Why Do People Steal?

Ruthanne

Ruthanne

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Why Do People Steal?

Why Do People Steal?


By Caroline Nettle

Stealing from others has always been seen as a crime- in fact in years gone by, you could be hanged, or go to prison for years for stealing as little as a fish. Why do people steal, and is punishing them always the right course of action?

There are many reasons why people steal. One of the most obvious ones is in order to feed themselves or their family. I often hear people say that they would never steal, but I believe desperation and possible starvation would force many people to steal to survive.

Another reason to steal is to be seen to be cool in front of your friends or just for the thrill of it. Sadly for many retailers, teenage years have several rites of passage and one of them can be the act of stealing and getting away with it. I have met people who describe how they felt elated when they stole something from a shop. Often, they were not at all interested in what they were stealing, but the thrill of getting away with it was worth it and the thought of getting one over on the establishment was motive enough. This type of behaviour is often short lived, and the teenager grows into an adult that has more respect for other people's possessions. Of course, this is not always the case!

A third reason that people steal is because of deprivation. They do not know this is what is driving them, but they are unconsciously telling the world that their needs are not being met. Often these people begin to steal as children. They have experienced deprivation (usually of an emotional kind) and so they develop a sense of entitlement to money and objects outside of the house. It is a way of trying to fill the emotional gap that the parents or caregivers left, but as with other compulsive behaviours, it does not solve the problem at all. This leads them to repeat the behaviour and become more and more confident, stealing riskier and riskier items in an attempt to not feel the deprivation.

The fourth category of people that steal, do it because they can. It is a lot easier to take someone else's money than have to earn your own. This can be learned behaviour or just something that is picked up along the way.

Whatever the reason that you steal, our societies do not condone the behaviour. Many people learn the hard way what is like to lose everything you value to a thief. It can feel as though you have been violated, just because you know they have been going through your possessions and treasures.
People often steal because they feel insecure and less than.

Learning that stealing is not the way to form loving and happy relationships with the people you know and the people you steal from is part of learning respect. One rule that it always helps to keep in mind is- Can I have it? Is it mine? If the answer to those two questions is yes, then you are entitled to it. If it belongs to anyone else, you can have it if you ask them, and they agree.
Learning to respect other peoples' possessions is just part of growing up. If countries and governments learned this, then the world would be a lot more harmonious!

Treat others as you wish to be treated- and this will teach them to treat you with respect.
Written by Caroline Nettle

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http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/why-do-people-steal
 

Good article! However, I would add a 5th reason people steal. In their minds, they are not stealing. They are performing acts they feel are warranted and are not crimes. This side of stealing is most prevalent in politics. Politicians will steal money from programs that feed the needy, clothe the poor, educate the youth, and give medical care to those who cannot afford it. Read an article this past week about a teenage girl who was mowing lawns to earn money for a band camp. The city in which she lives has a requirement for anyone performing work for hire to have a business license. The license fee was over $100. The city has threatened the young lady with fines/detention if she continues to mow lawns without a license. The City, in its greed, would rather "steal" from this youngster than see her earn the money for band camp.
 
Some people steal because of a sense of entitlement. "He has all that stuff and I don't, and it's not fair." They don't see anything wrong with it. Saw that one a good bit when I was working.
 

One thought: Stealing food to keep starving family alive I don't think is a crime that should put the perpetrator in jail but given months of paid assistant work no matter how unpleasant the job.....

When I was around 8-9?, I had the very unusual fortune of having money!--two dimes!! to spend. I bought a Babe Ruth candy bar at a drugstore for a dime, went next door to an A & P grocery market where I munched on the bar as I walked the aisles. Suddenly I was confronted by a man & a woman clerk who angrily accused me of stealing the candy bar from the market. I can still 'see' sunshine shining behind their overpowering shapes. No matter what I said about buying the candy bar at the drugstore, they refused to believe me and insisted I pay the store for it. I did, using my last dime and left the market in despair. If there are A & P grocery markets still around anywhere, (Wisconsin, USA) no way would I shop at any of them.
 
Elsie said:
One thought: Stealing food to keep starving family alive I don't think is a crime that should put the perpetrator in jail but given months of paid assistant work no matter how unpleasant the job.....

