Posted: September 5th, 2023

Sociology Case

Crime is common phenomena in a society which exhibits itself in different forms. In the movie “Bus 174” street crime is exemplified where Sandro dares to hijack motorists within a bus causing a lengthy standoff as police tries to rescue the hostage passengers. One thing is very clear that to have such courage; Sandro must have had certain motivating factors. First, the failure of the criminal justice system is one of the problems that might have lead to the criminal act which was committed by Sandro.
This is in the form of the poor treatment of lower classes of people in prison. Prisoners were segregated into cases whereby the lower classes lived in pathetic conditions. This could have been a motivator to the lower class prisoners to commit more and even violent crimes once out of prison.

In addition, the inhuman treatment of the criminal by the prisoners is part of extended injustice by law enforcers (Lembruger, 2003). There were cases where police taught the street kids nothing other than punishing them by beating them severely. The prisons conditions acted like a place where by the street kids would go and get punished only to come out as hardened criminals.
In this case, Sandro developed criminal behavior when he was a little kid living on the streets. Children may involve in petty crime for fun but when crime becomes a norm, it ceases to be a matter of fun but social phenomena (Ellis & Hoffman, 1990).
The prisons conditions offered no any lessons corrective measures hence failed to underline the cause of children’s. Therefore, to these children, prison represented structures for collecting and torturing the underprivileged in the society.  We can deduce that, the life in prison did not manage to correct Sandro perception about crime.  It defeats the essence of having prisons as correction centers while they act as crime training institutes.
In another view, economic deprivation is also another problem that could have led Sandro to commit crime. Lack of jobs and other income generating opportunities made Sandro opt to venture into the only possible way of creating income. In the film we find crowds of idle onlookers who have nothing to do and possibly could end up emulating Sandro. We also find young underprivileged street children involving themselves in all manner of activities even acrobatics to solicit for some money from motorists.
 These are children who do not have a place to live, food to eat and above all they have no protection from the government which was sworn in to protect its citizens. It is the role of a government under any state to provide fair distribution of resource to its citizenship (Jolly, 2007).  Sandro though a well built man with a lot of physical energy lacked a job that could sustain him.
The frustrations of being brought up in harsh conditions in the streets where he watched each and every new day people going to and from their jobs could have initiated a negative attitude towards the working class. In addition, the imagination of how these so called the working class could have money loaded in their pockets could also have motivated him to go after that money regardless of the consequenc3es which were associated with such an undertaking.
References
Ellis, L & Hoffman, H. (1990). Crime in Biological, Social and Moral contexts. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Jolly, R. (2007).  Economic Justice in an Unfair World: Towards a Level Playing Field. Ethics and International Affairs Vol. 21, p. 12-14
Lembruger, J. (2003). The Brazilian Prison System: A Brief Diagnosis. Retrieved on 20 July 2010 from http://www.uoregon.edu/~caguirre/lembruger_brazil.pdf