Delinquency, crime
and its causes

 
Talking to a great Brazilian publication about a topic of his expertise - criminality -, the American sociologist John Laub, president of the American Society of Criminology, says that many are the theories that try to explain why criminals give up on it.

One of the factors of change, according to Laub, is the marriage to someone the individual is closely related. Other factors would be identification with the work, education and religion. But the most important of all is the marriage, which, according to him, provides several good results, not only crime-wise.

Laub claims that delinquency is not only found in poor families. We see it everywhere. Poor and rich teenagers are involved with crimes, especially the small ones, like drug addiction.

The American specialist is right, who could have even said that the big robberies against public coffers have been made by people with college degree and have nothing to do with poverty. What senators, congressmen, governors, mayors have done in this country, in this thing called corruption, is bigger than kidnappers and bank robber have done.

The reason why delinquency is not only found in poverty is clearly explained by the Spiritist Doctrine.

The Spirits reincarnate in different places and situations, according to their evolution. Poverty and wealth are neither punishment nor privilege. They’re trials, whose aim is to experiment the individual of several ways, according to their evolutionary necessities.

Wealth and power, as well as difficulties and poverty, are hard trials, because, while poverty provokes complaints against God, wealth is conducive to spending sprees, and, that’s why, in a spiritual perspective, even harder than poverty itself. (The Spirits’ Book, questions 814, 815 and 925.)

What few people know is that the trials we bear in the corporeal life is part of what is called as reincarnation program, which Kardec goes deep in with his keen mind in the item 872 of the same book.