Must read: Poverty is not an excuse for crime as morality is the biggest factor, claims Cambridge University study

Children commit crime because they lack morals and not just because of the environment they live in, according to
a new study.
Cambridge University studied around 700 young people in Peterborough for over a decade and discovered that most adolescent crime is not just youthful opportunism.
In fact, while it is agreed that urban environments trigger some young people to commit crime, it is their morality which is the biggest factor. Other teenagers remain highly resistant to committing crime - regardless of the circumstances. 
The Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study was carried out by Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. The findings from the first five years of the study from ages 12-16 have just been published in the book ‘Breaking Rules’.
The young people self-reported about 16,000 crimes during the study period.
The most common types of crime carried out by youths were being violent, vandalism and shoplifting. Crime is often believed to be a natural part of teenage life - but the findings show that a third of teenagers committed no crimes at all.
The rest only committed crime occasionally - once or twice a year on average. 
The bulk of offences were committed by a small group - with around four per cent responsible for almost half the crime and the overwhelming majority of the most serious property crimes such as burglaries, robberies and car theft. 
Often beginning before the age of 12, the most persistent offenders in the study also committed a wide range of offences.    
But the study suggests that a major reason why certain young people refrain from crime is not because they fear the consequences.
It is that their morality simply prevents them from even seeing crime as a possible course of action in the first place.  
Young people at the other end of the spectrum do not care very much about breaking the rules of the law and tend to be impulsive and short-sighted, leaving them more vulnerable to the temptations of crime. 
The 16 per cent most ‘crime-prone’ young people committed 60 per cent of the crimes, while the 16 per cent most ‘crime-averse’ were only responsible for 0.5 per cent of the crimes.
Professor Per-Olof H Wikström, responsible for the study, said: 'Many young people are ‘crime-averse’ and simply don’t perceive crime as a possible course of action - it doesn’t matter what the situation is.
'The idea that opportunity makes the thief - that young people will inevitably commit crime in certain environments - runs counter to our findings.'

-Dailymail

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