Why inequality causes crime

In order to make our society more law-abiding, we need to heed the thorough research showing that economic inequality is a major cause of crime. For instance, the amount of inequality within an American state accounts for no less than half of the difference in the murder rate between states. Comparison of 15 developed nations shows that inequality has a particularly strong impact on crime in nations where many people have self-centred values. National income per head had no influence on the international comparisons either of crime rate, or self-centred values. Inequality has a particularly close relationship to violent crime.8

Inequality has this effect because of the discontent it arouses, particularly in those on low incomes. The 1992 international victim survey found that the proportion of young men in each nation who were dissatisfied with their income was related to its crime rate. But the fact that people want more money does not mean that they lack material necessities. A British study found that physical need was the motive of only one crime in ten.9 When asked why they commit crimes, young people most often mention boredom, a clear sign of dissatisfaction. Obtaining drugs is another common reason, as I discuss below. Drug addiction usually arises as a reaction to discontent with life.

The way the discontent caused by inequality arises through comparison with other people is shown by the words of a young street robber. He was not prepared to tolerate low social status which had been the lot of his father, whom he said had been paid 'peanuts'. He said he would not 'slave out my guts to build up this country', for even if he did society would keep him and those like him 'at the bottom of the pile'. It is a similar resentment which leads disaffected youngsters to choose expensive cars such as Mercedes or BMWs to vandalise. Nowadays both well- and poorly-qualified young people have very high aspirations, leading one research team to dub America's teenagers 'the ambitious generation'.10 As the middle class has grown, more and more people from working-class backgrounds aspire to join it. Hence unskilled wages are now much less acceptable than when the majority of people received them. As it is impossible for most of these teenagers to fulfil their ambitions, resentment will continue to be widespread.

Another aspect of inequality which causes the demoralisation of potential criminals is housing; many young criminals live in housing estates widely considered 'awful'. These estates have become unpopular largely for social reasons; their physical condition is not the basic problem. Those who moved out of slums into the first modern British housing estates in the 1960s were delighted to have a warm and relatively spacious home. At that time few working-class people aspired to own their own home. Many estates which are now regarded with horror were perceived very positively by their first residents, as one recalls:

In those early days there was a great sense of community among the people who came to live on Providence . . . they all knew what sort of background they'd come from and what sort of background everyone else must have come from, and it gave them a big feeling of all being in the same boat . . . It was like being put to live in a palace . . . The people who lived in the tower were all very nice polite people.

Such estates deteriorated largely due to vandalism and increasing youth crime, provoked partly by a lack of play space for youngsters whose homes were overcrowded.11

References

8Richard Wilkinson,Unhealthy Societies: the Afflictions of Inequality(Routledge 1996), 156; David Halpern, 'Moral values, social trust and inequality: can values explain crime?', British Journal of Criminology 41, 2001, 236-51, esp. 242, 244, 245, 247, 249; Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce P. Kennedy, and Richard G. Wilkinson, 'Crime: social disorganization and relative deprivation', Social Science and Medicine 48, 1999, 719-31, esp. 726; Erik Thorbecke and Chutatong Charumilind, 'Economic inequality and its socio-economic impact', World Development 30, 2002, 1477-95, esp. 1491-2; Johan van Wilsem, 'Criminal Victimization in Cross-National Perspective: An Analysis of Rates of Theft, Violence and Vandalism across 27 Countries', European Journal of Criminology, 1, 2004, 89-109, 92, 102, 103

9J. M. Van Dijk, 'Opportunities for crime: a test of the rational-interactionist model', in Crime and Economy: Reports Presented to the 11th Criminological Colloquium, 1994 (Council of Europe, Committee on Crime Problems, 1995), 97-145, esp. 114; Clive Wilkinson, The Drop-Out Society: Young People on the Margin (Youth Work Press, 1995), 78; see also Ann Hagell and Tim Newburn, Persistent Young Offenders (Policy Studies Institute, 1994), 89

10Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson, The Ambitious Generation: America's Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless (Yale University Press, 1999), 2, 4, 6

11Tony Parker, The People of Providence: A Housing Estate and Some of its Inhabitants (Hutchinson, 1983), 255-7; Peter Fysh and Jim Wolfreys, The Politics of Racism in France (Macmillan, 1998), 151