Recession Shatters Myth of Poverty Causing Crime
The sound you should be hearing right now is that of a myth exploding. And given the long duration and wide acceptance of this myth, the noise should indeed be deafening. But, no, as when many cherished notions of the left are revealed as fallacious, the current reaction is a hushed, embarrassed silence.
Writing in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald puts the lie to that hoariest of theories regarding crime, one that was once nearly universally believed, to wit, that crime is caused by poverty and that deteriorating economic conditions will inevitably lead to higher crime. (Full disclosure: Ms. Mac Donald and I are friends.) Mac Donald writes:
The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the “root causes” theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. Over seven million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s. The consequences of this drop for how we think about social order are significant.
Even the FBI bought into this myth, Mac Donald reports. “Through the late 1980s,” she writes, “the FBI’s annual national crime report included the disclaimer that ‘criminal homicide is largely a societal problem which is beyond the control of the police.’ Policing, it was understood, can only respond to crime after the fact; preventing it is the domain of government welfare programs.”
Indeed, as a young LAPD officer in the early 1980s, I was taught that murder is not a “repressible crime,” i.e., one that would respond to police intervention in violence-plagued neighborhoods. And as a graduate of what is generally considered an elite university, I of course believed it. When Los Angeles murders doubled between 1975 and 1992, few in authority believed the LAPD could do anything about it. Only after a time working some of L.A.’s meaner streets did I come to realize most of what I had been taught about crime and criminals was utterly and demonstrably false.
But don’t take my word for it, or Heather Mac Donald’s either. Simply examine the facts, at least as they pertain to Los Angeles. In December 2006, the unemployment rate in Los Angeles County was 4.3 percent. By January 2008 it was 6.8 percent and as of October 2009 it was 12.6 percent. If the poverty-causes-crime theory were true, this sudden rise in unemployment would surely be accompanied by at least some measurable increase in crime. Instead the opposite has happened. Over the last two years, Part I crime in the city of Los Angeles fell by 10 percent. More importantly, violent crime went down by 14 percent, with homicides down a remarkable 22 percent.
Dontchya think it might have had something to do with the 1 million + new gun owners that were inspired to purchase by the gun lobby’s newest star salesman Obama?
Poverty doesn’t cause crime, criminals do. (Sorry, liberals.)
All correct.
But don’t let the Lefties find out that underlying it all is the quiescent sun — sunspot activity is at more than a century low — all data analysis from the 19th century onward has shown the correlation.
The Liberals will turn it into another AWG and try to change the sun.
Sorry Jack, you missed a major point in an otherwise good article.
Self-deportation.
As unemployment goes up, one uncounted segment of the economy in part disappears…the illegals. Our Trauma Unit has had huge drops, primarily in the penetrating trauma, and our OB units at the same time was off 18%, mostly in the drive thru drop off an anchor baby (new welfare recipient)variety.
The illegals get counted on the crime side but not on the unemployment or population side…much of these numbers are artificial if one looks at “citizens”. You won’t hear this from those pushing amnesty.
I knew it! Didn’t you? So, when can we expect reparations for decades of black crime and welfare? I always suspected that those two young punks who attempted to appropiate my Laker tickets in the back parking lot of the Forum were a**holes, not un-employed dads merely trying to feed a family. Give it back, Al and Jessie! Give it back!
Just think. We could have used all that money to produce “Sesame Street” in Farsi to prevent Iranian kids from growing up to be suicide bombers, or something. Oh,…wait.
Steven
In North Minneapolis where there have been many foreclosures of rental properties, crime is way, way down. One theory by the North Siders is that the slum lords have lost their properties and the drug pushers and pimps have to go elsewhere.
Mpls has been aggressive in tearing down houses that do not sell after being foreclosed. For some structures, its sad since many structures in that area are about 100 years old with wonderful interior woodwork. However, the slum lords and criminals have trashed the structures and they are unsafe.
Mpls has also been aggressive in closing convenience stores that were points of congregation for drugs and prostitution.
This seems more like Mpls destroying the infrastructure for crime rather than crime being driven by social injustice. We have criminal families and gangs not some tundra version of Les Miserables.
maybe in a down economy the criminals return to mexico. rather than just empty the jails, deportation should be considered.
Interesting. Of course the seemingly endless time extensions of unemployment payments to former job seekers may have a lot to do with it. I say former advisedly. Why look for work or contemplate crime when taxpayers are keeping you above water?
“Why look for work or contemplate crime when taxpayers are keeping you above water?”
