why do people break the law?

Answer 1

For money, Anger, thrills, not caring (e.g. smoking in the doorway of a pub....it's still illegal but no one will do anything about it because why bother), oblivious to some laws (there's so many to know, everyone's bound to have broken at least one), the hell of it.

I think the better question would be why do people ask so many daft questions but then that's a daft question in itself.

Answer 2

In order to understand why people break the law, you should look at why we follow the law first. There are roughly two reasons to follow the law. The moral reason and the self-interested reason. The moral reason claims that you should follow the law because the law is right. The self-interested reason says you should follow the law because you may get caught and punished otherwise.

With these two reasons in mind, I think you can better understand why people break the law. If you follow the law because it is morally right, you lose this reason when the law is a morally wrong one. This is the motivation behind everything from civil disobediance to tax resistance to terrorism. A higher law (morality or religion) trumps the law.

If you follow the law because it is in your best interest, then you should break it when it is in your interest to do so. Most crimes go unsolved the odds that you will get caught for any given crime are minimal, especially if you plan it in advance, and if you are willing to take the risk. The self-interested reason can actually (like the moral reason) lead to a justification of breaking the law.

Of course this is all a great over-simplification, but to understand why people break the law, I think it helps to understand why they follow it. The reasons for following it (morality or self-interest) can, in fact quickly become reasons for breaking it.

Answer 3

Cuz some laws are just stupid. Or out of desperation. Or because life is too boring.

Eg#1: I smoke weed which is illegal, but it's a pointless law. Not to mention every year on 4/20 day thousands of people gather at the art gallery and smoke together. It's a peaceful protest and even the police join in.

Eg#2: My friends best friend has a baby son. Her boyfriend is refusing to help pay for his child's food and diapers. Her pay cheques only go so far because she works a low paying job. One month her government cheque came late and the money and food ran out. She got my friend to help her do credit card fraud and bought diapers and baby food with the money, nothing else.

Eg#3: I'm 17 so I can't go to bars or clubs legally. That doesn't stop me though, we go early and get in before the bouncers are at the doors. Party till they close and drink the night away. I've also done break and entries out of boredom, armed robberies (in which we demanded all the pennies out of the register, unrolled and made them unroll the rolled ones, then laughed at it when it was on the news), assult, dangerous drinking activities, street racing, experimenting with drugs, vandalism, auto theft - but all we did was find 2 cars that were the same make, same model, same year, same colour, etc and switch their places, occasionally we'd switch the license places too, spent all night leading police on a wild goose chase trying to find us, kept callin them tellin them we were committing petty crimes in certain places n would leave them a note at every pay phone tellin them they were too slow and give them a hint to our next location... Just really funny stupid shite... I guess this is all mischief...

Answer 4

Many different reasons.

Some don't know they are breaking the law -- there are so many laws, that it's difficult to keep track of them all.

Some are desperate -- they need what they need -- and they can't figure out any legal way to survive.

Some don't care -- they want what they want -- and the fact that the govt says no is not a factor.

And some just like hurting others -- and take pleasure in playing a hide and seek game against the govt.

Answer 5

Some laws go against peoples life style

Answer 6

A few years ago most people had respect for others,or fear of the consequences if they broke the law, now to many people have nothing to fear and little respect for the law.

Answer 7

A complex question involving an explanation for the anarchic mind. A lawyer will protect his street and a bum destroy it. The biological reason can be seen in primates who rebel in groups against the old order with some success. The much lower success rate of rebellion in civilisation is reflective of the relatively recent birth of civilisation. As the anarchic response was more successful throughout the whole of pre-civilisation, this lends credence to its continued prevalence today. Key to this, is the anarchic mindsets success rate in groups of 200 or less[hunter gatherer] compared to groups of 1000000 and more.

Answer 8

They do it because they know the sentencing in this country is a joke. And the prisons are more like holiday camps than prisons.
Prisons should be that fecking awful, that even the most hardened criminal would not want to go back.
Stop all this Liberal bleeding heart crap and make them suffer for their crimes.

Answer 9

Because they think they're above the rest of the population and a lot of people brake the law because they don't bother

Answer 10

Because the law is a system created by man and some men dont see why they should be controled by another man who is equal to them so they brak the law because they refuse to allow another man to control what they choose to do.Lol if that makes sense to anybody.