When I was around 8-9?, I had the very unusual fortune of having money!--two dimes!! to spend. I bought a Babe Ruth candy bar at a drugstore for a dime, went next door to an A & P grocery market where I munched on the bar as I walked the aisles. Suddenly I was confronted by a man & a woman clerk who angrily accused me of stealing the candy bar from the market. I can still 'see' sunshine shining behind their overpowering shapes. No matter what I said about buying the candy bar at the drugstore, they refused to believe me and insisted I pay the store for it. I did, using my last dime and left the market in despair. If there are A & P grocery markets still around anywhere, (Wisconsin, USA) no way would I shop at any of them.
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Last year the A&P did its last year in court and business. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Groceries and Tea Stores are no longer. I think their official bankruptcy and closing was just last year. As a kid in high school I worked for them as a carry out in the afternoon and weekends and also met trucks in the morning and helped clean the meat cases for new stocking. Now the biggest chain store we have where I live is Kroger and this newcomer called Walmart.
 
Elsie said:
One thought: Stealing food to keep starving family alive I don't think is a crime that should put the perpetrator in jail but given months of paid assistant work no matter how unpleasant the job.....

When I was around 8-9?, I had the very unusual fortune of having money!--two dimes!! to spend. I bought a Babe Ruth candy bar at a drugstore for a dime, went next door to an A & P grocery market where I munched on the bar as I walked the aisles. Suddenly I was confronted by a man & a woman clerk who angrily accused me of stealing the candy bar from the market. I can still 'see' sunshine shining behind their overpowering shapes. No matter what I said about buying the candy bar at the drugstore, they refused to believe me and insisted I pay the store for it. I did, using my last dime and left the market in despair. If there are A & P grocery markets still around anywhere, (Wisconsin, USA) no way would I shop at any of them.
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I had a similar experience. A friend of mine and I went into a newstand and started looking at the car magazines. I think we were maybe 14 or so. After a while we decided to buy a copy of Motor Trend. I think it was 35 cents back then. When we started to leave we found that one of those early afternoon Florida thunderstorms had popped up and it was raining cats and dogs. We were maybe a mile from the neighborhood where we lived and were on foot so we decided to hang out in the store until the storm died out. So we went in the back and looked at the Motor Trend that we had just bought. About a half hour later the storm had let up but when we went to leave there had been a shift change and there was a new cashier on duty. And she accused us of trying to steal the magazine. We had a similar exchange with her as you did with the Winn Dixie people except that when she wouldn't relent we just gave her back the magazine and walked out.
 
You know it's easy to speculate about why other people steal or to relate stories about when you were the victim of theft, but how about when you are the perpetrator?
How about it? Anybody feel like getting real here?

Tell you what, I'll go first. I was pretty much a goody two shoes when I was a kid and got into less mischief than most. But I've got one or two stories.

One day when I was about 8 years old my mother came to me and said that the lady that lived in back of us (her back yard bordered on ours) was having her nephew stay with her for a few days and wouldn't it be nice if I went over there and played with him.

So over I went and met whatshisname, I forget. Let's call him James. Anyway it turns out James had brought a tent with him and the plan was to camp out in the back yard. That sounded pretty cool to me and my mom and James' aunt were OK with it. We'll just be in the back yard and right in between the two houses, what can go wrong?

So that's what we did. We were hanging out in the tent playing with our flashlights and talking about whatever eight year boys do. I forget what. It was getting pretty dark when James took his pillowcase off of his pillow and said "Follow me, I wanna show you something" and I said OK, I followed him out across the vacant lot that was next to our houses.

On the lot next to the vacant lot there was a little mom and pop type "corner store" and once we were across the vacant lot that was maybe 100 feet wide we were at the back of this store. And at the back of the store they had something, I don't know how to describe it, but it was kind of like a chicken coop. A storage area made with a wooden frame and some kind of fencing. And stacked up in that storage area right next to the fencing were a whole bunch of empty pop bottles in their wooden cases. The kind that you can get 2 cents a piece for when you return them to the store. Do you see where this is going?


