The Correlation between Crime and Poverty Essay

During the 1990’s, the United States saw the greatest decline of violent crime rates since World War II. The dramatic decline gradually began in 1994. By the late 1990’s, the crime rate had dropped with a record 10.4% (“1990’s” ). Violent crimes generally include acts such as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Although there are numerous theories as to why this happened, no one has actually pinpointed the reason for the substantial decline.

In this article, as the title suggests, it explains the use of social class differences to explain racial differences in crime. Among earlier arguments are the subculture of violence and subculture of poverty theories, which argue that African Americans tend to have pro-crime norms and values. The article's author, Robert D. Crutchfield, goes in depth with recent and more advanced theories to explain the link between poverty, crime, and race, while criticizing the subcultural theories. These new theories tell a different view from that of the subcultural theories with evidence showing that economic disadvantage and the way how society is structured accounts for the link between poverty, crime, and race. From these evidence, ethnographers conclude

When determining whether a city or population is in poverty and/or has a high crime rate, there is difficulty interpreting the data or how the data is even collected. Some people in poverty are perfectly content with life. Perhaps, having no material possessions was a choice, or maybe they have never experienced anything better. If unemployment is used as a tool for deciding who is impoverished, how do we calculate who is unemployed? Some drug dealers make more money than you or I have ever seen, but they are not reported as having jobs or careers. Some people are paid under-the-table, where no taxes or wages are being reported. It is also very hard to say what is causing crime in the first place, when there are so many factors happening at the same time. It could be poverty, high-divorce rate, single-parent households, high population density, frequent residential mobility and turnover, concentration of racial and ethnic minorities or dilapidated housing.

Poverty is regarded by many as one of the key orchestrators of violence and particularly among African-Americans. Together with racism, these factors are cited

Crime will be always present in our society and it will never truly seize. As the years go by, more people take precautions to ensure the safety of their families and themselves, whether it is from getting security at home or to even storing away their valuables in a safety locker. Even though this may be the case, the crime rates for different criminally activities have been gradually declining over the past few years. Furthermore some investigations have illustrated that the south had a higher crime ratio within the United States because it tends to be the poorest states. While northern states tend to have better standing due to better economy, and even more around San Jacinto College South Campus, crime ratio has not increased, but it

This paper explores the relationship between low income and violent crime rate in Unite State over some period of time. This question is research is interested in how income inequality increases crime rate. Between 1975 to 2004 research shows that income earned by the top 5% of America families increased from 15.3% to 20.1%. Families that are at the bottom sees their earning dropped from 5.1% to 4.2%. Data used for this research is been collected from bureau of justice statistics (BJS) from national Crime and victimization survey (NCVS), which provide summary statistics based on a nationality representative sample for a wide range of crimes. Data is been collected from household that are below and above poverty level in the country and non-fall violent victimization, but

Crime and criminalization are dependent on social inequality Social inequality there are four major forms of inequality, class gender race and age, all of which influence crime. In looking at social classes and relationship to crime, studies have shown that citizens of the lower class are more likely to commit crimes of property and violence than upper-class citizens: who generally commit political and economic crimes. In 2007 the National Crime Victimization Survey showed that families with an income of $15000 or less had a greater chance of being victimized; recalling that lower classes commit a majority of those crimes. We can conclude that crime generally happens within classes.

In this study, I will examine the relationship between poverty and homicide. I anticipate that there will be a significant association between the increase of poverty rates and the increase of homicide rates. The null hypothesis states that there is no significance relationship between poverty and homicide. The alternative hypothesis states that there will be a significant relationship between poverty and homicide. The two theories I found to explain the increase of poverty and homicide rates in the urban community are Merton’s strain theory and Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization theory. Merton’s strain theory states that social structures limits access to the goal of success through legitimate means (Lilly et al., 1995,

People who lack money, high paying jobs, and control over their lives are generally miserable with their lives. This misery may lead to feelings of anger that may result in interpersonal violence (p 169). Disadvantaged, low-class neighborhoods are more susceptible to increased rates of crime and violence. The effects of crime and violence leave a negative impact on the neighborhood, which leads the community with a sense of hopelessness. Community-wide feelings of despair are a factor in the increasing rates of violence (p.

Why are crime rates higher among some social groups than the others? Are some groups more prone to crime, or are they in situations more conducive to crime? Many factors can influence a person to commit a crime, but is there a common trait that leads people down the road to actually committing a crime. Some traits that can influence criminal behavior are: Families, Economic status, Gender, Race, and Age.

The relationship between poverty and crime can be viewed as a link, but it can also be viewed as a cycle. Lower class individuals are more likely to commit crimes (McLaughlin, 2) so a child who grows up with little money is more likely to have a crime on their record making it more difficult for them to attain quality employment. For this reason they stay poor and their kids are now more likely to commit crimes and stay poor as adults. The disproportionate number of single parent homes in low income areas and the potential lack of control the parent may have on the child could add to the fact that low income youth are four times more likely to commit violent crimes (McLaughlin, 2). A simple explanation for why there is more crime amongst low income individuals is there is a greater need for them to steal because they may lack basic necessities and their only option is theft. A theory I found very interesting was the lack of money can put great stress on a household which can have adverse effects on the children and make them more likely to commit crimes. Although the homes of serial killers are not necessarily poor they are often broken and the effects this has on the killers are very

This article is about a research study on Aggressive Crime, Alcohol, Drug Use, and Concentrated Poverty in 24 U.S Urban Areas. The study investigates the relationship between the use of substance and aggressive crime in the poverty - level community and social attachments in the 24 U.S urban areas in a large sample of male arrestees. It is very common for society to assume that alcohol and drug use are linked to aggressive crime. Their argument is the higher the level of poverty, the higher the aggressive crime. Their hypothesis is that drugs and alcohol use will be related to aggressive crime but social characters and the community poverty will moderate the relationship. Female arrestees were not included in this study. The data used in the study was from the 1992 Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) in the 24 cities and 1997 Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitor (ADAM).

Many countries witness an increase in the crime rate. There are many reasons for this. This essay will discuss the poverty and immigration as causes and subsidize unemployed workers and set high requirements for immigration as solutions for this problem.

‘... Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is unsupportable to all men’ ( Thomas Carlyle 1839, cited in Reicher 2011: pp26).

As I take a look back to everything I have learned in Sociology 101 an area of sociology I chose to explore further was deviance and crime in Canada. Deviance and crime seemed to interest me because it could help me deeply understand the different factors which cause low class societies to be deviant and criminal compared to their counterparts, high class, deviance and crime. With intentions of further exploring this area I concluded that the macro-level conflict theory, founded by Karl Marx, would be most useful in making conclusions of the different types of deviance and crimes resulting from being very needy in contrast to being very wealthy. Karl Marx helps distinguish between