- Introduction
- Define poverty and crime
- Poverty is the state in which an individual or a community lacks the financial resources to provide the minimum living standards
- A crime is any action that is termed as an offense, that the state can prosecute and is punished by the law
- A comprehensive sociological imagination and elaboration of the concept of poverty in the contemporary world
i. The prevalence of poverty in developed world and how great economies have succeeded in handling poverty (Mehlum, Miguel & Torvik, 2006).
ii. Poverty is the chief element sprawling the success of third world countries.
- Lack of necessities
i. People’s failure to meet their primary needs provoke suicidal thoughts within them (McNamara & Bell, 2012).
ii. People living in poverty-stricken areas have limited options in life.
- Research question
- What is the relationship between poverty and crime?
- What are the underlying factors that cause crime?
c. Thesis statement
i. the paper shall comprehensively elucidate the relationship between poverty and crime and the reasons why poverty lead to crime
2. Literature review
a. Poverty and economic diversification (McNamara & Bell, 2012)
i. Poverty is a problem that continues to hamper economic diversification in many countries.
ii. The inability of many economies to expand and accommodate the economic needs of its populations makes the people more susceptible to volatility and inflation.
iii. Approximately, fifty 50% of world’s population solely relies on elementary production methods that cannot gratify their survival needs.
b. Dissimilarity between the rich and the poor (McNamara & Bell, 2012).
i. The gap between the rich and the poor is high making the poor feel that the wealth generated from their country’s resources is only benefiting a few selected individuals at the expense of the majority.
ii. People complain about injustices when they observe the starkest wealth variation between people living in the same neighborhood and develop the mentality to steal or unjustly acquire the wealth from those who have.
iii. Masses cause social unrest as they try to obtain a share of their country’s resources.
c. The political and education system (Rosenfeld, 2013)
i. The political system fails to establish a fair distribution of a country’s economic resources; therefore, those who feel deprived have to engage in crime to obtain the resources.
ii. The education system fails to equip learners with knowledge and skills that will make them victorious in the highly competitive economic arena, end up in poverty, and consequently engage in crime.
d. Cost benefit analysis (Rosenfeld, 2013)
i. It costs about $123,400 to intern a youth in a correctional facility and only $19,800 to send the same youth to a university in America (Rosenfeld, 2013).
ii. Despite the high returns that will be realized when the youth is taken into a transformation facility and be a productive citizen, taxpayers take the high taxes accruing as a burden.
iii. The poor taxpayers do not allow their hard-earned money to provide free education to at-risk youths; therefore, the youth continue engaging in crimes for they have no other mean to earn a living.
- Most governments direct money that should be used in transforming the youths into other developmental programs, whose payback period is extensive (Mehlum, Miguel & Torvik, 2006).
- Data and methods
- Data collection using surveys in USA (Shaw et.al, 2008)
- Sample size=n=87
- Sample size critique
- The data collected may suffer from unreliability and inconsistency
- Unwillingness of the interviewee to give out sensitive information
- Key findings
- 70% of convicts in prisons come from a poor family or society
- There has been a 20% increase in crime rates after the economic recession and inflation in the United States
- 10% of crime suspects have landed in prisons because of wrong conviction due to the perception that poverty leads to crime
4. Theory
a. Economic theory of crime
- It highlights the correlation between poverty and crime in the population
- Use of statistical and economic analysis to find out the optimal crime control (use of ODEs)
- How the model brings interventions that can control crime to the unstable economy in the society (Anderson, 1999).
- The cost-effective crime control strategies
- Social conflict theory
- Define the social conflict theory
- The economic inequities in the society causes the society to develop classes and the poor feels, as they are the odd one out
- Karl Marx perspective
- Poverty results to the use of drugs and substance abuse and this makes the poor depressed in a way that they increases the chances of committing a crime
- The society have a perception that crime, especially theft, is caused only by the poor people so that they can earn a living
- The general life satisfaction affects the poor as they feel that they have no value and they only engage in crime to affect the well-being of the wealthy population.
5. Conclusion
a. In this paper, I have comprehensively studied the relationship between poverty and crime rates.
b. Poverty contributes to crime since people fail to meet their needs independently, therefore, engage crime to gain wealth and resources to sustain them.
c. My thoughts and views about the relationship between poverty and crime
d. Poverty and crime affects human rights in the society
References
Anderson, D. A. (1999). The Aggregate Burden of Crime. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.147911.
McNamara, R., & Bell, K. (2012). Dimensions of Crime As a Social Problem. Durham, N.C: Carolina Academic Press.
Mehlum, H., Miguel, E., & Torvik, R. (2006). Poverty and crime in 21st century Germany. Journal of Urban Economics, 4, 89-207.
Rosenfeld, R. (2013). Economics and Youth Violence: Crime, Disadvantage, and Community. New York: NYU Press.
Shaw, M., Sagant, V., Jendly, M., & International Centre for the Prevention of Crime (Montréal, Québec). (2008). Crime prevention and community safety: International report : trends and perspectives. Montréal, Qué: International Centre for the Prevention of Crime = Centre international pour la prévention de la criminalité
