Cultural and Historical Roots of Crime: Understanding Resource Deprivation in Today’s Clients
Introduction
When we talk about crime, it’s easy to place the focus on individual behavior, as if someone simply made a bad choice. But that lens is too narrow. In therapy and in society, we miss the bigger picture when we don’t look at the cultural, historical, and systemic conditions that shape how people survive.
This upcoming course, launching in July, will explore the deeper context of crime, not as isolated incidents, but as responses to long-standing deprivation and injustice. We’ll unpack what it means to work with clients who come from communities where opportunity was never equally distributed to begin with.
Reframing the Narrative
Crime isn’t always about intent. Sometimes, it’s about survival. And that survival is often shaped by generational trauma, racial inequities, systemic oppression, and a chronic lack of resources. Communities that have endured slavery, redlining, colonization, and forced displacement still carry those scars today, in their institutions, in their neighborhoods, and their daily realities. This course is about helping clinicians understand that context. Because when we miss the context, we misdiagnose, mislabel, and misunderstand.
Culture, History, and the Clinical Lens
In many marginalized communities, there is an ongoing mistrust of law enforcement, medical systems, and mental health services. That mistrust isn’t imagined, it’s inherited. It’s rooted in lived experiences and passed-down narratives that come from real harm. Understanding this cultural history matters. It shapes how clients show up in the therapy room, and how we need to show up for them.
We’ll explore how cultural legacies impact behaviors often labeled as “criminal” and why it’s essential to examine how structural violence, such as mass incarceration or housing discrimination, continues to shape outcomes today.
Systems That Still Fail
Let’s talk about what happens when someone grows up with underfunded schools, limited job access, unstable housing, or a parent who was incarcerated. These aren’t just background details, they’re the framework. And when opportunities are blocked generation after generation, crime can become one of the few available avenues for economic or social mobility.
Clinically, we need to do more than treat symptoms. We need to recognize when a client’s life story is intertwined with systems designed to fail them.
Course Objectives
This upcoming CE course will provide you with:
A clinical understanding of the historical and cultural roots of systemic resource deprivation
Tools to work compassionately with clients involved in or affected by the criminal legal system
Case studies that reflect real-world complexity, not theoretical assumptions
A framework to engage in ethically sound, culturally aware, and historically informed clinical practice
A Personal Note
While I was working as a therapist, I also spent time as a school counselor in both Baltimore City and Montgomery County Public Schools. What stood out to me, what still stays with me, was the clear difference between students who had access to resources and those who didn’t. I saw young people who, with just a bit of support, were able to explore opportunities and thrive. And I saw others who had to navigate systems that were never designed with their success in mind.
I've also worked with immigrant clients, many of whom came from countries where even basic resources were scarce. When given access to consistent support and opportunity here in the U.S., many of them flourished. That contrast taught me something powerful: access changes everything.
I’ve supervised clinical interns who meant well but lacked an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts their clients came from. Because of that gap, some clients were misdiagnosed or had their conditions misunderstood. Not because the interns didn’t care, but because they didn’t yet have the full picture. That’s why this course matters. It’s not just theory; it’s about helping clinicians understand the deeper reasons behind the behaviors they’re seeing, so they can show up more ethically and effectively in the room.
Join the Waitlist
This course will open for registration in July. To receive early access and a special launch discount, make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter. Join the waitlist here for the upcoming course: Trauma, Culture, and Survival: Understanding Crime through Context.
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