Here’s why, speaking as a criminal lawyer: the relatively small unemployment benefits payable to the denizens of the occasionally-working class, even when added to one’s baby-mammas’ welfare checks, aren’t a patch on the income to be derived from 4-5 holdups or burglaries a month, not to mention a solid ‘small business’ in weed or rock. “Keeping above water” isn’t the goal; it’s bling and new Jordans and Cristal at the club.
People have it exactly backwards. Poverty doesn’t cause crime. Crime causes poverty. Let’s face it, if you are breaking into cars at night, you don’t have time to study or make other improvements to your life.
As the first comment implied, it’s also disproving the liberal myth of availability of guns being a driver to crime. The sales of guns have grown dramatically (historic highs) since just prior to Obama’s election at the same time crime has been dropping.
I saw the original article and I’m glad to see such a respected professional comment on it.
Of course, there is also the fact that when you lock people up who commit crimes they are not around to commit any more. Like the NYT says, annually “Analysts are baffled as prison population soars while crime drops.” Yep, I am baffled too, but not by that.
But let’s fact it. Much of the crime we see is the result of affluence, not poverty. If young people don’t have the money to buy a car, fill it up with gas, buy some booze, put on $200 sneakers, and go looking for tail and drugs, many crimes don’t happen.
Random thoughts.
1. It could well be that technology plays a role, as does “leftist” TV portraying technology usage (underlying message of crime doesn’t pay.) TV? Yeah. Lots of CSI/forensics shows. Cops. Steven Seagal. (Somehow this doesn’t seem so leftist.) What’s on TV, anyway? Cop/Crime shows. Lawyer shows. Doctor shows.
2. Perhaps the newer 3 strikes laws may play a role.
3. And of course cameras are now in places they never used to be. Meanwhile it’s becoming increasingly difficult for criminals to outrun radios. And methods of money safekeeping at stores (only so much in the register, the rest is secured) plays a part. Better vehicle security systems stop most but the pros.
4. Perhaps rather than the crime index alone one ought to have a look at the insurance claims (e.g. vehicle damage resulting from stealing attempt) as a way of verifying whether or not technology deters or slows down would-be criminals that would have been successful 10 years earlier. What are the claims on cell phone plans?
5. Crime is also more than just street hoods robbing stores.
It would also be interesting to note whether claims in general have risen; people with decreasing incomes may look for the great bailout from Allstate where a small event somehow is claimed to require a new roof.
***
As such the interesting thing here is whether the nature of crime is simply changing rather than laser focusing on some types; one doesn’t call the LAPD for insurance fraud.
Chapter 4 of ‘Freakonomics’, “Where Have All The Criminals Gone,” is instructive. There are a number of summaries online if you don’t want to read the book. I always enjoy Mr. Dunphy’s take on things, and suspect that there are multiple causes. But this column recognizes that cause and correlation aren’t the same thing, and cause is difficult to determine. This revelation has been exploited by the political class, at least for centuries. It even has a Latin name: Post Hoc Fallacy.
Poverty only leads to crime when there are less impoverished nearby.
When EVERYONE is down, there’s no one left to rob.
(And rich bankers/wallstreeters are locked behind bailout-paid security forces)
Unemployment means more people are home and some of them will watch for crime and call responsive police. This means that neighborhood watch revival would be a good idea where police budgets are tight.
While I think the article is good overall I think its misses some basics.
1. LA is not everywhere…
2. Gun owners
3. “Effective policing” is not a realistic term… police can only react to crime on the small scale… Large scale stuff police can be more pro-active on.
4. Illegal aliens which make up a huge amount of crime. They are leaving and other being pushed out in areas.
5. Gun Laws
Bohemond @ 9: You’re a criminal (defense) lawyer? There should be more like you.
From T. Dalrymple’s “Life At the Bottom” : ” My father was born in an English slum in the years before the First World War. In the borough in which he was born one in every eight children died in his first year. But in those benighted times, when some London children, too poor to buy shoes, went to school barefoot, the “vicious cycle of poverty” had yet to be discovered.”
It amazing how we came to accept so many paralyzing ideas. I’m glad to see that this is finally coming to and end. -Very good article.
The theory that a bad economy spurs crime only works if the criminal is Jean ValJean (from Les Miserables; he stole a loaf of bread to feed his family). If the criminal is selling drugs on the street corner, the probability is that he’s likely to do that whether the economy is good or bad. My guess is that the decline in crime (in LA anyway) is mostly due to the police department slowly increasing in effectiveness, and improving in the aftermath of the Rampart scandal. The economic downturn has nothing, or nothing much, to do with the crime rate. Lots of liberals are obsessed with “root causes” of crime, poverty, etc., mostly using this as a Trojan Horse to infiltrate them further into the control of society. This again proves they’re wrong.
