Does Our Society Drive People To Crime?

An interesting new law review article addresses the question of why some poor people become criminals:

The disadvantaged have incentives to commit crime, and to develop criminogenic dispositions, that limit the extent to which their co-citizens can blame them for breaking the law. This is true regardless of whether the causes of criminality are mainly “structural” or “cultural.” We need not assume that society as a whole is unjust in order to accept this conclusion. And doing so would neither stigmatize nor otherwise disrespect the disadvantaged.

Christopher Lewis, Inequality, Incentives, Criminality, and Blame 22(2) Legal Theory (2016).

Hat Tip: Legal Theory Blog.