Is stealing morsels of food to feed one's hungry children a "moral crime", a legal crime, an immoral act?

Question

Pls explain your answer supported by more than mere assertions of opinions. Though such assertions indicate a position, they are no help defending an ethical or philosophical position.

This is a specific Q, as part of a series of Q's on the morality of stealing! But that general Q is not the focus here.)

Answer 1

Its a crime to be unemployed.

Answer 2

This is a moral crime. I don't think there can be such a thing as a legal crime because a crime is an act that is prohibited by law, a crime could never be legal. Yes, stealing is bad; however letting a child starve is worse.

Answer 3

Defining morality depends on one's ethics, and ethics is subjective, so you can't expect to get any answers that AREN'T mere assertions of opinions.

Stealing is a legal crime in almost all societies.

It's also an immoral act in all the religions I know of, its all of the above.

Answer 4

it is a legal crime, the law forbids it. it is a crime in terms of law. maybe there are some countries where this wouldn't be illegal, but i don't this so in this day and age.

but truly i find for me, the crime, the ethical or immoral crime, in this situation is not the stealing of food, but that the food was not given when a surplus exists. but obviously food doesn't really come from nowhere. so you need like a system or something, but i think that defining the system would take alot of discussion and alot of space so i'll leave it at that. but basically it should be so that there are no hungry. stealing food for your hungry children is a result of that failing, and i think a choice most if not all of us would make.

Answer 5

This is a classic example of Kohlberg's model of moral reasoning.   I see it fitting into something called Social Contract vs Individual Rights. (level 5 for the Kohlberg nerd's out there)

Social contract, the law, dictates that stealing food is an offense punishable by law in most countries. Hence it is a legal crime.  

However is the law right?  If we are theoretically able to question and influence ways to better society, then we may value life more than property.  We may be of the opinion that saving a life by feeding it is more important than someones personal property.

One could argue that is a moral act because the child needs to be fed and civil disobedience is necessary to bring forth change in a society that needs change.

One could also argue (at the same level five) that you are victimizing the owner of the morsels who had nothing to do with the hunger and if you just go stealing food you will bring chaos to a society which has laws for order.

Of course I am siding with the civil disobedience because life is that important to me...but I can argue reasons not to be in war at the same moral level as someone who is for it....and both of us can be evolved.   Morality is tricky that way.

(Thanks for the compliment, but I had to learn it in a social work class.  I found it interesting and relevant to the question.)

Answer 6

Legal crime, yes it is. It is an infraction against the social/economic system/agreements. No matter how slight, it causes a minute ripple effect in the monetary/values/assets equation. And it's breaking the agreed upon rule.

Moral crime/immoral act?... Well, it depends on the existence of a universal law/moral/balance... without such, ethics ARE subjective depending on the context of existence (you might need some more college courses in philosophy to understand that). For something to be ethical, there has to be a reason to perform or not perform in such a constraint and for something to not be subjective there cannot be a context where something can be considered "ethical/moral" and in another context be considered not "ethical/moral." The fact that there exist many contexts where that is the case negates the existence OBJECTIVE ethics.

This leads to two scenarios:

If there IS a universal law/moral/balance (not religion specific) then it's not an immoral crime as it would be understood that you exist in a situation where you are unable to feed yourself or family. Also, perhaps the social system you are in has possible immoral flaws where one is allowed to starve.

In the context of NO Universal balance it is neither moral nor immoral. If one is going to starve to death (and cease to exist), why should one care about they're negatively affecting others by stealing when? Ceasing to exist means you have you awareness that you died or even lived in the first place... that's not a rational disincentive. Biologically (degrees) speaking, you (will) do what you need to survive. People do kill,steal, abuse, exploit, anything in order to keep living. If the only punishment is social (jail or death) that's not much incentive considering you're starving to death anyway. The individual is able to "not care" about the punishment or the effect they'll have on others or the social system and follow through with their decision/action. Say one doesn't care about s******g their friends in a game of poker, that sounds like a terrible thing to do... but he just made a ton of money and no one found out... If one is ALLOWED to "not care" because getting away with something (people do) is possible or even likely then that excludes the existence of a universal law/moral/balance.

In terms of subjective ethics (without a universal order of some kind), left to social constructs, if one society can praise an action while another can punish then which is right? Take an action like theft; The ancient Spartans trained their warriors to steal food... they weren't fed, if they didn't steal it they didn't eat. Yes, they were punished if they were caught but the point was to not disapprove of stealing but of being caught. Getting AWAY WITH IT was praised. In the end, they were a strong force so the aspects of their training/upbringing (no matter how small) paid off and was valued.

In a more modern hypothetical idea, take eugenics/genocide. If a nation condones this and, through selective genetic breeding or sterilization, can have a society of people immune to a disease that wiped out everyone else but them... they're the only ones left... they survived... would they have been wrong? It was best for humanity, as a whole, as otherwise it would no longer exist.

Answer 7

It would definitely be a legal crime and a moral crime according to societies believes,but an immoral crime? would depend on the reason the children are starving. If because of an unpreventable reason then probably not compared with allowing the children to starve.

Answer 8

I'll answer your question any by god way I want. Or something.

my answer it's a crime against the state, but not morally wrong. letting your children starve would be morally wrong.

Answer 9

The whole ethos of law is biased in favour of private property ownership. Hence any form of unauthorised transfer of property (in this case, morsels of food) are deemed a 'crime' in law, and therefore a 'legal crime'.

So where is the morality in favouring one group (property owners) over the rest? Just because something has societal sanction, doesn't make it morally right. And vice versa. Just because society frowns on a mother 'stealing' to feed her children, doesn't make her morally wrong or immoral, does it?