HTuttle @ 15
If that were true then the various welfare “projects” would be havens of total security since everyone there is impoverished.
Prisons would be totally safe because everyone has the same thing and their basic needs are met (food, clothing, shelter).
Both places mentioned are the WORST environments for safety, yet everyone in them has the basics.
Why was there still significant high crime in the former USSR? Everyone had their needs met by the state. There were no really rich people (outside the Party) to be “keeping the poor down”. The average citizen had no right to keep and bear arms. The police had total authority. The press were prevented from reporting the true extent of the crime in order not to embarrass the administration. Why did they still have high crime?
In the “publish or perish” world of academia the content of a published paper is not nearly as important as the fact it got published and the number of citations it generated. Thus we get all sorts of silliness in refereed journals. We need look no further than the East Anglia CRU documents to see this phenomenon at work. I, personally, have sat in on “data meetings” where the major professor, a then current recipient of many (at one time sixteen!) millions of dollars in annual research grants, would review data points one by one and encourage his research staff to find reasons to exclude points that were (for his purposes) outliers, and never once question points that fit his hypothesis, or mention the p<=0.05 statistical test appropriate for rejecting a data point. The reason (if I must be blunt) was that an outlier was unlikely to be excluded statistically because the data was a freaking mess!
A great deal of what passes for ground-breaking research is neither ground-breaking, nor good research.
Charlie
Ah but poverty does cause crime…
A Poverty of Values.
Actually like most liberal montras, it is not just wrong, it is EXACTLY wrong.
Poverty does not cause crime;
Crime causes poverty.
jd
Once again, the Gipper is proved right:
God, I miss Ronnie.
If there’s two things people care about most it’s their economic well-being and their safety. Both of which should be the top priorities of any government whether local or national. Everything else is trivial in comparison. And by economic well-being I do not mean wealth redistribution and government handouts but rather a strong economic engine that’s stable and always trying to grow – something which the left is opposed to because they’re Marxists frankly. The left’s disgustingly soft stances on crime where the criminals are treated like the victims is another one of the main reasons why I’m no longer a leftist. The evidence is overwhelming that the more criminals are thrown in jail the lower our crime is. Violent criminals especially need to see the unsympathetic iron fist from the state. When I hear that murderers are released from prison after only spending a few years in jail I sometimes want to weep for the victims loved ones. The punishment for murder should always be a life sentence. You either literally die in prison from old age or are promptly executed by the state. Preferably the latter. Our prison and law enforcement budgets should be the last thing we cut. The left will continue to feel no shame for their lack of concern for the real victims of crime because they believe they’re fighting for “social justice”. What a disgrace. Truly a suicidal political and cultural movement.
Oh and you forgot to mention that gun ownership has soared across the country since Obama was elected. Another main reason that crime has plummeted and yet another blow to the left.
Jack – While I would like to agree with your premise, a raw number, such as the “crime rate” has to be carefully examined before pronouncing that the Left is wrong. Here’s why: As the population ages, crime goes down for no other reason than younger people are more crime prone than older people. Then, as someone has pointed out, illegals may have left the US, and, if their crime rates are higher than the remaining population, there will also be a reduction in the crime rate. Again, as someone has pointed out, if there was an increase in the number of legal gun owners because of the election of the current POTUS, that too will bring the crime rate down.
In any event, I would wait for a deeper analysis before saying that crime and poverty are not related.
Actually,Mr. Dunphy,you have the sequence reversed:poverty doesn’t cause crime;crime causes poverty through recession. The problem is that the criminals, Geithner,Blankfein,Dodd,Rubin,and Barney Frank,who destroyed the economy,are either members of the OBAMA administratiion,or its supporters.
Jack @27 — the lack of correlation between economic downturns and the crime rate has been consistent over several decades now. Only the myth system sustains the message.
I generally agree with this author on most of his editorials; however, I am skeptical on this issue. First, this recession as a little too recent to simply fly the banner that since crime hasn’t gone up in the last 6-12 months, well then, so much for the poverty-crime link. Second, this recession is also on the direct heels of a productive and wealth producing period. Many of the unemployed may still be in a position to sustain themselves without turning to less honorable means. There is also information suggesting that criminal street gangs, once at odds with each other (and the source of substantial crime in the inner city), have finally discovered the benefits of mutual partnerships and the disadvantage of bad publicity (read drive by shootings, innocent deaths, etc). There are certainly other issues that should be considered, new laws, demographics, mean population ages, etc. With respect to the 1984 Olympics; yes, crime was reduced in those areas, but only by flooding those neighborhoods with officers. A non-sustainable endeavor. Even if it were sustainable, what are we saying about a society/community where we have to force people to behave by putting a cop on every street corner. I don’t necessarily disagree with the author, I just think it is a little early to be re-writing the thoughts on economics and crime.
