The Outsiders and Saints and Roughnecks/Reaction paper - Essay Example

A reaction to the common issues highlighted in “The Outsiders” and “Saints and Roughnecks The reaction ment: “The society tends to punish only the poor for their visible crimes, although the invisible crimes of rich are more severe and heinous than those of poor.” Reaction:The society in which we live can be principally divided into two types of people; the rich and the poor. people belonging to both of these classes can be criminals, but the reason why poor are punished more than the rich is that they get noticed for their crimes because their region is specific and a scarcity of resources causes them to be less smart in hiding their crimes unlike the rich.

Moreover, the crimes committed by the rich are too abstract to be taken into account, in that, they offer psychological torture to the poor in the form of abuse or insult to which they physically react and are punished.Poor children are turned into criminals because of the social injustice and exclusion they are offered by the richer society. Society tends to sideline the poor for their physical misconduct. Poverty and social exclusion together induce a feeling of revenge among the poor and they indulge in physical offences.

Crimes of the rich are more heinous because they are more often than not, a root cause of the physical reaction shown by the poor.Only if the society attempts to accept the temporary misconduct of the poor and cooperate with them and calm them down psychologically, the number of criminals can be significantly reduced.In view of the argument made above, a large proportion of the prisoners we know come from low class backgrounds. This is evident from the fact that the major forms of crime i.e. murder, drug possession, drunk driving, physical offence etc require very little / no money to be committed.

(Caplan, 2007, para. 1 ). Power has always been the property of rich. The wish to dominate others is in the nature of man. With all the power and resources they have, it is easy for the rich to play with the emotions of the poor. This is exactly what is termed as social injustice and is the root cause of social exclusion of the poor. This induces feelings of revenge in the poor and their revenge is more physical than otherwise because all they have is physical power. This physical revenge is both a cause and effect of the social exclusion and the crime.

Conclusion:The way an individual is perceived or labeled in the society shapes his mentality has a big role in deciding his future. If one knows how to carry oneself in the public, the public would accept one and overlook one’s delinquencies. But this never means that others who are just not as good at hiding their delinquencies are worse. The society should eliminate the differences between the rich and the poor. Psychological counseling of the poor can make them good individuals and responsible citizens.

Works cited:Caplan, Bryan. “Why do the poor commit more crime?” 13 June 2007. 20 July 2010. < http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor.html>.