16.
Re: Banking Embezzlement - Motivation? Nov 7, 2008 10:05 PM
in response to:
chuckgallaghe
Chuck, I guess this is where our viewpoints may differ: "Many law abiding citizens, elected to take a path of fraud when Katrina hit . . . because the ‘opportunity' was right."
I don't quite believe that. If they committed a crime in the wake of Katrina, I'd bet they weren't law abiding citizens before it hit. Squeeze an orange, you get orange juice -- you never get tomato juice. Put a person under pressure and the essence of what's really inside always comes out.
I'm not sure that 1 in 9 Americans are "finding themselves incarcerated" (as in "Oops, what the . . . how did I end up here?"). They knowingly committed a criminal act (probably more than one time) and eventually got caught. Oops.
A contributing factor to that 1 in 9 statistic is that given a choice between spending time: (a) at home in their neighborhood, (b) at work in a job they can get with limited education and skills, (c) in the military or some other service occupation, or (d) in prison -- a sizeable number of people would (and do) opt for prison. They "do the crime" because "doing the time" is not all that bad in their case . . . but that's another debate altogether.
