Crime in Urban Cities Is at Least

Crime in urban cities is at least 1.5 times higher than suburban or rural areas. Many factors account for this difference including higher poverty, more densely populated centers, presence of poor minorities, low education, limited resources etc. The paper studies crime in urban cities from the perspective of causes and impact so explain why higher urbanization translates into higher crime rate.

Crime in urban cities

Crime in urban cities of the United States continues to be a major problem for the society. The effect of violent crime against persons and property on general welfare is unmistakable since it takes a serious toll on mental, physical and emotional health of people while it places a huge burden on society's resources and finances. It is important to mention that while crime has a profound impact on welfare of people; it also costs the country almost 0.7% of GDP in variety of ways including loss of property, crime investigations, arrests and trials etc. (Freeman 1996).

Discussion:

It is immensely important to be aware of the crime rate in urban cities because we should understand how crime affects welfare of society and how it places serious burden on our financial and non-financial resources. This needs to be understood because how a country is suffering from increasing crime rate is not limited to loss of lives alone, there are other serious effects and the damage done by crime can affect other areas of activities as well including business, economic, political environment and general growth and progress of a country.

United States has been a victim of increasing crime rate for a very long time. There was however a decade in which crime rate consistently came down and that was the 1990s. But the decline was minor and at the beginning of the new decade, it appeared that the decline had slowed down even further to become almost negligible.

Some of the main categories of crime that have a seriously negative impact on society include murder and manslaughter, rape and sexual assault, robbery and vandalism, theft without contact and motor vehicle theft.

While some crimes are considered violent, others are more passive in nature but they have an equally bad impact on psychological and emotional health of the victims. The crimes involving personal contact and coercion are termed violent crimes while those where contact doesn't occur are often termed property crimes.

Crime in the urban cities is always higher than it is in rural areas. Apart from the differences seen in crime rate from demographic perspectives such as race, gender and age, it is also important to study differences in crime rate on the basis of areas. It is generally known that urban cities especially larger ones have a higher crime rate than smaller cities or rural areas.

According to Glaeser and Sacerdote (1999) the reason for crime rate being high in urban cities is grounded in two facts. For one, in urban cities, criminals can come in much closer contact with potential victims than in smaller cities and secondly, in urban cities, the chances of being caught are much lower.

Even in the metropolitan cities where crime rate is generally high, we find that some neighborhoods are more vulnerable to crime than others. For example in poor minority neighbors across United States, criminal activities are much higher than other relatively wealthy and affluent neighborhoods. It has also been found that crime rate in the center of an urban city is much higher than the suburbs. Generally crime in urban areas is at least 1.61 times higher than it is in suburban areas. The fact that more central neighborhoods are occupied by poor minorities accounts for this difference in crime rate.

As cities grow, so does the crime rate but there are still researches that are uncertain about the reasons why urbanization gives rise to more criminal activities. It is believed that apart from the two facts mentioned above, urban cities have a higher crime rate because of lack of clear boundaries between legal and illegal activities. Masih and Masih state "At low levels of urbanization, crime may be high because of sparsely located residents; a further increase in urbanization may lead to decrease in crime because of closer proximity of residents; and finally, with even further increase in urbanization, crime may rise because individuals may not identify whether they are engaged in a legal or illegal activity" (1093)

Urban cities have a higher crime rate because of variety of factors already discussed. But we must understand that poverty contributes to crime more pervasively in urban cities than in rural areas. Rural poor may not turn to crime to improve their standard of living because making ends meets is easier in such areas as the cost of living is low. However in urban cities, cost of living is very high and poverty ridden households find it sometimes impossible to make ends meet and hence become more open to the idea of earning money the wrong way. Since urban poor have to face the grim reality of poverty on daily basis, and there is general sense of helplessness that comes from not being able to participate in social, economic or political matters, they feel there is no way they can change their situation except through involvement in illegal activities such as drug dealing and hence they have a higher propensity of getting involved in crimes.

Crime in urban cities becomes an even graver problem because of the involvement of youth and juveniles. Juvenile delinquency is a more pervasive reality in urban cities than in rural areas. There are many causes to juvenile delinquency which need to be addressed by society and the legal system of a nation. Factors like school attendance, graduation rates and academic achievement play an important part in the involvement of youth in the criminal justice system. "Research indicates that the level of education attained can affect opportunities for future employment. Although juveniles often fail to make this association, they do possess monetary ambitions" (Winters, p.451). Poor academic achievement is a major factor in crime and delinquency. Violence is being experienced by the youth today and they are both the victims and perpetrators. There have been many incidents where the juvenile offender has been sent to adult courts and are incarcerated in adult facilities even after established studies have shown this to bring about negative effects rather than any positive ones. The problem is that a proper system does not exist to control this juvenile behavior to prevent and deter juveniles from indulging in criminal activities.