While poverty, racism, and addiction. are a factor, the root cause of crime is over criminalization of society [2] that creates a cycle of crime that once start

While poverty, racism, and addiction. are a factor, the root cause of crime is over criminalization of society [2] that creates a cycle of crime that once started it is very hard to escape from. The thousands upon thousands of sooo called "victimless" crime that it used to dump millions of people in to the criminal system which then society punishes for the rest of their lives by denying them opportunities in all segments of life from Jobs to Housing to access to government assistance. Often time people have "no other means of making money" due to this cycle of over criminalization, they were busted with a small amount of weed, from that point they were a "convicted criminal" where by many employers will deny them a job, schools will deny them admission, landlords will deny them housing, etc. We have a narrative in this nation that a Misdemeanor Conviction Is Not a Big Deal [1], this is a false narrative one that the legal system pushes because they often over charge individuals with felonies then "allow" them to plea out to a "lesser" misdemeanor to improve the efficiency of "justice". The biggest flaw in the system is that we have created so many criminal laws that we need to make the "justice system" an assembly line of contract negotiation [1] https://time.com/76356/a-misdemeanor-conviction-is-not-a-big-deal-right-think-again/ https://time.com/76356/a-misdemeanor-conviction-is-not-a-big... [2] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/overcriminalization-of-america-113991 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/overcriminal...