“Theodore Dalrymple is pessimistic, of course, and yet optimistic in one respect: he thinks that people can change, and overcome the most terrible circumstances. The socialist view is that deprivation leads automatically to criminality “like the earth and the falling apple”, which is actually a more pessimistic view.”
People CAN change and overcome terrible circumstances, that much is undoubtedly true but it would be dangerous to then make the leap to saying that this renders terrible circumstances irrelevant to problems such as crime.
For it is also true that there is a strong correlation between circumstances such as poverty – of education, ambition and self-esteem at least as much as material deprivation- childhood abuse etc and later criminality.
These phenomena do not work in absolutist terms (poor and abusive upbringing automatically leads to criminal adult) but in trends (poor and abusive upbringing is MORE LIKELY to result in a criminal adult than a comfortable and loving upbringing). That’s my own take on it anyway.
