How Might Deprivation Lead to Crime Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

How Might Deprivation Lead to Crime - Essay ExampleIn these models, red ink leads to offensive by placing low-income individuals who have low returns from market activity in proximity to high-income individuals who have things that argon worth taking. A formal model of deprivation and property criminal offence in which individuals choose amidst legitimate and criminal activity can be found in Chiu and Madden (1998, p123-141).Most empirical tests of the economic theory of discourtesy have been concerned with the deterrent effects of the criminal justice ashes in particular by how increased police activity and imprisonment rates reduce detestation, and whether this decrement is due to prevention or incapacitation (Tierney 1996). In the past several studies have considered the effect on villainy of deprivation, albeit indirectly through the effect of low earnings on criminal activity (Roger 2002).In cable to the economics of crime literature, which focuses on the deterrent eff ects of the formal criminal justice system, social disorganization theory considers factors that diminish the effectiveness of informal social controls. Shaw and McKay (1942) identified poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility as the trine factors that weaken networks of social control and undermine the ability and willingness of communities to exercise informal control over their members. Sampson (1987) has added family stability to this list. For social disorganization theory, deprivation causes crime indirectly by being associated with poverty. Several of the classic theories of crime, including Marxist, strain, and functional rely heavily on economic factors such as poverty and unemployment to account for variations in crime rates (Shihadeh & Ousey 1998). Researchers since the nineteenth century have suggested a positive association between poverty and crime in urban areas (Tierney 1996). This may be due to the fact that the relationship between poverty and cri me is contingent upon the specific crime category under consideration (Patterson 1991).In Mertons (1938, p672-682) strain theory, individuals low in the social structure are perturbed by their failure to attain the material attributes of success, and this failure is more unanimous when they are confronted by the success of those around them. Unsuccessful individuals become alienated from society and commit the crime in response. Individual alienation can arise from income deprivation or from belonging to a racial minority. The predictions of strain and social disorganization theories have been subject to extensive but questionable empirical testing in the sociological literature. The influential study of Blau and Blau (1982, p114-129) found a strong relationship between calculated income deprivation and homicide rates in large metropolitan areas in 1970. Such theories rely on the worrisome assumption that macro-level relationships reflect the sum of a series of individual-level social-psychological processes. Blau and Blaus (1982, p114-129) prominently stated that highly stratified environments come back feelings of resentment and frustration in individuals.