they are in combat, they will kill almost without realizing what exactly they’re doing. Before this training was put in place, studies were done that showed that it’s surprisingly difficult for a lot of people to kill, even in combat, and even when the putative target is actively trying to kill them!

When talking about abusive home situations, one of the factors is physical distance. A greater physical distance increases the psychological distance between killer and victim. Artillerymen in combat have significantly less PTSD than infantrymen, precisely because of this factor. They know that they’ve killed people, but because it’s not up close, it’s somehow less “real.”

5

As far as killing a relative (and I think your question is specifically asking about an abuser), I would think it’s because in that case there’s a power imbalance set up. Many kids just don’t want to kill their parents or just don’t want to kill, period. Or if it’s a bully type situation, they may not even realize (at least not for a long time) that there’s even something wrong. If the kid is screwed up mentally for long enough, they might not even know their home life is any different than anyone else’s or even if they do, they may be convinced that it’s their fault. But that’s another thread. However, all these things may still cause them to lash out somewhere, just not at their abuser.

As for school shooters. You mention not having a criminal record and being in extreme poverty as the things that potentially stop someone from getting gun, so I assume you mean getting one legally (from a gun shop). I was going to mention the expense being a barrier, but checking some of my local gun shops, semi-automatic rifle can easily be found for under $300 and an AR-15 (in case you want to go out in a brand name blaze of glory, but, the AR-15 is still just semi-auto, it only shoots one bullet at a time, just like a handgun) can be picked up for about $600 for a basic model. But you do still need to be 18 and most kids, by the time they’re 18 are seniors, almost done with school and have typically worked through most of their issues as the finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, there’s other way to acquire guns. Parents have them, parents of (better adjusted) friends have them, the internet has them, other people will buy them for you (aka straw purchase) etc.
However, to answer this part of the question, IMO, as someone who was pushed around a bit in school, there’s a HUGE leap from ‘I hate all these fuckers’ to ‘I’m going to kill all of them’. Hell, there’s even a huge leap from deciding you’re going to kill yourself to deciding you’re going to take out a bunch of other people, innocent or directly leading up to that point in your life, when you go.
So, my theories:
People don’t kill their parents because, no matter what the situation is, they just don’t want to kill their parents.
People don’t shoot up their school because no matter how bullied you are, they’d rather kill themselves and for most kids, taking out their classmates probably doesn’t even cross their mind, they just don’t want to go to school tomorrow.

Yes, that’s not the case from time to time, but in the vast majority of the cases, as you noted, it works out like that and as of right now, it’s by running theory.

6

Another theory I hear was that in the case of teenage delinquents in poor an middle class areas, the vast majority of those crimes are ‘peer/group based’. In other words, teens kill strangers, shoot other teens, or in the rare exception adults, in groups. It’s not a ‘lone wolf’ process.

When people think of a teenage boy doing something bad, they are in a group of ‘lads’ and they are almost always right. Even rape, a crime considered heinous and one that breaks the conduct of ‘don’t harm the weak’ is always among a 4-5 guys.

It seems that self driven sociopath teens are pretty damn rare. Someone who commits parricide or goes on a mass shooting would have to have a disregard for the basic respect for human life that mos teens of all races/socio-economic backgrounds have for their parents/classmates no matter how bad their relationship and be driven intensely be some emotion that also makes them disregard law.

7

It seems like a fair question. Personally, when I’m driving down undivided highways, I’m always wondering how long it be before someone decides to (purposefully) veer over into oncoming traffic at 50mph. There’s nothing wrong in asking why easily commitable crimes don’t happen more often.

Looking at the wiki page on school shootings, I was surprised to see how many there were. I hear about them from time to time, but have never seen them compiled into one place like that. I’m surprised that the first one I was really aware of (like most people, I’m guessing) was Columbine, then they just sort of trickled in after that. I know Columbine was a big one, but less than a year before that, there was a fairly large one, and a year before that there was another big one (which was at a middle school and done by a 13 and 11 year old, killed a teacher and some students and they pulled a fire alarm to get everyone outside and picked them off from the surrounding woods, also they drove themselves there with a dozen weapons and 2000 rounds of ammo).

Anyways, maybe it was poor wording by the OP, maybe instead of ‘too many’ it should have been, with such easy access to guns ‘why aren’t there more’.

8

Good reading suggestion from flyer.

I don’t have the expertise in the areas that you requested, OP, but I do have what I think is a valid consideration for you to commit to.

That is, that you might have the MATH wrong. Your question is essentially why don’t more people who are suffering from parental persecution, choose murder as the solution, and you have the sense that the proportion of children who do choose patricide is smaller than other similar situations.

I suggest that you might be wrong about that fundamental, and that the proportion of people who DO choose to use violence in such circumstances is probably about what is to be expected, given all of the parameters involved.

Flyer’s suggested reading is a part of this, because as Flyer points out, choosing to use lethal violence really isn’t easy or common overall.

