capitalism is criminal

With two million minors arrested every year, researchers and legal experts are urging Barack Obama to find alternatives to jail, in hopes of breaking a cycle of crime that ensnares many American youths. There are some 31 million 15 to 18 year olds in the United States, and close to 93,000 of them are behind bars, serving time in nearly 600 private and public detention centers across the United States. Most jailed juveniles come from poor backgrounds.

While the causes of crime in a community can vary widely, one factor remains constant, according to a national crime expert -- poverty.
"That is the rule," said Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston. "Poverty breeds crime, both violent crime and property offenses" he said.

" Most violence takes place among the poor and the alienated who do not feel they have a stake in society nor a future," said Jesse Jackson ."Many are driven more by fear than hope.
They fear their future prospects and their present environment. Often, people will fight fear by seeking a false sense of power, and the gun, the knife and the gang can provide that false sense of power."

Today crime is a big problem. But most of it is to do with private property. To keep the buying and selling system going, people are encouraged to want more and more things. But they are often not able to get the necessary money legally. So it's not surprising that some of them break the law by stealing. Since doing this on a large scale would seriously endanger the profit system, there has to be a complex apparatus of police, law courts, prisons and the rest.
If politicians such as Jackson were serious about eradicating crime, they would identify and attempt to remove the causes of crime. This, however, would raise questions about why we need private property, money, privilege, not very likely to be tackled by most politicians since the one thing they all agree on is the social system in which a minority owns most of the wealth and exploits the rest of us to maintain it.