Oftentimes, understanding a criminal's reasoning seems to be a difficult challenge for the average citizen, as opposed to the simple cases where kids pilfer candy or breaks public property. Those minor criminal actions are easily explained through the kid's innocence, and poor upbringing from their parents who failed to teach it what is right and what is wrong. It may also be explained through the kid's lack of reasoning abilities - that it fail to understand the possible consequences of its actions.
This does not exclusively apply to kids though. If a poor and/or homeless person steal food from a store, it is fairly easy to sympathize with its actions, which will not be condemned by the average citizen in the same way as, for instance, murder would. The reason to this is because the reasoning is obvious, and the only person who can't see it (or simply choose to ignore it) would possibly be the owner of the store.
There are exceptions regarding murder as well though. If a woman is being held prisoner in a man's house (which, as we know, actually has happened on several occasions) for years, it would be no struggle to figure out why she would eventually murder him, even if she was able to escape without doing so. In fact, it may not even be considered a criminal action because of the reasoning which is as obvious as it possibly can be. I mean, in this case (where murder is not necessary, which it isn't in almost all cases), she is willing to break the laws in order to make peace in her mind. Because the awareness of him being alive would make her depressed and frustrated for the rest of her life.
The average citizen sympathize with her for perfectly understandable reasons, but what they fail to do is to sympathize with the man who held her captured. In the end, they are both criminals. Yet, only one of them receives sympathy from the public. The reason? People can only understand her reasoning, but not his. Instead, people say "He was free to do what ever he wanted, yet he chose to held her captured? This action cannot be defended."
Her reasoning makes sense to the masses, the poor/homeless thief's reasoning makes sense to the masses and the kid's resoning or lack of reasoning makes sense to the masses. When it comes to the man who held her captured though, the outbreak from the masses becomes massive once the court has confirmed that he is not mentally ill. He will be hated throughout the rest of his life, while she and the poor thieves are heroes who dare to break the laws.
Here is what the masses fail to see: The man had a horrible upbringing with parents who never played- or spent time with him, and did not even let him go to his friend(s) houses out of fear that he may tell them about their drug abuse. He had to go to school on his own, while his friends used their bikes. In school, he was constantly bullied because of his smelling clothes who also happened to be too small. And his teachers kept yelling at him in front of the whole class for arriving one hour too late, when all he wanted was some extra sleep from everything regarding life. He eventually pulled through all necessary education to get a decent job, but the scars from his childhood never healed, and he kept hating himself for reasons that he couldn't explain. One day though, he finally met the dream girl of his life. The relationship lasted for a few months, but after a while she started feeling uncomfortable around him and wanted to break up. At that point he was terrified. Losing her would result in the greatest depression of his life, and probably suicide. To stop this from happening, he did what he had to do in order to maintain control of his life (sounds familiar?), and what he did should be obvious at this point.
He saved his own life, she eventually restored peace in her mind and the thieves got food on their tables. Yet, he is the only one hated by the masses who probably wanted to see him dead anyway.
Moral: There is reasoning behind every criminal's actions. We should feel sorry for all of them no matter how severe their crimes may be, and we should be nothing but equally sorry for their victims. There are two kinds of people: Fortunate, and unfortunate. And the fact that they cannot will as they wills is what they have in common.
