It goes both ways..

How many more shop liftings, car thefts, sons/daughters killed over a wallet do you think it takes before these thugs get hunted and put down like rabid dogs?

Beneath the thin layer of tolerance and civility lies a level of barbarity most of us can't even fathom. This is coming from somebody who studies this stuff (history) as a hobby and even I wont be able to make sense of it.

For some reason, we are fed this idea of post history. The idea that, we are somehow fundamentally different to our ancestors who bashed peoples head in with a rock and called it a normal Tuesday.

We are still the same, there is just a tiny little sliver of civility. If you want to take that away, be my guest. This is what I think about every time I see a video of a shop owner get beaten to an inch of his/her life or I see some crazy left leaning political thing. I don't fear that stuff, I fear the counter reaction. I fear what comes next, thats when things get really ugly, like the stuff you read in the history books..

Unrelated: Please don't ban-ish me señor Dang. While it may leave a bad taste in some peoples mouths, this comment offers very interesting philosophical and socio-economic insights that are directly related to their previous comment and the OP.

So tired of this notion that poor people have no morals.

Someone who is capable of kidnapping a child for ransom is seriously fucked up. Paying that person off with welfare so they don't "have" to resort to heinous crimes, as if that's the default, is unconscionable.

The moral reasoning behind kidnapping is: no one gets hurt, these rich people just have to live in the same conditions we do everyday for a week or two, then their parents will pay out of pocket change more money than we can make in our entire lives.

That logic isn’t really true, but it’s what kidnappers tell themselves.

No one ever feels like they are truly immoral.

I'm not really concerned with what the criminal tells themself.

I am concerned about society at large sympathizing and excusing criminal behavior because the criminal was poor.

I'm sympathetic to your comment but I do think he has a point, it seems both of you guys are speaking past each other.

I think modern society is quick to cast criminality as either circumstantial or biological.

There is a non zero percentage of the population that are sociopaths and psychopaths with a top percentile disagreeableness trait yet most of these people are fully integrated functioning members of society.

Although their might be predispositions, I think its moral narratives that turn an otherwise "normal" person into criminality.

This goes back to your point, we should not be empathising of excusing those among us who have missed the mark with their moral narratives and downstream actions that follow.