Research Paper On James Joseph Bulger Jr

Since the first crime that was committed people have tried to explain the reasoning for criminal behavior. While there are many different theories for why people commit crime we have to connect the theories to each individual person. A man by the name of James Joseph Bulger was a prominent criminal in the seventies and eighties as a mob boss in Boston. The question is what made him turn to a life of crime James Joseph Bulger Jr. was born on September 3, 1929 in Dorchester, Massachusetts to a family of six children to Irish parents who immigrated to America. His father, James Joseph Bulger Sr., was a laborer and longshoreman. His father lost his arm in an industrial accident and the family had to move to a public housing project in South Boston.

After Killeen’s murder in 1972, he joined Winter Hill Gang where he became a ruthless mobster. Bulger had became a well known figure in Boston's organized crime scene. Howie Winter, the boss of the Winter Hill Gang, was sent to prison for fixing horse races, and Bulger assumed the gang's leadership. Over the next 16 years, he came to control a significant portion of Boston's drug dealing, bookmaking, and loan sharking operations. From 1975 to 1990 Bulger was contacted by the FBI multiple times and eventually became an FBI informant. He not only used this connection to the FBI to improve his own mob family but he would regularly abuse the power his brother William who had been elected into the Massachusetts State Senate. On December 1994, he left Boston when he was informed that the DEA had begun a search for him. He was put on trial and on July 6, 2011 and was found guilty on 48 charges including 19 murders. He is currently incarcerated in the United States Penitentiary Coleman II, Sumterville,

There theory states that if a person has low self control they are more likely to commit crime. Characteristics of low self control according to Gottfredson and Hirschi are seeking immediate gratification, look for easy way to satisfy desires, enjoys acts that are exciting, risky, or thrilling, lack personal stability, low frustration tolerance, and is self centered or insensitive. Also according to Gottfredson and Hirschi people lacking in self-control are more likely to experience problems in social relationships, such as marriage and they are likely to use drugs and abuse alcohol. Bulger in his early childhood had wanted to join the circus the easiest way for him to do this was to run away from home and find a circus so thats exactly what he did. Bulger can also been seen throughout his whole life trying to find things that were either risky or exciting in his early childhood he at only 14 committed serious crimes. He also joined the military, he robbed banks, and he was a top gang boss. Bulger wasn't known for his sensitivity a man by the name of Flemmi a former gang member of Bulgers says that when a girlfriend tried to end her relationship with him he brought her to an apartment in South Boston and she was strangled to death by Bulger. A few years later Deborah Hussey Flemmi’s stepdaughter from a relationship with his wife, Marion Hussey accused Flemmi of