Criminality and Social Interaction

Abstract

As regards to the abrupt growth of crime, it has been analyzed that, only with Becker's (1968) original findings, is not sufficient to prove this phenomena. Thus, many researches have incorporated new paradigms with the intention to explain the mechanisms which react to crime. New research lines are being demonstrated the topic which studies the existing relation between illegal behavior and social interaction. Others works tries to verify the factors related to family situation or family heritage has impact on crime. The approach which gives us the support on this research parts from the foundation that crimes have diverse nature, not only for its type but, primarily on its determinants. Therefore, there should be a demarcation line which limits these different categories of crimes, when it is regarding to the nature of the motivation for committing a crime. Such motivation may be associated to economic factors or social interaction. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate if the optimum rule of decision making for entering the criminal world, for each different types of crimes, is motivated by the same factors. Thus, this article based on the procedures of Heckman (1979) to verify if the optimum rule of decision making, which motivates a crime, is the same for different types of crime. According to the results obtained from this study, one may find that there is a difference between the optimum rule of decision of the condemned prisoner for violent crimes of optimum rule of the rest of the prisoners.

Keywords: Criminality, Social Interaction, Religion, Sample Selection Bias

JEL Classification: K4, C25, Z13