The aim of my essay was to describe the connection and find similarities between criminal persons childhood and how they ended up in crime. The aim has also been to find out whether tougher punishments would help to reduce crime in society, based on the perspective of former criminals. To achieve my aim, I formulated two research questions that deal with excriminals’ experiences. I chose to do a semi-structured, qualitative investigation grounded on six deep interviews with former criminals. The theory I used was grounded theory, which involves empirical research with observations of real stories as a source of knowledge. The result of my essay showed that there are some risk factors that can cause a person to end up in crime. All interviewees have had one or a few of these risk factors. The results also showed that none of the interviewees believed that it would help to have tougher punishments as a measure to reduce crime in society.