For some Primary research, I reached out to a criminal to get his perspective on morality. In previous conversations he had told me some dark times in his past, and the purpose of the interview was to learn some first hand experiences where someone has questioned their morality.
I prepared a number of questions to ask this criminal, some were more general than others. But the answers I really wanted where personal experiences, times where he thinks he has done wrong(or if he doesn’t think it is wrong). I would have then liked to ask him where do the roots of these moral beliefs lie.
Interview:
Me(Interviewer)= T Contributor(Criminal)= C
Some answers need to be reworded/ paraphrased to make more sense. Quotes will be inside quotation marks. I will also not include every question because a lot of answers get repeated and is unnessicery to be featured in this post.
T: What do you consider being an immoral act?
In this question I wanted personal experiences from him which either he thought was immoral, or if the general society would view it as immoral. But instead, he gave me some of his opinions about things he thinks is immoral that he does not do.
- C:“Being a conservative”
- “Robbing someones nan”
- “Being a bizzy”- Police man
- “Robbing from your mates house”
I think that even though these answers are brief, they tell a lot about this persons beliefs, and their moral code. For example, a lot of people would disagree with him with his answer:”being a bizzy”, because the police force is seen by the general public as the people trying to keep society safe. But from the contributors perspective, he has had many bad encounters with the police, and has been majorly discriminated by them since a young age, because of the clothes he wears and the attitude he has had towards them his whole life.
T: What circumstances would have to be in place for you to commit an act that results in somebodies death?
- C: Accident- If somebody died in an accident this would not be immoral.
- Self defence- Manslaughter or assault would not be immoral in these circumstances.
- “Peado”- Killing a peodophile would not be an immoral act if he had done this act he would “Sleep quite easily knowing there is one less peodophile in the world.”
- Soldiers- He thinks that if a soldier kills someone, this is not an immoral act.
- “Kidnapping is sweet for money”- he says that he would kidnap somebody for money, but not kill them.
- Rapists- he would not mind if a rapist was killed.
T: Why would people agree/ disagree with this answer?
- C: “Everybody thinks differently”
- “People are influenced by others, they act like sheep”
- “The right things aren’t the same for everyone.”
T: Who puts these morals in place?
- C: “Stuff that has happened in the past”
- “The government- they are all c*nts”
T: Do you think that the environment you grew up in, influences your moral make up?
C: “No”
T: Do you think that if you grew up in different circumstances, your moral make up would be different?
C: “No, I probably would have been a tool like.”
To be honest, I would personally disagree with this answer. To give you some context, the contributor comes from a working class family and has been brought up in a disadvantaged area his whole life. This means he has been surrounded with crime all of his life and therefore he uses crime as his main way of making money. I think that this answer displays the ego of the contributor. But I was the person asking the questions, not answering them. I tried to see if he did not understand the question so I asked the same question a few times and worded it differently to get a better answer. In the question, I was implying that when I said a “different environment” I meant if he grew up in a wealthy household in a middle class location. He still disagreed.
Interview Evaluation:
Overall, The interview was not as successful as I hoped it would be. The main purpose of the interview was to get his perspective on the acts he had done in the past. I wanted him to comment on the crimes he had done in the past. But there were a number of things that stood in the way of achieveing these answers I desired.
- My interviewing skills need to be improved.
- His girlfriend was present during the interview.
- He is a cocky and egotistical individual.
I am still very new to the skill of interviewing somebody, my questions were not open enough which resulted in short answers. Because I know the contributor very well, I found it difficult to speak formally and he didn’t take it as seriously as I had hoped.
The other problem of his girlfriend being present was not due to the fact she is unaware of his crimes. But I do not think that he was completely comfortable with talking openly about his dark days with here being there. I felt too rude asking her to leave the room because it was their house and I didn’t want to seem rude. I notice now that in the future, I need to try and be more assertive but in a polite way.
When I say the contributor is egotistical and cocky, I don’t mean to sound rude but I know him very well and that is just his personality. He embraces his ego and I don’t think this is an undesirable personality trait, it just was not helpful at all for the interview. He seemed bored of the interview after the first few questions and started to get restless and ask for us to do something else instead. I took the hint and before I knew it, I had to leave. This is why I have only included a few questions in this post. The rest were useless and there wouldn’t be any point having them on this as I would not be able to comment on them sufficiently.
The interview was not a complete failure though, it gave me a good insight into what he thinks is immoral, even though he was trying to avoid mentioning crimes he had committed. This interview has confirmed for me that I would like my protagonist to be a criminal with questionable morals and it it is a good example of subjective morality.
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