The topic discussed refers to one of the many edges present in the crime phenomenon and by its nature it has both theoretical and practical importance. With an adequate differentiation of the motivations that the commissioners of crimes have and the means they use to satisfy them, some elements that often go unnoticed can be identified, and they can be used as useful tools in the process of primary prevention. In other words, knowing these elements can act on them through culture and education to configure appropriate motivations and means.
The objective was to analyze a representative sample of criminal sentences. A series of research methods were applied to them, which yielded useful information that could be applied in specific plans of primary prevention.
Introduction
This article has its origin in the work “The motives and means in criminal activity. Its importance in Primary Prevention ”, carried out for the master's thesis in Criminal Law, defended in December 2008 in Las Tunas, before the tribunal of the University of Camagüey, and includes the fundamental content of the research carried out.
Development
Human Behaviors go unnoticed most of the time and are only revealed when an observer makes an effort to collect and analyze them. One of those occasions occurs when it comes to criminal conduct and is the subject of a police investigation. This type of research can be part of valid criminological studies.
When the actions carried out by the accused are clearly determined, included in the criminal sentences, it is possible to carry out a detailed analysis of them, about the motivations that trigger their actions and the means they used to execute them.
Under the hypothesis that "the criminal sentence is an ideal material to know the motives and the means used by those who commit crimes, and that information is effective to establish effective measures in primary prevention", we chose a universe made up of the sentences of the Criminal cases filed by the first chamber of the Provincial Court of Las Tunas, which includes criminal activity in the municipalities of Manatí, Las Tunas and Majibacoa in the years 2005 and 2006, for crimes whose penalties have a criminal framework of more than three years. The unit of analysis turned out to be the first resulting from those sentences.
In the research we did a random sampling, since any sentence of the period and the given territory had the same probability of being chosen, and for this we used the systematic selection method with an interval of eight, so that the sample size was the result of dividing the size of the universe composed of 1300 sentences by the interval, which indicates that the sample was 166 sentences, equivalent to 12.7%. The sample was adequately representative because compared to judicial statistics, which analyzes not only one sample but the total number of cases, the coincidence was total.
Methods and techniques used
We apply Direct Observation to the sample, a technique that describes the phenomena it observes with the greatest number of details; In our case, it was the motivations that people pose when they commit crimes and the means they use for it, the content analysis that, although at the time was conceived to study the trends of social communication and the mass dissemination of various media, given the The problem posed consisted of a useful tool, the Systematic Logical method, which encourages the objective and dialectical assessment of the social behavior of the phenomena linked to the object of the research, the bibliographic review that consists of the systematic consultation of books,brochures and materials both on paper or digital that dealt with the problem posed and that allowed us to configure the theoretical framework and understand the historical background of the subject, Mathematical analysis, which made it possible to perform calculations through the application of mathematical sciences, which made possible the determination of averages, extreme values and trends, the Statistical Analysis, which allowed the configuration of materials that contained the information in a concentrated way, such as graphs and tables among others, the Judicial Statistics to contextualize our investigation, so that we could know with some precision some aspects of the state, structure and dynamics of crime in the same territory where we detect the motivations and the means used by that same mass of people.This allowed us to have a more complete vision of the social legal phenomenon, on which we based the study to achieve both the general objective outlined and the others of a particular type already mentioned.
Finally, the method known as the Expert Criterion, which consisted of an assessment made by a pedagogical specialist about the possibility of incorporating a topic on criminal activity into the Civic Education subject taught in primary education.
Discussion
With the study, we have determined that by making a detailed analysis of the content of the sentences, both the reasons and the means can be found, both are not absolute entities, but rather represent the trends that are revealed at first glance and express the externalization of certain traits of the personality of each individual, revealed in concrete situations.
Of the total of the analyzed crimes, 7 motivations resulted in a first approximation: sexual, prestige, greed, self-affirmation, freedom, revenge, and no motives.
- Sexual: It consists in that the individual had a fundamental concern based on sex, of practicing it himself or that others did not practice it with a partner who was his, causing feelings of jealousy.
- Prestige: Demonstrate that in certain official actions, leading state entities can be efficient at all costs, according to the maxim "the end justifies the means."
- Greed: Category that designates the motive that drives certain individuals to obtain for themselves or for other certain objects or resources of any kind, including money.
