Do you believe that crime is an effect of social and environmental factors?

By definition, it must be.

A normative definition views crime as deviant behaviour that violates prevailing norms, i.e. cultural standards specifying how humans ought to behave. This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect the current definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law enforcement, and penal responses made by the state. These structural realities are fluid and often contentious. For example, as cultures change and the political environment shifts, behaviour may be criminalised or decriminalised which will directly affect the statistical crime rates, determine the allocation of resources for the enforcement of such laws, and influence public opinion.

Maybe to some extent, but crime is committed by people so ultimately the people who commit crimes have noone or nothing else to blame but themselves.

No. It's weak people who commit crimes.

Nothing anyone has ever done to solve crime, other than punishment, has ever had any effect whatsoever.

Yeah, but it is still antisocial and it is a choice people make,

To some extent. I think people are brought up thinking differently about the law. For instance I was brought up thinking felonies are a big freakin' deal, that was something criminals did, but traffic laws were ok to bend. Many people complain about asian drivers, part of the problem is many little old asian believe that you can't break the law. any law. That's true of some people also. Other people may be brought up around felons or criminals that view breaking all laws as more gray area, the emphasis being on not getting caught. I also believe that most any individual will break a law if he/she is desparate. Deep down I think we all know that the laws of man are just that.

Well to be honest social factors can lead to crime. Environmental facts could as well, but I believe a social problem is more prevalant than environmental. Though there is a thing called environmental terrorism. But overall I would say both could cause criminal activities.

That depends on how you define "crime."

One responder indicated "A normative definition views crime as deviant behaviour that violates prevailing norms ...." Although that definition is liberal, it ignores both the mores of civilized people and the judgments of rational persons.

Under the "normative definition," there is no moral distinction between Common Law penalizing theives by fines and/or humane incarceration, and Islamic law penalizing thieves through the amputation (a euphemism) of their hands.

Under the "normative definition," there is no moral distinction between States relying on informed consent and good faith as the predicates for sexual intercourse between humans, and those States specifying some greater minimum age for consent and/or specifying the maximum permissible age disparity between sexual actors.

While it is true that "This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect the current definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law enforcement, and penal responses made by the state," history hath taught that such an amoral view tends not only to encourage abusive and barbarous treatment of suspects and convicts, but also to promote capricious and frivolous legal proscriptions.

As the other responder noted, "These structural realities are fluid and often contentious. For example, as cultures change and the political environment shifts, behaviour may be criminalised or decriminalised which will directly affect the statistical crime rates, determine the allocation of resources for the enforcement of such laws, and influence public opinion." However, that utterly sterile "example" lacks the specificity to engender a moral response.

Consider this: only 100 years ago in the USA, men and women as young as 12-14 years old consummated marital unions through sexual intercourse. In many cases, there was significant age disparity between spouses -- sometimes, more than 20 years. Throughout the USA, such harmless activities would today be regarded by the criminal law as rape. Think about it: your grandfather, great grandfather, great aunt or other elder relative was -- by the standards codified in modern laws throughout the USA -- a rapist.

Having personally interviewed many such couples, and surviving members of such unions, I have yet to find any party to such a union that considered such a relationship wrong on account of age disparity or the age of the younger sexual partner. All but one such union was harmonious, and the source of discord within it was violence arising from drunkenness on the part of the elder party. Literally hundreds of other interviewees characterized their such marriages as being as nearly ideal as any reasonable person could under any circumstances hope.

And yet, we teach our youth that they are to deny their natural sexuality; we tell them that they cannot possibly know what they are doing; parents eagerly abandon the essential task of teaching their children how to be competent sovereign executors of their own sexuality; as a society, we enact laws that prevent parents from BEING parents, and penalize normal people for doing what is natural.

A better definition of what ought to be considered crime, I think, is the injuring of others through action or inaction; if at the time of the act, the parties to the act agreed that there was no harm, the act ought not be regarded as a crime. That is not to proscribe the principle of civil remedy from addressing the issue of collateral damage, but it is ... regarding regulation of personal affairs ... to distinguish between what is rightly the role of the State and what is not.

See also my answer at ( http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=2... )

Of course it is. It is also an effect of nature, for example, genetic pre-disposition to aggression and violence.