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The Moral Ambivalence Of Crime Summary

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The Moral Ambivalence of Crime Response
In Reiman story, The Moral Ambivalence of Crime in an Unjust Society, the author tells how one experience in the summer of 2005 shaped his view on crime after writing and thinking about it for over thirty-five years. While in France on a summer vacation with his wife, they become a victim of a crime where the assailants grabbed what they could, a duffle bag and his wife’s purse, and ran off. He stated that when the instant first occurred he was so angry that he may have killed them if he could have caught up with them, but after a few days, he didn't worry about it and his wife and he had a wonderful vacation. The author concluded that after having time to think over the situation, he believed that“ …show more content…

When the author was in France, he expected this safety, but he was robbed of the safety when the criminals broke the moral agreement of the law and disturbed the peace. The criminals were from the ghettos of France and the author stated that they couldn't have been older than fourteen. The society in France is not based upon John Rawls’s difference principle which states that the just society benefits the least advantaged yet the world does not function this way. From birth, the children living in this ghetto were at a disadvantage. The criminals were not born to break the social contract and disturb the peace, but the strain from the lack of resources and others having more caused them to turn to crime as a viable solution. This example of distributive injustice was a primary cause of the crime that these kids committed and the author acknowledges this and states that he understands the choices these kids made and in turn does not want them punished for taking what they think is theirs, but rather taking their sense of stability and predictability. Consensus theorists want to know the origin of the crime and they believe that the environment are relevant to fostering a criminal. The author’s purpose for writing this article was to bring to the public’s mind that breaking a crime is not just black and white, but often falls into a grey

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