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Instead, to a higher or lower level, they increase the risk of criminal behaviour. The more risk factors any individual has the bigger the danger of their engagement in crime. Criminologists stress this point by saying that risk factors for crime are increasing in their effect. There are also factors, which protect an individual from involvement in crime. These, too, are increasing in their effect. .
A lot of criminological investigation involves trying to conclude whether a specific factor increases the risk of involvement in crime, when other possible risk factors are controlled by being held constant. Of course, the detection of a statistical alliance between some factor, and crime, never provides any guarantee that the factor being studied actually causes crime, even when efforts have been made to control other likely factors. .
Finding the causes of crime is not ever easy or obvious. Investigation can only hope to exclude some factors from being considered, and reinforce the dependence in the role played by other factors. Of course, as research continues to be carried out, the representation of crime is regularly changing. Therefore for that reason the factors identified in this essay as "causes" of crime have been detected on the grounds of research evidence, and the reliance in their significance must be regarded as temporary. One shared issue in popular discussions of crime is a bias to mystify the examination for "causes" with an examination for "blame". To suggest that child neglect increases the risk of delinquency, or that alcohol abuse increases the risk of domestic violence, is not saying that parents are to blame for delinquency or that alcohol abuse is to blame for domestic violence. Conclusions of culpability are moral judgements. This essay is not concerned with who is to blame for crime, or who should be held accountable for it. It is only concerned with what "causes it".
