A Look At Poverty And Crime

There is no link between poverty and crime

- Craig Read

June 11 , 2007 — Another socialist engineering mantra and canard is ‘poverty causes crime’. This apparently explains Islamic violence; Hispanic gang violence; black gun play and white crime committed by high paid executives wearing designer shirts. There is of course no correlation between poverty and crime. The arrogant Marxists have it precisely backwards – crime causes poverty. Crime is a derivative of a failed culture and personal frailties, not of income status.

Where is the proof that poverty causes crime? In Canada and the US the poverty rate has collapsed in the past 50 years from 25 % of the population to about 8%. Yet violent crime has increased by 7 times. So the correlation is perhaps this: the wealthier a society gets the more violent it becomes? Of course not. The linear relationship is between culture and crime. A society that is soft on culture – lax laws, too few police resources, ‘rehabilitation programs’, reduced sentencing etc. – is one that is prey to violence.

The cultural factors that induce crime can be found in-extremis inside the Black and Hispanic sub-cultures. In the US for example crime rates amongst Hispanics and Blacks are 3-8 times that of Whites or Asians, depending on the category though they only make up 15% and 12% of the population respectively. Race is not an issue, nor is police persecution. Asian crime rates for instance are below those of Whites in most categories in the US. In Toronto Canada 2/3 of all violent crime are committed by Blacks, though Blacks make up less than 10% of the total population.

David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York said it best; ‘…..Serious crime is concentrated in certain areas within poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods….For people who live in the Trinidad area of Washington, in the Nickerson Gardens housing complex in South Los Angeles and on Magnolia Street in Boston, the citywide statistics have always been meaningless. Their neighborhoods are war zones.’ Is this due to White racism, police oppression, or an uncaring society without a welfare system? Of course not. It is cultural