Does poverty cause crime?

[Nolan]

What proof is there that it does? Places like the Heritage Foundation and Fox News seem dead set on proving that crime causes poverty.

For fucks sake, just google "poverty causes crime."

[Blake's Baby]

Depends what you mean by 'causes' really. Certainly there's a strong link between poverty and crime.

Consider... you go to the theatre, and you're looking at the stage. There's a big ... object at the front of it, blocking your view of the centre stage. At the sides of the stage, there is a strange effect where apparently two flat people are dancing in perfect time. Is one causing the other? Are they affecting each other somehow?

What you can't see behind the large object is the dancer, and the lights that are projecting shadows to the sides. Without seeing the dancer, you have no explanation but that the shadows are somehow causing each other.

The dancer is private property and the masking object is bourgeois ideology. Poverty and crime are born from private property, the dispossession of the poor by the rich, and the writing of laws by the powerful to protect their position.

Hope that makes sense.

[Muzk]

http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/MUZKROX/well1.jpg

http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/MUZKROX/well2.jpg

I don't have much time, I'm pretty tired and before I started researching I just guessed if I found these 2 things it would be obvious already but it's not quite clear yet so let someone else finish the job

[Wolf Larson]

Capitalism causes crime. Anytime there is a large or small population with no access to the means of production they will have to do what they have to do to survive. The unemployment rates in America are kept around 4% (real numbers) at all times. They say it's to control inflation but it's to keep profits up and wages down. The false scarcity which is necessary for profits within capitalism causes crime. Capitalism is a crime.

[Crusade]

It does sometimes. Rich people also commit crimes, though. Way more successfully I might add. Poverty sustains a social environment for crime. Poverty makes crime seem like more of an option. If you're poor, you feel like you have nothing to lose so you'll go to crime. Or sometimes you have no other option. If you're rich you can get into crime because you wanna get richer and feel like you have enough to bribe people. You have so much you feel like you're untouchable, etc. If you wanna just have a blanket answer about things, then yes. Poverty CAN cause crime. Unless you love the law so much that you'll die following it.

[RojoyNegro]

Like blakes baby said with a creative example poverty and crime are both consecuence from captilalism.

Capitalism its a system full of vices because promoves MONEY as the key to happyness and corrupt our feelings and thoughts. Since money its the main goal, people become selfish and seeking their green happyness they dont care about exploiting people if thats its gonna give them more money and power.

The poor crowd can hardly move on from their condition because in capitalism system the private proverty rules the economy and poverty tend to bring frustation, anger, desolation, and all kind of bad feelings that change people into something they are not.

Socialism on the other hand decrease criminalism, like for example in Cuba, Cuban people are like from another world, very smart, warm, joyful. And this only because of the revolutionary process thats working on in Cuba, even thoug Cuba its not a rich country.

[bawbag]

It reminds me of Fun With Dick & Jane, he loses his job and they are losing their house, so they start robbing folks (I am not sure if that is what happens in the original, but it hppens in the remake).

Anyways, I live in a rather poor area and crime around here is pretty high, although it depends what crime you are talking about. People robbing others, then yes I would say poverty can be a factor of that as I think it happens a lot around here.

Around here we get a lot of youths doing drugs, drinking and joining violent gangs. I believe this is because there is really nothing to do here, we want to go out and play football but the council won't pay for good sporting facilities (either they are incredibly stupid or they have no money), the streets are filled with cars and there is no reasonable land around to play on so we see a lot of kids out drinking and smoking or fighting, when there's nothing to do and no one cares, gangs come about and that is where the crime starts.

Well that's what it is like round here. If there was something decent to do, any sort of real entertainment for youths then I think it would be a lot different.

As far as stealing goes, I think it is down to the conditions we live in, poverty is, in my opinion, the biggest cause of it.

I would say that poverty

[Nolan]

Someone on facebook said "poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue."

How do I respond to this?

[Broletariat]

Someone on facebook said "poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue."

How do I respond to this?
But wealth does cause poverty.

[Blake's Baby]

Not sure you have to respond - or if you do, I'd say 'well said!'. Riches don't make people good, poverty doesn't make people bad. What poverty does is make people desperate and/or angry. In these circumastances it's hardly surprising that, in general, there will be more crime in poor areas than rich ones.

[28350]

Now, I don't know if they're causally linked, but there certainly is a correlation.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/correlation.png

[Blake's Baby]

That's awesome. No sensible political point to make, but it is.

