Why So Much Crime?

“MOST crime is against property,” asserts a British government brochure. Yet, in that country violent crime against people is reported to be “the most rapidly increasing form of crime,” although it makes up only 5 percent of all offenses.

This situation mirrors crime’s worldwide escalation. Hijackings, armed robbery, rape, and other violent acts are featured regularly in the columns of the world’s press, often attracting more attention than reports of nonviolent crime. Evidently, then, both you and your possessions may be the target of crime. But why? What prompts people to become criminals?

Many criminals are opportunists. As a consequence, authorities endeavor to counteract the surge of crime by encouraging people to be more aware of what goes on in their neighborhood. While such strategies are employed to try to prevent criminal acts, do they stop people from becoming criminals? No.

The criminal personality is the subject of much study. Interestingly, God’s Word, the Bible, provides a look into the criminal’s thinking when warning young men of those who enticingly say: “Come on; let’s find someone to kill! Let’s attack some innocent people for the fun of it! They may be alive and well when we find them, but they’ll be dead when we’re through with them! We’ll find all kinds of riches and fill our houses with loot! Come and join us, and we’ll all share what we steal.” (Proverbs 1:11-14, Today’s English Version) Yes, greed, covetousness, and a materialistic outlook foster crime.

Drug abuse and hedonism also dominate the thinking of many in this 20th century. Money is needed to pay for the excesses, even if it requires hurting another or taking his life to get the money. In these ‘hard-to-deal-with critical times,’ it is indeed true of a growing number of people that “they hasten hot-foot into crime, impatient to shed blood.”​—2 Timothy 3:1, 3, 4; Proverbs 1:16, The New English Bible.

A crime is “a grave offense esp[ecially] against morality,” says Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. We live in an age of moral breakdown. The apostle Paul warned the Ephesian Christians of people who “walk in the unprofitableness of their minds, while they are in darkness mentally, and alienated from the life that belongs to God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the insensibility of their hearts. [These have] come to be past all moral sense.” Similarly, we need to pay heed today.​—Ephesians 4:17-19.

Do not the proliferation of sadistic video tape recordings, the glorifying of war, and the selfish pursuit of illicit pleasures all contribute to making some become criminals while making innocent people the target of crime? But there is yet another element in the web of criminal intrigue. What is this?

It is Satan the Devil. His anger lights the fire of mindless violence and crime that characterizes this present world. (1 John 5:19; Revelation 12:12) His aim is to turn all people away from the true God, Jehovah. Though he may succeed with many, the Bible prophetically reveals that he will fail to break the integrity of God’s true servants. Finally, Satan will be removed. Yet, even with Satan out of the way, will that spell the end of crime? And is the end of crime now near?