POVERTY REMAINS ROOT CAUSE

Another View: Research Shows 'Unmistakable Connection' Between Need, Crime.

So far, crime rates have dipped during the "Great Recession." However,
poverty remains a root cause of crime.

The FBI reports that the street crime rate dropped by a small
percentage during the first half of 2009 compared with the same time
period in 2008. Even though the crime rate doesn't immediately rise
and fall in lock step with the unemployment rate, this does not mean
that illegal activity has little to do with the state of the economy,
and that decades worth of evidence about the unmistakable connection
between poverty and criminal behavior can be ignored.

Of course, most poor people are honest. They toil at minimum-wage,
marginal jobs. They do not commit serious acts of violence and theft.
And yet, as far back as the 1920s, criminologists who mapped the
locations of crime scenes discovered that incidents of delinquency,
violence and theft were concentrated in the least desirable places to
live in congested downtowns.

Ever since the 1950s, researchers have documented what urban residents
knew ? that the chances of becoming a victim of street crime were far
greater in the toughest neighborhoods. In the research I carried out
for my book, I discovered that most of the killings in New York took
place in the "busiest police precincts" where officers patrolled the
city's meanest streets. The last known address of most of the victims
were Gotham's poorest Zip codes. More than 90% of the departed had
never taken a college course. About 85% of the individuals arrested
for killing them were indigents eligible for a court-appointed lawyer.

The overwhelming majority of slayings could be characterized as poor
young men snuffing out the lives of other poor young men. The nation's
jails are packed with people who don't have the money to raise bail.
Prisons are full of inmates who dropped out of high school before
mastering some marketable skill. Impoverishment remains a major risk
factor for getting caught up in the world of guns, drugs and gangs.

To prevent criminal activity, it is in our enlightened self-interest
to improve failing schools, provide job training for ex-convicts, and
stimulate job growth in both the public and private sectors.