Surging poverty in a key to crime - Essay Example

You will not be permitted or approved to walk that street, you are not even allowed to sit or sleep and it is strictly prohibited for you to roam around like a normal citizen of the society. This forces me to ask a simple question that is being poor a crime itself or is being poor a doorway to crime? If questioned, City officials come up with a self-satisfactory answer that the State’s laws are constituted in a way, not to discriminate. They have their own way of explaining it. If someone is lying down on some random sidewalk, whether that someone is wealthy or a homeless, he has violated the ordinance.

Another way these officials put up the law and equality is by saying that it actually forbids both, the rich and the poor to sleep under bridges. This arouses a thought: why would the wealthy even consider of sleeping under a bridge when he knows he has a better, luxurious and comforting place to spend his night. Moreover, the recent study indicates that poverty has intensified as recession has continued to eliminate jobs, thus generating higher poverty ratio. Deriving information from the study highlighting poverty and homelessness, conducted by the National Law Center shows that the statistics of poor public have continuously increased since the year 2006.

As a result, a higher ticketing ratio and an increased number of arrests have been observed. People have been ‘taken in’ for more neutral violations such as littering, holding an open bottle of alcohol or jaywalking (Ehrenreich 2009). Therefore, the connection between the two, poverty and crime has been a controversial debate. However, it can be said that in our country there is an obvious relationship between them. Poor in our society make up the overflowing majority (Williams 2007). It is well said that an improved society can be evaluated by how it administers the poor.

In the light of this saying, the Americans are a hopeless failure. Current situation indicates that on a nationwide scale, up to 20% of children reside in poverty. In Los Angeles, almost 30% of children suffer from poverty (Holmes 2002). The brutality of the official’s temperament towards the poor, indigent and homeless in our society can at times be breathtaking. ‘Food Not Bombs’ was the name of a group that started to function a few years back. The group’s motive was to feed the poor in the society and therefore, launched free vegetarian food in public parks, with a hope to serve hungry people nationwide.

Not long after, when this activity was initiated, many cities including Las Vegas approved an ordinance that forbade food sharing with the hungry and poor in public places. As an outcome, most members of this public service group were taken into custody. This is yet another cause that further spoils our social situation. Such acts play an important part towards criminalizing people (Ehrenreich 2009). Furthermore, criminal justice professors and sociologists have found mutuality between poverty and crime.

 Logically people who are victims of poverty are much likely to be connected and involved in criminal acts such as street crimes, larceny, burglary and shoplifting. As per the evaluations, city of Detroit is one of the poorest regions in America and Michigan’s economy is estimated to have the worst economic conditions as compared