Perhaps if you expand your concept a bit, things will make more sense to you. People who use violence as a solution to their challenges, overall don’t do so in a calmly and thoroughly rational or scientific way. That kind of “problem solving” is reserved to the military and legal systems. I suggest that you look at the use of violence as a solution in a broader sense, and allow for people thus challenged to make errors in targeting, then the number of expressions of murderous “problem solving” will fall into more understandable and consistent patterns.

9

:confused: Why on earth would anybody want to?

10

You deliberately twisted the meaning of that phrase from the OP’s intent.

For what reason, I’m not sure.
mmm

11

That’s well beyond the scope of this thread, I think.

12

For the most part, you are talking about things that would be criminally prosecuted but are not crimes as much as acts of deranged persons. At best, someone who is sniping at school children or cars has a blackmail/ransom motive but is still one sick f*ck more than they are a criminal.

So the answer would be that as a society, we have a long ways to go… but we could be unimaginably worse.

13

It could be the narrowness of the potential victim pool. A serial killer can commit dozens of murders. A parricide, by definition, can only commit murder twice.

14

I suspect most children don’t kill their parents because they love them. Even if they’re horrible parents, even if they abuse them.

Parent-child relationships are complicated.

15

In cases of abuse or neglect a minor child who wants to escape would be better off reporting the parents to the authorities or running away. Many abused children don’t do either of these things, but that seems to be because of affection and/or fear. If a child loves and/or fears their parents or is afraid of what their life will be like without parents to provide for them, then they’re also probably not going to try to kill their parents.

16

If you want to kill people it’s pretty certain you’re fucked up - it’s an irrational mindset.

Most children get picked up by the school and/or social system if their behaviour is to irregular in some way. So they are given treatement.

Adults are not supervised or scrutinised in anything like the same way so if something happens in adult life, or whatever happened in childhood develops further in adult life, there is little or no oversight. You either deal with it yourself or … not.

17

Because that would be called suicide, and no one would live to enjoy the crime.
You have better chances i think with someone deciding to camp out with a 30-06 and snipe the oncoming traffic.

Living to get some twisted enjoyment out of what you did appears to be more popular than going out with a bang

18

On top of that, there’s the independence issue. A lot of abusive parents have no choice but to reduce the abuse as the child gains some independence. Unlike a kid, a teenager would find it easier to run away, speak to a guidance counselor, hitch a ride, put pictures of their abused body on Facebook, etc, or possibly become big enough to repel physical abuse.

I think a teenager independent enough to kill a parent is independent enough to get help for the situation, except perhaps financially. (A lot of domestic abuse tales involve victims who “aren’t allowed” to work, or work for a menial job.) I figure by the time the victim could kill an abusive parent, they’ve become an adult, they have left their home, and gotten a sustaining job, and they’d have to give up those achievements in order to commit murder. Having a successful life away from the abusive parent seems like a much finer revenge.

I haven’t heard of many abused spouses getting revenge on their exes, either, even though they’d have reason to be angry, and now that they’ve left have the power to take revenge. Except possible the John Wayne and Lorena Bobbit story. (According to one version I’d read, Lorena had left John Wayne, and came back for revenge.)

19

Considering that the OP asked about school shootings and many [mass] school shootings end with the shooter committing suicide would lead me to believe that that there’s plenty of motive for suicidal people to kill people before killing themselves. Also see: suicide bombers, murder-suicide and also here’s a list of rampage killers in which you’ll note a large amount of them mention that the killer commits suicide.

Furthermore, you’re just kind of picking apart a hypothetical. I asked why someone doesn’t veer into oncoming traffic. Fine, let’s change it to “Sometimes I wonder why someone doesn’t sit on top of a hospital and pick off student nurses”.

And, to be clear, you’re the first person to bring up anything about getting any kind of enjoyment out of murdering anyone. So far, I think, all examples seemed to be about people in abuse situations (hence the resulting suicide).

20

Ummm…I don’t really believe so. Most teens who become mass murderers/killers are given ‘help’ for misunderstood problems.

E.g. A quiet Asian teen who hates his authoritarian parents/teachers/bullying students and wants to kill them will give hints that he might escalate to violence against others with his acquaintances who despite having a ‘gut feeling’, think he’s crying wolf. He won’t tell teachers the same things for obvious reasons but he will show less aggressive signs of homicidal depression which students and teachers will report.

This is probably the case with most teens who resort to such crimes. They are reported to social services/guidance counsellors/psychiatrists but they’re given medicine which treats the symptom and not the root cause because they can’t really say that “I have a strong homicidal ideation and also…I’ve assaulted someone” to authority figures because although that may get them help they need, they will almost certainly be red flagged by local law enforcement, be constantly monitored by their principal or even asked to leave.

I think believe that adults don’t really commit mass murderers that aren’t terrorist related/workplace related not just because they understand the legal consequences but largely because as an adult if you don’t like someone or something…You can pretty much change your situation compared to being a teen.