Criminology Interview
Introduction
Jetro Williams, an alias for writing, is a convicted felon. He is serving time for multiple offenses, including robbery with violence, murder, and assault. He is a twenty-six-year-old man who hails from the state of Chicago. This paper seeks to understand what could have influenced his criminal activities and link them to already established theories and criminal models.
Interview.
Offender’s background
The oral interview was conducted in state prison with the prisoner provided with the liberty to decline to answer the questions as and when they deemed necessary. The first question focused on the biodata of Jetro Williams and focused on his family. He is an African- American who hails from the inner city of Chicago. He’s married with two kids and never attended college. His parents are divorced, a factor that made him lack parental guidance, and he mostly lived with his father, who is a bartender. His mother, he says, was mostly unavailable since she was remarried to another man who hailed from a different state.
The interviewee’s background indicates the poverty levels which he experienced during his childhood until he decided to start engaging in criminal activities. Engaging in crime is a way that was readily available to solve the challenge of poverty. Once his parents divorced each other, lack of proper parenting also meant that he lacked proper guidance on culture and morality. These are factors that promote criminal behavior in the youth (Ferrell, 1997).
What led him to start offending
On asking what influenced him to start engaging in criminal activities, he stated several reasons. He attributes his criminal behavior to constantly being left alone by his father to fend for himself. Things took a turn to the worst when he left school for a lack of tuition fees. His friends often had to buy good clothes from burglaries and asked him to join them on numerous occasions until one time when he was drunk, and they asked him to tag along. For the first time, he was able to buy clothes and shoes. He had a decent meal, and from then on, it was one job after the other. The success which his gang had coupled with the spirit of brotherhood kept him going, he asserted. He continued to add that he could help his father with the money to grow his side hustle without asking questions. He had come from abject poverty, and now he had things he had previously wished for whenever he wanted. His father’s house had become the meeting point for his gang, and this underlined his importance to the gang, and within no time, he had earned respect from his colleagues. He had learned how to use a gun at a local basement of a warehouse and gained experience from their well-planned burglaries.
When he had made enough money, he moved to a new house which he could now afford. It’s after moving out of his father’s house when he married his wife. He kept his wife in the dark about his operations with his gang. He could afford food and shelter, and when they had children, he knew he had to continue providing for his family as well as take good care of his children. This opportunity is what he lacked in his childhood, as he quickly pointed out during the interview. He subsequently cut contact with his mother and only talked to his father on rare occasions when the latter had problems which were mainly financial in nature.
The interviewee started engaging in criminal activities after his recruitment by his older folks. They say show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you’re. Peer pressure has been shown to draw people to things that they would not do on their own. In as much as it was convenient for the interviewee to engage in crime, he would not do so with the help of his friends (Cullen, Agnew, & Wilcox, 2006).
How and when he stopped dealing in crime
Despite the very successful nature of his crimes, on one fateful day, police intervened in the middle of a robbery of a pharmacy, which he declined to mention. This intervention is after what he suspects one of the bystanders notified the police of the robbery that was going on at the pharmacy. Once they heard sirens of police cars, they all made their way out of the pharmacy and escaped unscathed. They shot at the police several times and even at the clients in the pharmacy before their escape during the shooting match and heavy gunfire. However, since this was a local pharmacy, one of them was identified by one of the clients who was buying over the counter drugs at the pharmacy. Things got worse when one of the members of the gang was apprehended following identification by the police. He had to stop the criminal activities and go into hiding following these developments. He left without notifying his family since he feared divorce and instilling fear into them, especially his children, who were at a young age. He was gripped with fear, for he knew his apprehended friend would cut a deal with the police and turn on the rest of the members of the gang.
He further cut ties with the rest of the gang for fear of being caught. He had reverted to his state before he had started involving himself with criminal activities. He could hardly afford meals, and shelter was hard to come by. This situation was compounded by the fact that he had to lay low for a while, at least until the police had stopped probing their case or reached a dead end. He knew this wasn’t going to be a short stint. The police were going to stop at nothing before all the gang members were arrested and prosecuted. These circumstances forced him to abandon his criminal activities. There was an obvious lack of friends to help in carrying out new robberies and even lack of guns to use for they had been thrown away after the incident the pharmacy. He focused on one main thing from then on; to evade arrest and possibly going to jail to answer for his crimes. He added that this was the most trying time of his life, and he didn’t have all of it figured out. He spent most of his time alone and in isolation, sometimes in the dark. He did not know what was going on around him, and he was getting more paranoid by the day. Once surviving alone proved all too difficult, he made contact with his father to have some money since he was not into the culture of saving. Going days without food was reminiscent of his childhood, and the thought of losing everything he had worked so hard for in a whisker made this time a living nightmare.
