What's Your Excuse? - Why People Commit Crimes

 "Twinkies made me do it!" 

Such was the defense of a man in 1978 who pleaded temporary insanity after shooting the San Francisco mayor and the city supervisor. The man insisted that his diet of junk food had caused temporary insanity. This type of defense became so common that it garnered the name, the "Twinkie defense." 

It's still rather common for people to use excuses to minimize their culpability in committing crime. The challenge is, how can the courts consider mitigating circumstances, which do factor into a person's psyche and motivations, without excusing their behavior?  

Twinkies and sugar-rich diets do not make people homicidal or violent. But unhealthy diets are often correlated with other social factors that do contribute to a person's criminality. Other factors, too, like youthfulness, childhood abuse, and mental illness, are other important social factors to consider.

Unfortunately, our society seems to be of two minds when it comes to the impact of social factors on human behavior. 

One group, commonly thought of as "progressive" or "liberal," views people as passive recipients and byproducts of environmental and social pressures. This approach reduces human agency. Instead of being humans responsible for our own choices, we are simply reactive to outside influences. In other words, the Twinkie made me do it! 

Another group, commonly thought of as "conservative," views people as economically driven "calculators." Social factors are not responsible for our choices. Instead, we make cost/benefit analyses. Humans commit crime when the benefits outweigh the costs (punishment). Therefore, greater punishments will lead to less crime. In other words, humans are all a bunch of criminals who are only restrained by the risk of severe punishment. 

Of course, neither group is right, and I dare say that the majority of Americans fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Rarely do people actually believe Twinkies lead to criminal behavior. And rarely do people believe only fear of punishment restrains anarchy. After all, most people believe they have some level of morality that guides their behaviors. 

The reality is that humans are moral agents, capable of discerning between right and wrong (even if imperfectly). But sometimes our moral agency is warped, by social influences, by internal justifications, or by a myriad of other factors. We ought not discount these factors, but neither should they excuse criminal behavior. To do so is to diminish human agency, and therefore, human dignity. 

Only an approach to criminal justice that honors human dignity and moral agency by addressing the need for responsibility and repentance will work. Punishments for crime ought to factor in responsibility and make a way for repentance and restoration. This is the aim of restorative justice. 

Sadly, our current criminal justice system is in a battle of worldviews. On one hand, the culture calls for more mercy by wrongly assigning blame to social forces. Mob theft rings, for example, are excused based on "economic insecurity" among the wrongdoers. On the other hand, the culture calls for more severe punishments to diminish the cost of the benefits of crime. Recidivists (repeat offenders), for example, are hit with severe mandatory prison sentences, even for minor crimes. 

True justice honors human dignity by requiring responsibility for one's behavior, but it also aims for mercy and restoration whenever possible. It aims for addressing the moral breakdown that leads to criminal behavior rather than thinking that punishment alone will fix a person's moral breakdown. It won't. 

If we really want to be a just society, we have to hold people accountable, to honor their dignity as moral agents. But we also have to actually work towards and encourage moral agents to make morally good decisions. And we have to stop blaming the Twinkies. 

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"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~ C. S. Lewis ("The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment")
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(Ideas adapted from "How Now Shall We Live?" by Charles Colson, 1999, Tyndale Publishing, pp. 181-182 )