Poverty and Crime
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Poverty and Crime
Poverty is the mother of crim e
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus [121-180 C.E.]
Even ancient philosophers can oversimplify things. It is still often contended
that poverty and crime go hand in hand, or that one cannot deal with crime
without dealing with the root causes of crime such as poverty These assertions
carry with them some serious implications. Even if the speaker of such a generality
means to assert that society has a duty to help those who have disadvantages - not
a matter of dispute - the implications of such a generality should not be over-
looked. It should be recalled that poverty, as we commonly understand it, is rarely a
condition of choice and is usually the burden of those who lack the advantages of
the rest of us. Moreover, while people can hide wealth, they cannot hide poverty
The source of a generality that there is a link between poverty and crime seems to
be the theory that people who have less will want to take from those who have more.
Indeed, some of those who assert that generality advance that supporting theory in
different formats. One suggestion, for instance, is that crime increases when the gap
expands between the haves and the have-nots. Another suggestion is that poverty
drives people to crime. No credible research supports this latter as a general statement
and one would have to be careful with interpretation of statistics about the former.
Even if have-nots would like to be haves, it does not mean that people with less will
take in a wrongful fashion from those who have more. When Dr. Johnson said that
poverty was a great evil, he did not mean that it was the expression of evil people,
but that failure to deal justly with it was a moral fault of society
It is plainly unfair to people in poverty to suggest that they are more disposed to
crime than other people. There is no gene that has been identified linking disposi-
tion to crime with poverty If so, one might have thought a massive crime wave
would have swept western Canada during the Great Depression. It did not. If any-
thing, people may have been more generous to each other then. Moreover, many of
the greatest artists, philosophers, and thinkers of history have been poor people.
Yet, the greatest thieves in history have been people with lots of wealth and power.
The list of larcenous political autocrats is long.
Basically, the problem with a generality like this is one of faulty logic arising
from over-simplification of relationships between facts. What definition of crime is
being used in the generality? What connection is there between poverty and arson?
Between poverty and sexual assault? Between poverty and murder? The problem
with the poverty and crime linkage is comparable to the following pseudo-syllo-
gism: all cats have four legs; my dog has four legs; therefore my dog is a cat.
February/ March 2000 47
This article is copyright @ 2000 by LawNow, Legal Studies Program, Faculty of Extension,
University of Alberta. Permission to reproduce material from LawNow may be granted on request.
0 Crim inal 'Law
Jac Watso
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Poverty and Crime
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