The social environment of individuals may have a considerable impact on their behavior. In the course of their development, individuals learn from their social environment certain models of behavior (Siegel, 2003). If individuals grow up in the environment, where crime is a norm or where crime rates are high, they take the criminal behavior for granted and tend to commit crimes themselves. At this point, it is possible to refer to the statistics of crimes committed by individuals living in communities with the high crime rates.
In addition, the impact of the environment and socialization may provoke the criminal behavior of individuals by means of the socioeconomic pressure. For instance, crime rates in poverty-stricken areas are consistently higher compared to crime rates in the middle- and upper-class communities (Mathiesen, 1998). Therefore, the poverty is an important socioeconomic factor that provokes crimes and increases the risk of the development of the criminal behavior in individuals. In fact, people are often forced to commit crimes to survive. Hence, property crime rates are particularly high in poverty-stricken areas because the local population looks for means for living often being forced to violate the law to gain some means for living. At the same time, people grow up and live among people, who may be inclined to the criminal behavior (Mann, 1994). As a result, they just have to develop criminal behavior patterns to defend themselves and to survive in communities with the high crime rate.
Thus, environment and socialization play an important part in the development of the criminal behavior in individuals. Even though people may have latent traits that increase the risk of criminal behavior but these traits are often developed under the impact of the social environment and in the course of the socialization of individuals.