All of us have the capacity to commit a crime,” says Richard Wright, criminologist and TEDxPeachtree 2015 presenter.

“Imagine restraint as a cup. When overwhelming pressures and needs intersect with opportunity the cup overflows. The size of your cup, what fills it and what you carry around in your brain everyday determines your actions.”

This belief has propelled Wright to study urban street crime in the U.S. and England for the last 25 years. As a sociologist, he finds understanding the minds of burglars, armed robbers and drug dealers a continuously fascinating subject.

“How do criminals move from a non-motivated state to a motivated one? Why does a person walk past a jewelry store ten times and then one day all of a sudden breaks the window and steals a bracelet? I want to know why.”

A California native, Wright’s interest in crime began as a sophomore studying history at the University of California at Irvine. As serendipity would have it, one day he strikes up a conversation with a professor while they were both standing in line to handle paperwork. That professor turned out to be renowned criminologist Gilbert Geis. Wright thought he was so interesting he decided to take one of his classes. Before he knew it he was changing majors, and the rest, as they say, is history.

He pursued graduate studies at Cambridge University, which ultimately led to his current position as Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice and Criminology Department in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.

All the while, Wright continued his research into the behaviors of street criminals, doing hundreds of interviews and visiting scenes of crimes with the perpetrators. For ethical reasons he’s never witnessed crimes actually being committed, but he’s often infiltrated crime rings in his pursuit of understanding why they do what they do.

“If you want to study the hunting strategies of lions you don’t go to a zoo. People are animals like any other animals and you want to study them in their natural setting. I’m interested in how people think and act in real life circumstances.”

Crime is obviously an interesting topic for the rest of us, as well. Just turn on your TV. Of all of the crime shows, however, only two British productions make Wright’s favorites list: “Prime Suspect” and “Criminal Justice.”

Asked what he would do if he wasn’t a criminologist, Wright says he’d be a hairdresser. “Hair salons are fascinating places. People say things they wouldn’t anyplace else. They reveal themselves, what they aspire and what kind of person they want to be.”

What better place for someone fascinated with people’s behavior?

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Rosemary Taylor is a freelance writer and content strategist at PR Focus.