How Might Deprivation Lead to Crime - Essay Example

How might Deprivation lead to Crime? Introduction This paper deals with the widely held notion in sociology: If deprivation leads to crime? After a thorough research and strong empirical evidence it was established in the later part of the paper that it does. The link between deprivation, inequality and crime is stressed by the three main ecological theories of crime: Becker's economic theory of crime; the social disorganization theory of Shaw and McKay, and Merton's strain theory. These have been discussed in detail in the later text. In the economic theory of crime--starting with Becker (1968, p169-217) and developed by Ehrlich (1973, p521-565) and others--individuals allocate time between market and criminal activity by comparing the expected return from each, and taking account of the likelihood and severity of punishment. In these models, deprivation leads to crime by placing low-income individuals who have low returns from market activity in proximity to high-income individuals who have things that are worth taking. A formal model of deprivation and property crime in which individuals choose between legitimate and criminal activity can be found in Chiu and Madden (1998, p123-141). Analysis Most empirical tests of the economic theory of crime have been concerned with the deterrent effects of the criminal justice system in particular by how increased police activity and imprisonment rates reduce crime, and whether this reduction is due to prevention or incapacitation (Tierney 1996). In the past several studies have considered the effect on crime of deprivation, albeit indirectly through the effect of low earnings on criminal activity (Roger 2002). In contrast to the economics of crime literature, which focuses on the deterrent effects of the formal criminal justice system, social disorganization theory considers factors that diminish the effectiveness of informal social controls. Shaw and McKay (1942) identified poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility as the three factors that weaken networks of social control and undermine the ability and willingness of communities to exercise informal control over their members. Sampson (1987) has added family stability to this list. For social disorganization theory, deprivation causes crime indirectly by being associated with poverty. Several of the classic theories of crime, including Marxist, strain, and utilitarian, rely heavily on economic factors such as poverty and unemployment to account for variations in crime rates (Shihadeh & Ousey 1998). Researchers since the nineteenth century have suggested a positive association between poverty and crime in urban areas (Tierney 1996). This may be due to the fact that the relationship between poverty and crime is contingent upon the specific crime category under consideration (Patterson 1991). In Merton's (1938, p672-682) strain theory, individuals low in the social structure are perturbed by their failure to attain the material attributes of success, and this failure is more substantial when they are confronted by the success of those around them. Unsuccessful individuals become alienated from society and commit crime in response. Individual alienation can arise from income deprivation or from belonging to a racial minority. The predictions of strain and social disorganization theories have been subject to extensive but questionable empirical testing in the sociological literature. The influential study of Blau and Blau (1982, p114-129) found a strong relationship between measured income deprivation and homicide rates in large metropolitan areas in 1970. Such theories rely on the troubling assumption that macro-level relationships reflect the sum of a series of individual-level social-psychological processes. Blau and Blau's (1982, p114-129) prominently stated that highly stratified environments generate feelings of resentment and frustration in individuals. When deprivation is based on characteristics, such as race, these sentiments can be highly pronounced and can find expression in the form of violence. The reductionist nature of the Blau's explanation is dearly evident and makes it impossible to distinguish between individual and collective social processes. If macro-level studies fail to make that distinction, it begs the larger question: why examine this relationship at the combined level? Yet, as the research on family structure and crime has shown, it is possible for the theoretical relationship between variables to be distinct at various levels of analysis. Much of the extant research has generally failed to yield evidence of a significant individual-level relationship that single-parent households are more likely to produce juvenile delinquents find extremely strong associations between the rates of family disruption and the rates of juvenile violence. They argue that widespread family disruption weakens the formal and informal capacity of communities to control their members regardless of the type of family those members are from which in turn may lead to higher rates of offending. However, later empirical results have been mixed, with strong relationships between deprivation and poverty, race, unemployment, and other measures of deprivation making it hard to separate the effects of deprivation on crime from those of poverty. Crime can be partially explained by poor employment prospects, as reflected in unemployment rates (Shihadeh & Ousey 1998). But despite the intuitive appeal and theoretical support of an unemployment and crime relationship, a few studies actually report a negative unemployment-crime relationship. Such findings contribute to what Chiricos (1987, p187-212) terms the "consensus of doubt" regarding the relationship between deprivation and crime. But according to his review, the vast majority of studies find a positive relationship between deprivation and crime. And of the city and county level studies that find a statistically significant unemployment and crime relationship, virtually all of them report a positive association. So despite some evidence to the contrary, readers of the review are left doubting not the unemployment and crime relationship, but the "consensus of doubt" itself. The three ecological theories of crime are better seen as complements than substitutes, each focusing on a different facet of the relationship between crime and deprivation. Social disorganization theory