Conventional wisdom has always said that crime and poverty are related to each other. The more poor people you have, the more people out of work, or looking for it, the more crimes you’re going to have. Interestingly there is a root to that logic that also makes criminals less evil and less problematic for society. Crime is based on “need” not “greed.” If you’re poor, you’re stealing things because you lack the basic necessities in life, as opposed to stealing just because you want something.
However, new reports
are showing that our conventional wisdom about crime may be way off, because
quiet as it’s kept, in the worst and longest recession in 60 years, America is
seeing an all time low in crime.
The U.S. Bureau of
Justice Statistics has just released a new report surveying violent crime
victims in the United States. The result? In 2008 there was the lowest amount
of violent and property crime in the United States since 1973 when the surveys
began. The FBI’s Annual Crime Report showed that violent crime in the United
States decreased by 6.2 nationwide in the first half of 2010 alone. The lowest
drops in crime have come in the South, where rape, armed robbery and the like
have dropped by 7.8 percent with 7.2 percent drops in the Midwest and the West.
Only the Northeast saw a negligible change with only a .2 percent drop in
crime. So the question on everyone mind is where has all this crime gone?
Again if we go back to
conventional wisdom these changes, which have been gradual but consistent since
the mid 1990s don’t make any sense. The America economy is in the gutter,
people by the thousands are living in tent cities across the United States due
to the mortgage crisis. Unemployment is still higher than anyone in the past
two generations remembers and while profits have been going on hiring has still
be slow to come. Shouldn’t people be rioting in the streets?
Shouldn’t we be seeing
Walmarts getting tipped over as men and women desperate for food and basic
needs start to get desperate? Since this has not been happening perhaps it is
time that we honestly evaluate just how we look at American crime and it’s
causes in general.
There are three main
theories why crime occurs in the United States: moral, environmental or
economic. The moral argument has always been that criminals are just morally
deficient men and women, people who are just prone to crime. This is a theory
promoted by many conservatives over the years. The environmental argument gain
steam in the 1970s through the 1980s as big city governments began to realize
that is a neighborhood is not well maintained it breeds crime.
Broken windows and
graffiti don’t cause armed robbery. But when people see their neighborhood is
in bad shape, has poor city services and police protection they are less
invested in stopping or standing up to crime. The last theory is what was
mentioned earlier, crime is primarily a result of need and poverty. I propose a
fourth theory, however, to explain the American crime rate that’s dropping like
a rock over the last few years: access and technology.
Increasing social and
class stratification in the United States means that more and more poor people
are surrounding by just poor people. Usually crime occurs when someone
perceives they have a chance to gain something from someone else who has more.
Well, when this extended recession has more or less created a flat earth
economic state for the country the difference in what your neighbor has an you
have isn’t enough to make robbing them worth it.
Next, technology has
played a roll in these drooping crime rates as well. Increasingly mobile phone
technology, computers, and even street cameras are making it easier to catch
criminals or at least scare them off. It’s one thing to outsmart a dusty old
1987 security camera to knock over a late night bodega, but when your picture
gets taken by the shop owner, his wife, and three kids standing outside on your
way out there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get caught. Unless you
want to add a multiple homicide rap to your charges, there are going to be
witnesses and they’re going to have video of your crime.
America still has the
most violent crime of any first world nation across the globe, but at least for
now it’s been on the decline. Maybe that’s one positive outcome of the
recession, it’s safer to walk the streets when all your neighbors are just as
broke as you.
Jason
Johnson is an associate professor of political science and communications at
Hiram College in Ohio, where he teaches courses in campaigns and elections, pop
culture and the politics of sports.
