The starting point for the person responsible

With few exceptions (a mother stealing because her child is hungry, a youth who uses disproportionate violence during a fight to protect a friend), committing a crime is a self-centred occupation, even if it is done in a group. During the offence, the primary concern of the person responsible is for Number One, and in the immediate aftermath, they are usually preoccupied with avoiding the consequences. In the words of Kelvin, who committed a string of burglaries, ‘The only person I cared about was myself, and everyone else could go to hell.’ While it is fair to say that some people instantly regret what they have done, and some may even feel remorse straight after the event (a clear sign that their empathy lapse was brief), it is rare for people who commit crimes to hand themselves in, unless for selfish reasons. Thinking about our own offending, our first thought when we have flown past a speed camera (exceeding the speed limit), stolen a pen from an office (theft) or left dog poop in the park (breach of a local Dog Control Order) is likely to be not instant regret at the real or potential harm we have caused others, but a hope that we will get away with it without having to face any potentially embarrassing consequences.

People committing crime usually know at some level that they are causing harm – there is a warning bell ringing away somewhere inside their head, but it is suppressed or ignored. An obvious example is people who commit property offences to pay for drugs. Their desire for a fix drowns out their inner bell, and they choose to steal, often from their family and friends – the people they love the most – again and again.

Some career criminals actively train themselves to ignore the bell. Using a process that Gresham Sykes and David Matza termed ‘neutralisation’, they suppress their usual values to enable them to commit acts that their ‘inner protests’ would normally proscribe, even though they know what the consequences will be in advance. Others may have been taught offending as a way of life from an early age, such that committing crime is so intimately connected to their identity that they fail to recognise that what happened in the past does not have to be continually played out in their future.