Actually, white-collar crime has gone WAAAYYY up. That is what all the bailouts, reckless lending laws, and now the rampant looting and grabbing of and/or collusion with big businesses by Congress and the Obama administration are all about. We’ve reached the point of being ruled by cartels of virtual career criminals.
It’s among the “little people,” who seem to be getting “littler” and less free by the week now, where crime has gone down. But even this will change if things keep going downhill: the underground economy could grow substantially, thus making “criminals” out of desperate ordinary citizens.
My uncle worked in the NYC prison system. He said most of the inmates never had a father in their lives.
The Baby Mama lifestyle has some rather disastrous consequences.
Jack,
As usual, you jump the gun and rely on misguided intuition and short term hunches.
Causation and correlation are two distinct phenomena which can be controlled for using unbiased data and employing statistical tests. For G-ds sake, could you please at least incorporate something other than anecdotal perceptions of olympic security to support your claim?
Only a childish numbskull would rely on a two dimensional model to explain the economics of poverty [as you have in this case]. There are many variables involved in the crime-poverty system.
Crime causing poverty and visa vie is not a liberal mantra persay. It is a hypothesis that has many statistical models which support its premise whereas as hard as many conservative institutes [e.g. The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute] have tried, finding statistically significant data which supports your ill-advised premise is few and far between.
Hang on.. doesn’t this support the ‘more inequality leads to more crime’ hypothesis? The recession narrowed the gap between rich and poor, since both were affected, and the rich lost more in absolute terms.
Crime stats are down for three reasons:
1) Assailant was aborted
2) Assailant was post-natal aborted in a Bush oil war. Same result.
3) Assailant acted in LA. The facts are not in those numbers. There is no secret — it has been uncovered by even the Catholic L.A. TIMES — that police and crime stat workers are ordered not to list murders as murders unless there is a witness to the murder, or some other outrageously obvious clue, like a bullet in the back of the head. Even a bullet in the temple has been called “death by unknown causes” or is not classified as a murder, because it could , in some far reach of the imagination, be suicide. The examples that I read about (there were over a dozen examples the reporter pulled from a single 24 hour period of time) include people obviously beaten to death, but without a witness, they try to guess they might have fallen out of a moving car, or off a building, or stepped in front of a car or fast moving bike. People who bled to death supposedly were suicidal. The list was ridiculous. But there is NO MOTIVATION for the cops to waste man hours trying to find the murderer of a gang banger. Someone burned alive in a house fire or car always was in it due to some accident. Rapes are not reported, especially in the latino community. And now for hate crimes, they only go one way — toward whites. There are teams of people who actually race to a racially motivated fight, or murder, and if the suspect is not white, they make sure it is never classified as a hate crime. Rumors have it that outside of the city limits of Las Vegas, over 6 bodies are found every single night, some from gang fighting, some from rolling a rich tourist, some from gambling debts.
I seldom respond to comments, but point no. 3 in comment no. 35 is laughable. Crime stats can be and sometimes are manipulated up to a point, but a murder is a murder regardless of witnesses, and there has indeed been a marked decrease in murders here in Los Angeles. They’re not covered up or reclassified, either by the LAPD or the county coroner, under any circumstances.
36@Jack Dunphy
Sounds like you’re disappointed. Enjoy it while it lasts, because if California loses the appeal of the Federal order to release a lot of those thugs back on the streets, the crime rate will climb back up. You can also factor in that a lot of those thugs moved to Antelope Valley, Riverside and San Bernadino, outside of L.A. city limits.
Are you advocating a police state?
Probably too late on this to matter but what did homicides have to do with poverty in the first place? Violent crime isn’t necessarily linked to poor economic traditions but lesser crimes (like uh… stealing!?) are linked to poverty for the obvious reasons. What the “article” misses entirely is that crimes such as theft, check fraud, and robbery HAVE gone up in L.A. and many other (mostly urban) parts of the country since the recession. Google it.
It’s not a myth, the facts in this case are correct but unrelated to the original hypothesis they are used to deconstruct.
Thank you for your article about poverty and older people.
Check out this original song on You Tube about growing old during hard times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM5HDRxwPns
Thanks,
Jim