For every criminal, there’s always that thought of stopping engaging in crime. This, some imagine, as some kind of escape without being caught. However, once one is associated with other criminals, there are several relapses. It’s hard to predict the end of crime, but it’s almost always unpleasant just as it occurred to our interviewee (Wolfgang et al., 1967).
How he feels about the robberies
Criminals upon apprehension almost always feel regret for their crimes (Ferrell, 1997). However, for this particular instance, it was a case of mixed feelings. He agreed that indeed it was wrong to engage in criminal activities as it led to hurting other people as well. He also thought that circumstances and his immediate environment pushed him into it, and he had little room to choose to be a criminal or not. He added that he didn’t give a thought to the effects of his crimes on society. He also expressed remorse for the victims of his crimes since it led to murder on one documented occasion. This rule out the possibility of his crimes being of passion or motivated by the urge to revenge against society. He further added that he is ready to do anything to atone for his crimes and change his behavior to become a better member of society. He is particularly sad for putting the lives of his loved ones in danger and lying to his wife, for whom he confessed so much love. He was adamant that the neighborhood where he was brought up influenced his decision to become a criminal. This influence is because of biting poverty and restricted access to social amenities. He also attempted to shift the blame to the success stories of criminals within his area who have managed to lead affluent lives from entire violence and criminal proceeds.
Sometimes, he added, the events leading to the criminal activities or even the robberies themselves kept playing on his mind once he had stopped. This experience made him develop the feeling of disgust, looking back to what he used to do to earn a living. He felt entirely dishonest when comparing his actions to that of other people who worked hard to build life honestly. It’s apparent that conditions influenced the man to engage in criminal activities, and so many times, he had acted against his conscience. This defiance is illustrated by the show of regret for his activities. Further, he was quick to the point of the gaps in the society which influenced his venture into criminal proceeds. This activity, too, is a factor that has to be considered during the analysis of his impetus to commit a crime, sometimes cruelly and horrifyingly. He viewed his crimes as a means to an end, and this is because he ignored his judgment to engage in heinous acts of criminal nature.
It’s quite ironic for criminals to feel guilty after engaging in committing heinous acts of violence against unsuspecting and innocent civilians. This guilty is also seen in this case, where the interviewee pleads guilty to several criminal offenses and feels it’s fair for him to be sent to jail. In cases where there’s overwhelming evidence against the accused, the most predictable course of action is a confession coupled with feelings of remorse and regret (Tierney, 2009).
His arrest and subsequent punishment
He vividly recounted events leading to his submission to the police and subsequent arrest. Through one of his friends, he learned that the police had visited his father’s house. This knowledge made him aware of the fact that his friend had turned on him, possibly as the first gang member to be betrayed since his father’s house was the center of operations. It made him feel guilty for involving his unsuspecting father in his criminal activities. He had a feeling then that he had to pay for his crimes. He feared the police would find even a shred of evidence in his father’s house and charge him instead. He was not going to make another mistake. He would not live with that one; he continued to add. So later that night, he went to his father’s house and confessed to everything. He could tell the disappointment in his father’s face when he listened to him. He further told him that he was going to plead guilty of the charges brought against him to have his sentence reduced so he could come back home to his family.
He was aware of the slim nature of his wish happening and even so was still willing to confess to the police. He recounted that his father warned him against doing that, highlighting that several people in that neighborhood had gotten away with the crime. The following day, he submitted himself to the police and was arrested as a result. He confessed to all the charges brought against him by the police. The prosecutor did not listen to any of his pleas to have his sentence cut to go back to society a changed man. Up to now, he is still serving time in prison for crimes he committed for around five and a half years.
Most criminals spend their lives evading punishment for the crimes they have committed. Very few, if any, anticipate their arrest by authorities. However, the rules are that apprehended criminals should face the full force of the law, and the interviewee is no exception when he was arrested and subsequently sent to jail (Schafer & Savitz, 1969).
