Various factors influence the decision made by an individual in day to day life. Some of the areas where this is mostly applicable are in deciding whether to commit a crime or not. The first factor that influences such a decision is the person’s immediate environment (Chang, 2011) . People or conditions that surround an individual can make him/her commit a crime easily. Genetics also contribute to free will one has in deciding to engage in criminal activities or not. One can pass hereditary traits that influence or attract him/her to crime thus making the offspring unable to easily determine good or bad (Levitt, 2012) . To understand the impact of the environment on the rate of crime in a community, it will be appropriate to understand environmental stressors that contribute to this.
The first one is the mental health of members of the community. If many people suffer from this condition, they are likely to engage a lot in criminal activities. Secondly, the social-cultural status influence how people view certain aspects of society. A society that views crime as a normal occurrence will lead to many of its members engaging in criminal activities. The third stressor is the economic factors within an area (Simning, Van Wijngaarden, & Conwell, 2012) . If a large number of people are unemployed, the rate of crime will increase unlike when the majority have a steady income. Other stressors include infrastructure development and the availability of social amenities. To address this problem, local leaders need to implement certain policies that benefit the community. First, they need to provide social amenities like schools and hospitals to deter people from engaging in crime. People will stop relying on criminal activities to afford those services. Secondly, local leaders need to initiate projects that offer young people a means of getting an income. They may include the construction of roads, terminus, or drainage systems.
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References
Chang, D. (2011). Social crime or spatial crime? exploring the effects of social, economical, and spatial factors on burglary rates. Environment and Behavior . https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916509347728
Levitt, M. (2012). Genetics and Crime. In Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics . https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-373932-2.00037-5
Simning, A., Van Wijngaarden, E., & Conwell, Y. (2012). The association of African Americans’ perceptions of neighborhood crime and drugs with mental illness. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-011-0426-0
