Maggie's Farm

Michael Crichton's excellent "The Great Train Robbery" made the same point about 19th C England: it was already becoming clear that much of crime was the result of attitude rather than circumstance. Certainly a truly desperate person, hungry and cold, might steal a blanket and a loaf of bread. There is hardly an American city (or European) where that's necessary, though. There are shelters, supported by a mix of charity and taxes, so that no one really has to go hungry.
Leaving out drug abuse crimes, most thefts and assaults and even murders are about taking what you want because you want to take it, more than because you actually want what you took, or they are about forcing others to obey you.

F/Up on myself: only yesterday morning, I stopped to check on a young man sleeping on a lawn beside a major street. I wanted to be sure he was all right. He told me he was a vet, which might be true, and had just come from a hospital emergency room (he was wearing a bracelet). I asked if I could drive him to a shelter or an agency and he declined. I'm sure he had a similar offer at the ED. What to make of this? The hand is extended and he chooses to walk by it.