Link to the theories
The theory of the city, social disorganization by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay can be used to describe the criminal behavior of this man. In this theory, a city is divided into zones, which include the inner city, the zone of transition, and the outer zones, just as in concentric circles. The inner city refers to the industrial area, sometimes called the central business district, and the zone of transition is just between the inner city and the outer zones. This theory suggests that criminal activity is more pronounced in the zone of transition in comparison with the outer zones. The zone of transition is characterized by disrupted families, schools marked by disorder, adult-run activities for the youth being sparse and poor, poor church attendance, and ineffective political groups. This zone of transition best describes where the interviewee is coming from. His family was disrupted as his parents were divorced, and he did not manage to continue his education for lack of tuition fees. This disruption indicates a failure by the adults to provide education for their children (Cullen, Agnew, & Wilcox, 2006).
The theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality by Robert J Sampson and William Julius Wilson can also be used, at least in part, to explain the criminal behavior of the interviewee. This theory seeks to reprimand lazy thinkers who attribute the likelihood of engaging in criminal activities to culture alone. This theory, they argue, is a simplistic manner of thinking and has limited merit. Such people argue that if youths had good values, respected the law, dressed the right way, and recognized the value of schools, then they would not commit a crime. They argued that even those youth who hail from regions that are mostly occupied by poor people and do not conform to those values espouse committing murder as a good thing, but they still do. This situation is also seen in our interviewee, who confirmed through the interview that he acted against his conscience to survive. They go ahead to observe that children who grow up in crime-infested neighborhoods are exposed to criminal activities at a young age where they are involved in doing favors to their older siblings and friends in exchange for some sort of favors. They add that children from these neighborhoods encounter dead bodies and even guns more frequently when growing up. This encounter is in comparison to others who hail from leafy suburbs. It is the kind of influence that our interviewee underwent while growing up and must have been an incentive for him to commit crime as he witnessed violence being used at a young age to solve problems (Gottfredson, & Hirschi, 1990).
The theory of Collective Efficacy and Crime also suffices to explain the criminal behavior of this interviewee. This theory was proposed by Robert J Sampson, Stephen W. Rautenbach, and Felton Earls. This theory is in two parts. In what is referred to as the compositional trait, Sampson et al. explained that individuals who are having a great tendency to commit crime prefer to live in a certain area. This preference is, in our case, possible to apply as it was easy for the gang to assemble and commit multiple crimes in a certain area of the state. Further, they endeavored to propose the concept of collective efficacy, which was beyond the compositional trait. They argued that areas where people can come together and fight crime when it arises, would reduce the crime rate significantly in areas where they reside. These people would identify potential causes of crime and thwart them before they are borne into real acts of crime. They continued to argue that neighbors who experienced some disadvantages would find it hard to forge close ties and even trust each other. Thus, they would be unable to implement this concept of collective efficacy. These disadvantages include poverty, disrupted families, and residential instability. Coincidentally our interviewee can be said to have experienced all three. He was born of poor parents who could not feed him well or even pay his tuition fees. Further, his parents had divorced each other, and thus the element of family disruption is clearly underlined. The interviewee also moved houses to facilitate his criminal activities and was even hideous of his dealings to his father. This facilitation means his father spent very little time in the house; otherwise, he would have found out about his gang in its early stages of formation and stopped the criminal behavior of his son (Ferrell, 1995).
Conclusion
People commit a crime every day, and there are measures put in place to punish criminals for their actions. It’s important, however, for federal and state governments to formulate sound policies for fighting crime, especially in crime-infested neighborhoods. This formulation aims towards improving the social amenities in those areas as well as providing affordable education for low-income families.
References
Cullen, F. T., Agnew, R., & Wilcox, P. (2006). Criminological theory: Past to present: Essential readings. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford University Press.
Ferrell, J. (1995). Culture, crime, and cultural criminology. Journal of criminal justice and popular culture, 3(2), 25-42.
Ferrell, J. (1997). Criminological verstehen: Inside the immediacy of crime. Justice Quarterly, 14(1), 3-23.
Schafer, S., & Savitz, L. D. (1969). Theories in criminology: Past and present philosophies of the crime problem (pp. 123-182). New York: Random House.
Tierney, J. (2009). Criminology: Theory and context. Pearson Education.
Wolfgang, M. E., Ferracuti, F., & Mannheim, H. (1967). The subculture of violence: Towards an integrated theory in criminology (Vol. 16). London: Tavistock Publications.