considers informal social deterrents to crime; strain theory focuses on pressures to commit violent crime; and the economic theory of crime (Roger 2002), although formally able to encompass the other two theories, is concerned primarily with the incentives to commit property crime, and the deterrent effect of the formal criminal justice system. Changes in the United States crime rate can be attributed to two significant developments in its labour market: the sharp decrease in the earnings of young unskilled men in the 1980s and the rapid decline in the total rate of unemployment in the 1990s (Imrohoroglu et al. 2000, p1-25; 2004, p707-29). In view of these parallel developments, this immediately raises the question of whether or not these events are related in some way. Of course, such a connection might be expected to hold on a priori grounds. The reason is that according to the canons of conventional microeconomic wisdom, the decision of whether or not to engage in criminal activities is a time allocation problem. As such, changes in the opportunities available to workers in the formal labour market will have a direct and ineluctable impact upon the crime rate, by affecting the opportunity cost of criminal behavior. Whereas Grogger (1998, p659-82) estimates that a 20 percent decline in the (youth) wage would lead to a 20 percent increase in the crime rate, Gould et al. (2002, p45-61) document that changes in the wage can account for up to 50 percent of the trend in violent crimes and in property crimes. Recent studies by Raphael and Winter-Ebmer (2001, p259-83) and by Gould et al. (2002, p45-61) also indicate that there is a strong positive link between the unemployment and crime rates. But taken at face value, these trends can be deceptive. First, these trends must be seen in relative terms. A broad based rise in educational attainment may actually widen the gap between the top and bottom, thus exacerbating feelings of anomie and relative deprivation among those at the lower end of the class structure (Shihadeh & Ousey 1998). The link between crime and deprivation or unemployment has received considerable attention in both historic and contemporary research (Shihadeh & Ousey 1998). But only a handful of macro crime studies specifically examine the relationship with racially disaggregated data. For instance, of the cross-sectional studies that use racially disaggregated crime rates (Shihadeh & Steffensmeier 1994, p729-52) less than half included black unemployment (or some derivation thereof) as a distinct predictor. And of those only a few find a negative association between deprivation and crime. The rest, using more recent data, report the more expected positive association (Shihadeh & Steffensmeier 1994, p729-52). Thus, the handful of evidence from racially disaggregated studies strongly indicates that economic deprivation creates an upward pressure on crime rates. The hypothetical foundation of the deprivation-crime link relies on the concept that deprivation creates economically motivated offenders who are compelled to commit crime in order to satisfy basic needs (Shihadeh & Ousey 1998). While economic motivation likely makes a nontrivial contribution to high crime rates, particularly for property crimes, as a stand-alone guiding principle it is limited in a number of respects. First, motivationally based explanations of crime suffer from what Sampson and Wilson (1995, p45) term the "'materialist fallacy' that economic (or materialist) causes necessarily produce economic motivations" (Sampson and Wilson 1995, p45). They point out that strain or materialist theories have not fared well empirically and "the image of the offender stealing to survive flourishes only as a straw many Sampson and Wilson (1995, p45). The modern welfare state buffers the full effect of poverty and joblessness through unemployment compensation, welfare, and other government programs. The point is that aggregate-level explanations of crime should not have to assume that individual offenders necessarily possess the characteristics of the aggregate predictors. Just as macro-theoretical links between crime and family structure should not require that perpetrators themselves are products of single-parent households, likewise, economic deprivation -- crime explanations need not adhere to the restriction that perpetrators are poor or unemployed. Yet this is precisely the implication of motivationally based theories which posit that the aggregate link is an additive function of a set of economically motivated individuals. The challenge for macro-social research on crime indeed is to identify the macro-social contexts that are conducive to crime rather than to reproduce individual-level catalogues at a higher level. With that in mind, economic deprivation can be exemplified by high rates of unemployment and poverty as having profoundly negative consequences on both the organization and normative structure of communities, consequences that are far more devastating to community life than the creation of economically motivated offenders. Widespread deprivation is an embedded structural condition that can delegitimize conventional norms and weaken the capacity of communities to cultivate allegiance to mainstream institutions (Shihadeh & Steffensmeier 1994, p729-52). The implications of this for minority communities are potentially serious considering that more than one-half of all black men in central cities between the ages of 18 and 29 are either unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labour force altogether. Conditions this extreme exacerbate the sense of exclusion in many low-income communities and weaken the social attachment to mainstream institutions among large segments of centre-city residents. Because joblessness and poverty are daily experiences in the harsh reality of life, certain value and normative responses may arise which further isolate residents. Rather than reiterating the culture of poverty perspective, it can be emphasized that oppositional practices -- which can distance members from the wider society -- are proximate outcomes to the structural impediments faced by a significant number of urban minorities. Elijah Anderson (1993, 1994) notes that impoverished young minority males have little hope of acquiring meaningful employment and are therefore deprived of the primary means by which males in the society prove their worth. They instead strive for achievable goals, by