The Allure of Crime

The Allure of Crime episode of “This American Life” was a very interesting view into criminal minds. Because I frequently watch TV shows such as Criminal Minds or Law and Order, I think that I have gotten stuck in the mind set that most criminals are really twisted and terrible people. I definitely don’t condone the things that were done in the three particular stories in The Allure of Crime, but I was surprised at how empathetic I felt when I knew the background of the criminals. I was particularly interested in the stories of the bank robber and of the woman who pocketed cash at her hotel job.

You almost had to feel bad for the bank robber. His childhood story was sad, his mother died when he was 9, his father was unable to cope with the situation, which left him as a minister that beat his two sons. When the bank robber was a teenager there was a particularly bad night of beating after the boy had told his father’s girlfriend that his father beat his brother and himself. His father stepped out of the house in the middle of the episode and in that time the boy hid a knife under his pillow. When the father returned and proceeded to beat him, he stabbed him in the neck. As his father was laying on the floor the boy told him that he had brought this on himself. In the interview he said that it was almost a religious thing for him, a “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” kind of situation. As he grew up he didn’t have the motivation for a job, but he had an impulse to spend a lot of money. So, he robbed banks, and eventually went on a 14-month bank robbing spree. It was clear in the interview that this man was using robbing banks as an outlet, to get all of the things he couldn’t have earlier in his life and much much more. As I said before, I felt empathy for him, knowing how terrible his childhood was, and how he felt like he had nothing to turn to except robbing banks, but I also know that no matter what, what this man did was not right. There are definitely other ways to take your feelings out rather than committing crimes.

Julia, the woman who stole money from the hotel she worked at, was a harder character for me to decipher. She seemed like the came from a pretty good family, and the only real hardship she described in her interview was her dream job at MGM falling through. This left her with a job working as an assistant bartender, handing out tickets for drinks, at a hotel. Her stealing first began in a way that she thought was justified. The hotel wouldn’t pay for her parking while she worked, so she stole the money to pay for her parking. Of course, the stealing escaladed because she got such a high off of it. But, what made the story more intriguing is that she had a very close relationship to God, and even thought of him as her sidekick in crime. She donated some of the money she stole to the church, which in some way I think acted as a penance for the crime she was committing daily. I felt less empathetic for Julia than I did for the bank robber. While I understand that she was going through hard financial and emotional times, I still don’t ever think there is a justification for stealing. But, knowing her story and her character definitely led me to feel a little empathy for her, and without this information I would have just written her off as another terrible person who turned into a criminal.