I'm not sure what size the mesh of that fencing material was but it was big enough for an 8 year old to stick his arm through, grab a pop bottle, and pull it back out. And that's what James started to do. Pull out those pop bottles one at a time and put them in his pillowcase. And, in spite of being scared out of my mind, it wasn't long before I started to help him. I didn't want James to think I was a scaredy cat. And I was sure not going to rat him out because being a tattletale is much worse than even being a scaredy cat.

The next morning James says "OK, let's turn these in." I'm still scared to death but I go along with it, but I'm wondering where we're going to do it. But James isn't wondering at all. He's got this. He heads right over to the same store he and I stole them from last night. And I go along with him. Even more scared than I was the night before. James put's them up on the counter and the cashier lady doesn't bat an eye. She just counts them up and hands us the money. I think we ended up with a buck and change each.

James went back home in a day or two. He lived in Hollywood Florida which is on the other coast from where this took place in Clearwater. I never saw him again. But I had to live there about 100 feet away from the store that I had helped steal those bottles from. I don't think I dared to go back into it for at least a couple of months. But nothing ever came of it. I got away clean. I never told anybody about it until many years later. Why did I do it? I guess I could blame it on peer pressure but it was me who succumbed to it. As for James, I don't know what his deal was. I don't think he needed the money. My best guess is for the cheap thrill.
 
We were foster parents to just over 100 children over the years. When we talk of "stealing", that brings to mind a brother/sister we had for a couple weeks. The two were, IIRC, 4 year old girl and 5 year old boy. The boy had scars from cigarettes being snuffed out on his stomach, back, and legs. He was deaf in one ear, attributed to blows to the side of the head. These two kids were the nicest, most polite kids one could imagine... especially due to the environment they had "survived" in. Well, these two were the best "food thieves" ever!!! We began finding food evidence in their bedrooms. Food was missing from the refrigerator. They would wake each other up at night and sneak to the kitchen to steal food. My wife and I would never hear a thing and they would have to walk/sneak past our bedroom door to the kitchen. We put up chairs to block the kitchen entrance. Next morning, the chairs would be in exactly the spot we had left them... but more food would have disappeared into their bedrooms. We rigged up "pots and pans" alarms... utensils strung on string that would rattle/clang when bumped. Never heard a thing. Food disappeared.

Now, we fed these kids well!!! They both had unbelievable appetites. Three solid meals/day, plus bedtime snack. Still, they would steal food every night. We finally understood that these little ones had been starved. They had lived through a time when they did not know when their next meal would come... if ever. So, they felt the need to get/eat all they could as almost a survival instinct. Have no idea what ever happened to these two sweeties. That would have been about 1985 so both would be young adults by now. Hopefully, they found stable homes and lost their need to "steal".
 
Manatee said:
In their feeble little minds they are redistributing the wealth.
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Not all thieves are socialists, as you hint at...the bigger thieves are in the corporate boardrooms....


But typically, burglars and shoplifters are most often drug addicts, supporting their progressively expensive habit.
 
Trade, well written & interesting account of your 'stealing' experience. Did paying the store back ever come to mind but doing so would probably cause a complicated mess?

Around age 9 I spotted a dime on a dresser of my aunt and uncle's and I stole it. I don't know why I would steal, except that having that dime to spend gave me a bad/good way of having money to spend. I never told my aunt nor uncle, nor their close in age to me children about this, but it has bothered me so much that I can still see that dime sitting on that white doilie covered dresser. I even thought to admit my crime years later and pay them back, but decided it probably would not matter to them by then, but just cause confusions as how to react to my confession.

To this day, stealing disgusts me very much.
 
Elsie said:
Trade, well written & interesting account of your 'stealing' experience. Did paying the store back ever come to mind but doing so would probably cause a complicated mess?
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No, I just chalked it up to part of growing up. Over the years a lot more has been stolen from me than I've ever stolen. Which is rationalization and I know that.
 
If you are hungry and you have to feed your family would you feel guilty about stealing food?

I wouldn't.

My mother explained different kinds of stealing to me and that was one of her comments to me about her mother going out at night to take food from gardens. They were very poor people. She would say don't do that. I have to do it.
 
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