Most of the day-to-day mooks and goons are thieves, escaped prisoners, the usual throwaway "criminal scum" types. It can't be ignored that many many of Batman's fights are against stereotypical depictions of street criminals who in the context of reality, are overwhelmingly poor. The assertion that many of the super villains aren't poor is true, but in turn many of those are clearly not mentally sound. Over his decades of depictions Batman has definitely not always shown care or empathy towards this fact. In some depictions they acknowledge that his method is not a solution to any of these problems and he could use his money, power, and influence to try to make systemic change, but him individually beating the tar out of these people isn't solving the problems, aside from one of the mentally ill or poor villains having their hands on a bomb (or whatever) in that particular issue. It's a legit critique that is raised in-text many times that to some degree he does get his jollies beating up poor people
"hmm, I'm poor and starving. Gotta work with the guy who gassed a movie theatre, no other options." In the same way we can judge poor people who join the military, we can also judge the fictional mooks who side with serial killers instead of holding up a gas station or joining one of the heist-themed villains. I guess there is the problem of a million different depictions and some do try and fix problems and others just like beating people up.
Most of the day-to-day mooks and goons are thieves, escaped prisoners, the usual throwaway "criminal scum" types. It can't be ignored that many many of Batman's fights are against stereotypical depictions of street criminals who in the context of reality, are overwhelmingly poor. The assertion that many of the super villains aren't poor is true, but in turn many of those are clearly not mentally sound. Over his decades of depictions Batman has definitely not always shown care or empathy towards this fact. In some depictions they acknowledge that his method is not a solution to any of these problems and he could use his money, power, and influence to try to make systemic change, but him individually beating the tar out of these people isn't solving the problems, aside from one of the mentally ill or poor villains having their hands on a bomb (or whatever) in that particular issue. It's a legit critique that is raised in-text many times that to some degree he does get his jollies beating up poor people
"hmm, I'm poor and starving. Gotta work with the guy who gassed a movie theatre, no other options." In the same way we can judge poor people who join the military, we can also judge the fictional mooks who side with serial killers instead of holding up a gas station or joining one of the heist-themed villains. I guess there is the problem of a million different depictions and some do try and fix problems and others just like beating people up.