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Washington: A seemingly shorter life span encourages youths taking to crime to focus more on the “here and now” regardless of risks of violent injury, death or punishment, a new study has found.
The study was conducted by Georgia State University (GSU) criminology professors Timothy Brezina and Volkan Topalli and economist Erdal Tekin.
“It turns out that if you boil it all down the more you think you are going to die young the more likely it is that you are going to engage in criminality and violence,” Topalli said.
“This is the opposite of what most people think, because most people think that if you think you’re going to die soon you become depressed and you wouldn’t commit crimes.”
The research is among the first criminal justice studies to simultaneously include one-on-one offender interviews.
It includes an econometric analysis of nationwide adolescent data to provide a better understanding of why young people tend to pursue high-risk behaviours associated with immediate rewards, which include crime and violence.
The professors interviewed young offenders in some of Atlanta’s toughest neighbourhoods, focussing on Central West Atlanta, a community that has suffered high rates of drug trafficking, serious street crime and youth violence.
Those interviews, which lasted from 45 to 120 minutes, focussed on the participants’ perception of risk, with an emphasis on the risk of future injury, early death and the extent to which these perceptions influenced their attitudes and behaviours related to offending, said a GSU release.
“Many had been shot or stabbed and bore visible scars of physical trauma,” Brezina said. “They occupy a dog-eat-dog world where it is acceptable if not necessary to use force to intimidate others and to prevent victimisation.”
The study was published in Criminology.