[Muzk]

He wanted proof and you gave him theory... I laid the foundations by posting some statistics... you just ... gosh.

[DaComm]

What proof is there that it does? Places like the Heritage Foundation and Fox News seem dead set on proving that crime causes poverty.

For fucks sake, just google "poverty causes crime."


I certainly believe if the was no Private Ownership that crime rates would descend dramatically. People (9.9 times out of 10) committ theft not as a result of want, but of dire need; need that originates from being unemployed which often occurs due to idiotic supply-demand relations/the need for Capitalists not to over-produce by having too much supply, thus lowering their productive apparatuses/economic crisis, or even just low wage. In this case, theft in under-developed would subside dramatically. Hate murders that spawn from religion and racism would vanish as both of these crime factors are customary to Capitalism. There are however, some cases of crime which I do not believe will subside of with submission of Capitalism, take for example murder/rape committed as a result of personality disfunctions.

[manic expression]

In terms of street crime, sure it's caused by poverty...the point of most of it is to not be poor. You rob because you want money. You sell drugs because you want money. Poorer communities can turn on themselves because people think it's the only way to get out of their situations. People who think crime causes poverty lack not only empathy, not only the capacity to rationally look at things from a perspective other than their own, but a Kindergarten-level understanding of history. In short, they're idiots.

Listen, middle class kids do plenty of crime. Mostly drugs, serious drugs too. But the consequences just aren't there, the high stakes aren't there. What happens if they get caught? A slap on the wrist, some cop who knows the kid's dad intimidating him downtown so he'll get back in line, maybe something worse...but not the life-ending stuff that happens to workers and working class kids. Desperation is funny like that. Oppression is funny like that.

Statistically, "white collar crime" costs the public far, far, far more money than all other crime. The FBI estimates it at $300 billion a year (and that's with a very narrow definition of white collar crime, healthcare fraud alone could cost as much as $400 billion). Street crime? $3.8 billion a year. Do the math. The focus on street crime is sensationalism, pure and simple. The capitalists want to convince you that the poor are animals, when the real predators are at the top.

Like we all know: capitalism is THE crime. Everything else is small time.


Someone on facebook said "poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue."

How do I respond to this?
Stupidity no more causes wit than intelligence causes enlightenment.

[Nolan]

Statistically, "white collar crime" costs the public far, far, far more money than all other crime. The FBI estimates it at $300 billion a year (and that's with a very narrow definition of white collar crime, healthcare fraud alone could cost as much as $400 billion). Street crime? $3.8 billion a year. Do the math. The focus on street crime is sensationalism, pure and simple. The capitalists want to convince you that the poor are animals, when the real predators are at the top.


Do you have a source for the numbers?

[KurtFF8]

I'm also interested in seeing a source (not saying I don't believe those numbers, but seeing a source would be an excellent tool to have handy)

[Svoboda]

What proof is there that it does? Places like the Heritage Foundation and Fox News seem dead set on proving that crime causes poverty.

For fucks sake, just google "poverty causes crime."
Is this really that hard to figure out? Go to a poor part of any city and see for yourself if crime is prevalent.

[Frederick Alexander]

I think it's fair to say poverty can cause envy and resentment and imagine a lot of people living in poverty would find it easy to justify acts of crime. We live in a society with a media which teaches us that material goods equal happiness and which at the same time pumps up our ego and teaches that the individual is a "special" individual. For someone living in poverty in a western society I imagine theft is something easy for them to justify to themselves. As I said, they're taught, in fact, pressured into thinking that they need the goods, thinking that they're a special unique person it's easy to think, 'why shouldn't I steal, why should they have it and me not have it, I "need" it and I should have it'.

[Obzervi]

I don't really see what you consider "crime". If you call impoverished blacks and latinos attempting to garner a small piece of the capitalist pie for themselves by whatever means then I wouldn't call it a crime, I would call it justice after centuries of being oppressed and having everything taken from them. The true crimes are being committed by the rich capitalists, every single day.

[BLACKPLATES]

I think this is another word game. It depends on whats meant by "poverty" and to some extent "crime", and so of course who you are talking to. "poverty" in the US is a not really disguised euphemism for "black people" or "latino". someone mentioned the heritage foundation and that ilk. "poverty" for the rock ribbed american republican means community of minority and lazy people. so its basically not possible to talk about crime and poverty in a pro-capitalist context in any meaningful way. hunger leads to "crime". and the useful and needed perpetual underclass in global capitalist societies creates resentment and desperation which can probably be shown to lead to crime. if not in individuals then in groups.