The motivations for youth crimes, including those by juveniles, are well chronicled and documented. The catalogue includes lack of parental control, social media perverse influence, poverty, lack of educational and employment opportunities, inequality of income and wealth, feelings of machismo engendered by boozing and getting hooked on drugs, grudging and implied glorification of crimes in films, and the delusional assumption that they will get away with it. Invariably, it is not one single factor that is at play. Rather, it is a combination of the above and other factors.

Again, the causes and motivations are not of the one-size-fits-all variety. Boys and girls from the poorer strata of society, whose worldview of grinding poverty is the single most significant cause of domestic and social discord, see in crimes the quickest and easiest get-rich-soon opportunity. They hear all the time about the phenomenal income earned by film stars and pine for such riches for themselves and their struggling and squabbling parents. They become willing handmaidens to big-time gangs and contract killers for what appears to their minds as a fabulous payoff.

In the middle class, economic factors and societal influences predominate. The starry-eyed youth from middle class look to social media to shape their thoughts as well as shaping others’ thoughts. Indeed, they belong there much more than others. Social media is a double-edged sword. While their role in spreading positive information cannot be belittled, it is their dubious and dangerous role in pandering to base instincts........

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