Essay Example on Crime: A Social Scourge That Needs to Be Addressed

Crime is prevalent in the United States and other parts of the world but multifarious forms. A high concentration of criminal activities has detrimental consequences that affect many people in society. Violent crimes hamper the overall quality of life and peoples' standards of living. Thus, criminality is one of the contemporary social issues that should be addressed as a way to improve other people's lives. There is a need to study socioeconomic factors that trigger criminality as the basis of curbing the problem. However, there is a direct correlation between the prevalence of crime and poverty levels. This relationship suggests that poverty, whether, relative or absolute influence the rate of crime within a jurisdiction. People living in poverty tend to commit crimes because they are less likely to access socioeconomic opportunities. Their situation increases despair, frustration, and hopelessness, and thus, the possibility of committing crimes. Poverty and crime rates have a positive correlation, and therefore, the government should provide people with economic empowerment opportunities as a strategy to address the problem.

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Becker's economic theory of crime is essential in explaining how poverty influence crime rates in society. The theory states that people tend to commit crimes if its benefits exceed the underlying costs (Zhao, Feng, & Castillo-Chavez 486). People living in severe poverty cannot fulfill the most basic requirements, including access to water and sanitation, education and health, to mention a few. To such people, the cost of engaging in unlawful practices is lower than the benefits they derive from criminal activities. As such, poverty increases peoples' tendency to engage in illegal practices than the general population. They tend to engage in practices such as theft, robbery, and burglary, which enable them to meet their basic needs.

Crime is a social problem that everyone should confront. I believe the government should address the issue through economic empowerment rather than the criminal justice system, which does not provide a long term solution to the problem. The events following the assassination of Martin Luther King suggests the influence of poverty on crime. Moore said that such unlawful acts, including looting, and the destruction of property were more than the tragic death of Martin Luther King (21). It was because of racial segregation, and economic inequalities, among other pre-existing conditions. In my view, economically-disadvantaged people could not fulfill essential needs and thus engaged in looting from affluent people, among other property crimes.

Poverty creates socioeconomic inequalities to the disadvantage of people living in poverty who are likely to face underemployment and unemployment in the society. This situation creates an economic gap that necessitates people living in extreme suffering to move to areas that have a high prevalence of substance abuse and gangs. However, I have noted that living in such an environment increases an individual's possibility of engaging in crimes because of anger, hopelessness, despair, and frustration. This idea connects to the concepts I learned in the class reading The Other Wes Moore. Moore said that the Cherry Hill Apartments built after the Second World War "were constructed at the same time under separate but equal policies" (21). The uplands apartments, however, became the home to the thriving economic class. The other parts of the estate, according to Moore, "became a ground for poverty, drugs, and despair" (21). These houses, however, could not sustain families since they were small and poorly constructed. This situation, in my understanding, is an illustration of socioeconomic inequalities that plunge people living in poverty in despair, which increase their chances of committing property crimes.

In my view, the government should allow people living in abject poverty to perform community services in exchange for monetary rewards. This approach is one of the most effective economic empowerment programs to supplement the income of people living in poverty. Since crime affects everyone in society, individuals should also take leading roles in addressing the problem. In this case, the community should involve such people in household tasks as an economic empowerment initiative from an individual perspective. This strategy is the basis for improving the lives of other people by controlling the prevalence of criminal activities.

City-level crime rate and city-level poverty rates have a positive correlation (Hinton 276). A recent study indicates that the prevalence of property crimes is higher in urban areas where a significant proportion of the residents live below the poverty line (Lofstrom and Raphael l08). Within cities, however, a high crime rate is geographically concentrated in economically-disadvantaged neighborhoods that have a considerable proportion of the minority population. This idea relates to the concept I learned in the reading, which states that areas that have high levels of crime influence the spread of the practice to its neighborhoods. The Bronx is an example of a city that had low levels of crime, but an increase in poverty levels in its surroundings influenced its crime rates (Moore 35). In my interpretation, this idea suggests that poverty in the neighborhood influence the prevalence of crime in other jurisdiction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, poverty and criminality have a direct correlation. People living in severe poverty have higher chances of engaging in unlawful acts as an approach to meet their basic requirements. Poverty, therefore, drives individuals to commit crimes since it creates an environment characterized by hopelessness and despair. Individuals growing in such areas have higher chances of committing crimes. The government, therefore, should resort to economic empowerment to address this social problem.

Works Cited

Hinton, Elizabeth. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime. Harvard University Press, 2016.

Lofstrom, Magnus, and Steven Raphael. "Crime, the criminal justice system, and socioeconomic inequality." Journal of Economic Perspectives 30.2 (2016): 103-26.

Moore, Wes. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. Random House Digital, 2011.

Zhao, Haiyun, Zhilan Feng, and Carlos Castillo-Chavez. "The dynamics of poverty and crime." Journal of Shanghai Normal University (Natural Sciences Mathematics) 43.5 (2014): 486-495, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221674142. Accessed 29 July 2019