Social evils are issues which in one way or another affects members of a society and is often considered controversial or problematic in terms of moral values. Some of the most common social evils would be alcoholism, racism, (child) abuse, organized crime and inequality.
So basically, social evil is anything that could be considered harmful or dangerous to a society and/or community. Let’s take a few examples and determine why they can be called ‘social evils’.
One of the first things one will think of when discussing issues that could be harmful for a society would be crime. Organized crime is something that is happening for thousands of years now and will most likely keep happening for the next few decades. But what makes organized crime a social evil?
Organized crime can be harmful to society in many ways. First of all, some forms of crime go hand in hand with violence, which can be considered a direct threat or danger to society.
Other forms of organized crime can take a non-violent/violent approach but can still cause harm to individuals and groups of people. For instance, a bank fraud which was deliberately kept secret by the perpetrators can cause harm for people who deposited money on that bank. And can also be very violent when those that perpetrated the crime find it difficult to share the money amongst them. In a worst case scenario, the bank could go bankrupt and thousands of people would lose their hard earned savings. As we can conclude from the examples mentioned earlier, social evils can happen in many forms and be harmful for society in several different ways ranging from physical harm to financial, social and even psychological harm.