- Self affirmation. Category whose content we take from the analyzes and references made by Fernando Ortiz Fernández in his anthropological studies on some sectors of the Cuban population in past times, and which is what drives certain individuals in different situations or when facing others, to demonstrate that their criteria or their personality must prevail, an attitude that in the street is called “guapería”.
- Freedom: Category that, of course, we only saw in the crime of evasion of prisoners, and that is the reason that drives the individual not to depend on others and go where they want, even when they recognize that they are committing a new crime.
- Revenge: Reason that reflects the desire of an individual to act on others as payment for a previous act that was considered harmful in some way to his person.
-Without motives: It is a category that indicates the absence of motives because there is no conscious motive to carry out a certain action, the result being totally unexpected, reserved in this case for crimes committed through recklessness.
In turn, in that same sample, we were able to determine several possible means by which the authors wanted to materialize their motivations, they were: force, simple execution, negligence, violence, and deception.
- Simple execution: category that indicates the criminal behavior of people, as if those actions were not prohibited by law, denotes to a certain extent contempt and disrespect for institutions, it is socially dangerous because it leads to manifest impunity.
- Negligence: when someone must perform an activity and does not perform it properly because they have not given it all the importance that said action deserves.
- Violence: a category that encompasses physical or mental actions carried out by certain people on others, which tend to damage their integrity.
- Deception: a category that encompasses actions, in words or in any other way, including forgeries, aimed at distorting reality.
- Force: Actions on things, of the same nature as the Penal Code.
Returning to the table of most frequent crimes, we have that both in the judicial statistics and in the study on the sample, five crimes emerged, which on average represent 45.3% of the criminal activity in the studied territory; And if we look at the table of motives and means, we realize that the investigation showed that the greedy motive was represented by 80% and self-affirmation with 20%, and in relation to the means used, force represented 16%, violence 52% and simple execution 32%. Thus, the situation is simplified because by only solving the problem of greed and self-assertion on the one hand, and on the other, what is related to force, violence, and simple execution, significant results would be obtained in the prevention of violence. criminal activity.
But simplifying even more, if educational activity were able to attenuate greedy motivation in children, and violence as a means of solving motivations, the result could be extraordinary.
On the other hand, the research sought to know the practical conditions in which teaching was developed in the primary schools of the territory, so that we could apply the results of the analysis of criminal sentences in that area of the life of each child.
In the fifth grade curriculum there is the Civic Education subject whose fundamental objectives are to ensure that children at that level know the rights and duties in general, learn to defend both their own and those that correspond to the community, that they learn to live with the rest of the people and be able to comply with the laws of the country at the same time that they can come to understand the social value of courtesy and good treatment with their peers, and in general the qualities that every person should possess to be a worthy citizen living in a socialist homeland.
This is how our proposal was aimed at including in the study plan of the Civic Education subject a topic related to criminal activity where the students put their attention and direct their efforts towards the development in children of socially valid motivations and adequate means to resolve those motivations.
If this endeavor can be fulfilled as we hope, we are sure that criminal activity in adulthood will decrease significantly.
Conclusions
With the investigation we reached the following conclusions.
- From very early times, criminologists or scholars who investigate related issues have issued a whole series of hypotheses and theories that have served to deepen the issues related to crime and the offender and in one way or another have enriched the object of study of that science.
- At present the doors are still open for the study and analysis of new phenomena in view of the development of modern theories that explain the phenomenon of crime and are capable of developing effective social prevention plans.
- Criminal sentences are reliable sources of knowledge for criminological studies, and as such they can be perfected in that sense.
- By studying the content of criminal sentences, it is possible to determine several important parameters for criminological studies, including the motives that drive people to commit crimes as ways to resolve their contradictions and needs through the wrong ways, consisting of the means used are worth for it.
- It is possible to positively influence the personality in formation of children and young people and plant positive values in them, teaching them to channel their concerns and needs through lawful actions that are in tune with the cultural patterns that surround them.
- It is feasible to add some aspects related to crime prevention to the primary school curricula, even adding the specific topic of Crime Prevention to the Civic Education subject.
- It is possible that with long-term social development a day may come when criminal activity with its serious consequences is minimal and where human beings act consciously and rationally in the face of every challenge that reality throws at them, and always put their own condition of being human.
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