seeking out peer support and fostering an image based on violence, shored up with clothing, jewellery, hair styles, facial expressions and gait (Anderson 1994). His research reveals that even young males with otherwise non-violent predispositions feel compelled to take on a street-oriented demeanour and demonstrate the ready willingness to use force. Thus structural impediments, such as deleterious labour force conditions, can generate milieu effects that are conducive to crime. In this sense, the focus is not the characteristics of individual offenders, but on the social conditions that have criminal consequences. On the basis of the above facts, the general heuristic is that the structural link between economic restructuring and crime involves two macro-social paths. First, the mass exodus of entry level jobs created by urban industrial restructuring contributes to economic deprivation in the form of high rates of poverty and joblessness. Second, economic deprivation then creates an upward pressure on the rates of serious crime. However, research has revealed important race differences in the correlates of crime (Shihadeh & Steffensmeier 1994, p729-52). This may be due to the vivid contrasts between black and white urban lives. Given the objective harshness of many black communities in urban areas, one might expect to see an effect only for them. But from the vantage point, the relationship between low skill jobs, economic deprivation and violent crime is essentially structural -- one that should exist based upon the contextual features of urban systems and should transcend the race composition of communities. Conclusion In the assessment of the social costs of deprivation, the economics literature has tended to consider its long-run costs: lower economic growth and reduced labour force formation. This paper investigated a much more immediate cost of deprivation: its impact on crime. It showed that for violent crime the impact of deprivation is large, even after controlling for the effects of race, and family composition. Although most crimes are committed by the most disadvantaged members of society (Roger 2002), these individuals face greater pressure and incentives to commit crime in areas of high inequality and deprivation. Finally, ecological trends, business policy and federal fiscal policy at the national level tends to favour the creation of jobs in high-skill, information processing sectors, over those in low-skill, entry-level sectors in urban centres. At the international level, public policy is designed to position the United States more competitively in the global economy. Having lost the competitive advantage in goods production to low-wage countries, the current administration is emphasizing trade policies that (in principle) capitalize on its competitive advantage in higher-order sectors such as information processing. Although such jobs contribute disproportionately to total economic output and productivity, this is only one of many dimensions of the post industrial shifts in the United States Policy makers need to also consider the importance of entry-level jobs in urban areas. A significant number of unskilled residents in the United States are increasingly marginalized because they are unable to participate in the new high-skill growth sectors of the centre-city economy. This structural impediment has serious consequences, one which must be interjected into any public discourse on welfare reform. Vocational training programs intended to improve the skill level and employability of disadvantaged residents may ease the problem. But low skill individuals still need an entry point into the labour market since job skills are also acquired through labour force participation itself. References Anderson, E. (1993) Sex Codes and Family Life among Poor Inner-City Youths. In The Ghetto Underclass: Social Science Perspectives, edited by William Julius Wilson. Sage Publications. Becker, G. S. (1968) Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach, Journal of Political Economy 76, 169-217. Blau, J. R., and Blau P. M. (1982) The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime. American Sociological Review 47, 114-129. Chiricos, T. G. (1987). Rates of Crime and Unemployment: An Analysis of Aggregate Research Evidence. Social Problems 34:187-212. Chiu, W. H., and Madden P. (1998) Burglary and Income Inequality, Journal of Public Economics 69, 123-141. Ehrlich, l. (1973). Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation. Journal of Political Economy 81, 521-565. Gould, E., Mustard D., Weinberg B. (2002). Crime Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States, 1979–97, Review of Economics and Statistics 84, 45–61. Grogger, J. (1997) Local Violence and Educational Attainment, Journal of Human Resources 32, 659–82. Imrohoroglu, A., Merlo A., Rupert P. (2000). On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime, International Economic Review 41, 1–25. Imrohoroglu, A., Merlo A., Rupert P. (2004). What Accounts for the Decline in Crime? International Economic Review 45, 707–29. Merton, R. (1938). Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review 3, 672--682. Patterson, B. E. (1991). Poverty, Income Inequality, and Community Crime Rates. Criminology 29:755-26. Raphael, S., and Winter-Ebmer, R. (2001) Identifying the Effects of Unemployment on Crime, Journal of Law and Economics 44, 259–83. Roger H. B. (2002). An Introduction to Criminological Theory. Portland, Oregon: Willan Publishing Sampson, R. J., Wilson, W. J. (1995). Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality. In Crime and Inequality, edited by John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson. Stanford University Press. Sampson, R. J. (1987) Communities and Crime, in Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi (Eds.), Positive Criminology (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987). Shaw, C. McKay H. (1942) Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). Shihadeh, E. S., Steffensmeier, D. J. (1994). Economic Inequality, Family Disruption and Urban Black Violence: Cities as Units of Stratification and Social Control. Social Forces 73:729-52. Shihadeh, E. S., Ousey, G. C. (1998). Industrial Restructuring and Violence: The Link between Entry-Level Jobs, Economic Deprivation, And Black And White Homicide, Social Forces, 00377732, Vol. 77, Issue 1 Tierney, J. (1996). Criminology: Theory and Context. Prentice Hall. Read More