Poverty and Crime the Connection

Poverty and Crime

The connection between poverty and crime has been observed by many throughout the course of human civilization. These observations, however, have been often vague and simplistic. For example, many religious doctrines attribute the two outcomes to a common defect in an individual's character, such as the Christian admonition against sloth and greed. More recent discussions, which can be termed under Social Darwinism, attempted to attribute poverty and criminality among certain groups of people to both the genetic makeup and culture of a particular racial or ethnic group.

Recent observations have focused less on personal and cultural factors and more on structural factors. Explanations examining structural factors are undoubtedly more useful for scholars and policymakers than those examining individual or cultural factors. However, the actual mechanisms by which poverty promotes crime is still unclear.

A number of studies in the field of sociology, economics, and criminology provide insight into the specific mechanisms through which poverty promotes crime. Thesis: As one spends more time outside of the mainstream labor force, one's employment and career prospects dwindle, often making criminal activity the most accessible and lucrative form of income available to the individual, who feels that he/she is leaving behind very little when entering the world of illicit criminal activity.

1) Notably how does being poor and having less access to quality jobs/education causes an individuals opportunity cost for crime to also lower.

Opportunity Cost

The opportunity cost for crime is determined by the opportunities that the person would have to forgo in order to engage in criminal activity. If the person engages in fairly regular criminal activity and relies solely on criminal activity for income, that person misses an opportunity to acquire the education and skills required for a quality job or career of some sort. The person also fails to develop the basic soft skills which are expected for entry into the workforce.

Because one's employment and career is expected to follow a steady progression, gaps in one's progress severely hinder one's ability to find a quality job later in life and thus one's overall socioeconomic position. Thus, the initial diminished access to quality jobs and education is often the start of a vicious cycle where one's career prospects steadily grow worse from one's absence from the workforce.

More importantly, there are additional opportunities foregone when a person is caught for a crime. A criminal record greatly limits employment opportunities, for instance. Imprisonment itself deprives the person of time that could have been spent acquiring education and skills that would make the person competitive for decent-paying jobs.

Diminishing Opportunity Cost

As one's employment and career prospects dim, the value of forgone employment opportunities, relative to criminal activity, also decrease. Thus, the person would be leaving behind very little when entering the world of illicit criminal activity. Also, a person who is already in poverty and who possesses very dim employment prospects has little to lose materially from imprisonment, which would at least provide the person with food and shelter, colloquially known as "three hots and a cot."

The micro-economic dynamics underlying criminal activity are borne out by comparative studies of crime rates. Hall and McLean of Northumbria University have found that neoliberal economies with lower social welfare spending tend to have higher rates of violent crime than other Western economies, particularly Western European Socialist economies such as Germany, France, and Sweden. For example, the U.S. government reduced its expenditures on education, health, housing, and other programs after 1970, causing its prison population to explode from about 200,000 in 1970 to more than 2 million in 2008. (Futurist, 10). Because of the reduction in quality of life for people living in poverty, the opportunity cost of engaging in criminal activity was lowered, leading to an explosion in criminal activity and tenfold increase in the nation's prison population in less than three decades.

The studies also demonstrate that poverty in itself is not responsible for promoting crime because the lowest crime and victimization rates are actually in some of Europe's poorest countries, such as Greece and Hungary. (Futurist, 11). This is because Greece and Hungary both contain strong safety nets which make living in poverty, earning an income under a certain amount, quite bearable, even comfortable. Thus, the opportunity cost of engaging in criminal activity, of leaving that life behind, is higher than it is in the United States.

Not all of Europe's poorest countries, however, have crime rates as low as Greece's. Many Eastern European nations which have transformed themselves into neoliberal political economies, which spend relatively little on social welfare programs, suffer from high rates of violent crimes and property crimes. (Futurist, 10). The Eastern European examples demonstrate that it is not poverty itself, but the nature of impoverished life, which is heavily influenced by government social welfare spending, which determine criminal activity.

The level of government social welfare spending alters the risk and reward structure for impoverished individuals considering a career in crime.

Government Intervention and the Movement between Mainstream Employment and Illicit Employment

In Zhao's "Dynamics of Poverty and Crime," the flow of impoverished individuals between the licit and illicit worlds is understood through a mathematical model. In Zhao's model, the population is divided into five sub-classes: the non-impoverished class N, the poverty class P, the criminal class C, the jailed class J, and recovered class (from jail or from impoverished class) R. (Zhao, 227). The model assumes that there is a certain probability that a person in the P. class will resort to crime after coming into contact with a criminal. (227).

Zhao found that there is an optimum government intervention level for each given crime level at which the cost of controlling crime is at a minimum. (233). In the context of Hall and Maclean's comparative study of social welfare spending and crime rates, Zhao's study can be very useful for neoliberal economies such as the United States in determining what level of social welfare and investment spending is necessary to reach an particular level of criminal activity.

2) Also Is there a "cultural" link that promotes low growth in the development within poor neighborhoods which causes a "cycle" of unemployment and poverty related crimes?.

It is often suggested that broader cultural factors or a cultural link is responsible for promoting crime within poor neighborhoods. However, there is no substantial empirical evidence in the aforementioned studies for the existence of such cultural factors. Albeit the quantitative nature of these studies makes it difficult to identify the influence of soft cultural factors, though not impossible. In Nikulina's study, "The Role of Childhood Poverty in Predicting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Major Depressive Order, Academic Achievement, and Crime in Young Adulthood.," Nikulina studied the predictive effect of childhood neglect, childhood family poverty, and childhood neighborhood poverty on adult arrest. Nikulina found that although childhood neglect and childhood family poverty uniquely predicted adult arrest, childhood neighborhood poverty did not have the same predictive effect.

In Nikulina's study, the childhood neighborhood poverty measure is the closest metric one could find in identifying representing cultural factors. The metric was used to measure the effect that growing up within a particular community had on a child's likelihood of adult arrest. In other words, it is meant to measure the influence of neighborhood culture on adult arrest. Nikulina found that it did not have a significant predictive effect for adult arrest and found that childhood family poverty and childhood neglect, more personal factors than cultural factors, hold far greater predictive effect for adult arrest.