Does someone have links to literature on whether inequality causes crime?
There are linksallover the place to the effect that the correlation between inequality and violent crime is well attested. There is a lot of quibbling about what kind of inequality correlates with what kind of crime, but the basic link seems sound.
On average, are more dollars stolen by rich criminals, or by poor criminals?
Rich, but does that matter? I’m not arguing that poverty causes crime, rather that inequality does. Whoever is a beneficiary of the inequality tries to maintain it, while whoever is a victim of it tries to correct it. If the inequality is modest and proportioned to merit, we can expect that both will remain within the law in their efforts; if the inequality is disproportionate, both will have an incentive to resort to extraordinary (and possibly illicit) measures.
I’m not denying the existence of middle class crime, but it’s clear that inequality provides lots and lots of opportunity for crime; the greater the inequality, the more the opportunity.
In Mexico today, the body count in the drug wars
Yup, drugs supplied by poor countries to rich countries: inequality in law enforcement (which comes down to economic inequality) amplifying existing economic inequality.
There are links all over the place to the effect that the correlation between inequality and violent crime is well attested. There is a lot of quibbling about what kind of inequality correlates with what kind of crime, but the basic link seems sound.
The causal connection, however, is at best controversial. (Though of course it’s fashionable and high-status to assert things along the lines of “inequality causes crime,” because it sounds enlightened and caring.) For one, there are historical examples of societies with extreme inequalities and nevertheless extremely low crime rates—late Victorian Britain, to take a notable example, and most of the 19th century Western Europe in general. And certainly there are numerous ways how the correlation between crime rates and various measures of inequality could emerge without any causal connection.
If the inequality is modest and proportioned to merit, we can expect that both will remain within the law in their efforts; if the inequality is disproportionate, both will have an incentive to resort to extraordinary (and possibly illicit) measures.
Am I misreading you, or do you actually believe that inequality proportioned to merit is likely to be less severe than otherwise? What do you base this conclusion on?
The causal connection, however, is at best controversial.
Agreed: it cannot be established from correlation only.
do you actually believe that inequality proportioned to merit is likely to be less severe than otherwise
That would be overreaching. No, I just point out that extreme inequalities that do not appear to have any sound justification make a fertile breeding ground for crime. Extreme inequality of this kind constitutes “grounds for thinking that others are not complying with the rules”, and if you think that others are not complying with the rules you may reason that it is rational not to comply with them yourself, since complying with the rules hurts you and does not benefit society as a whole (because the benefits of complying only accrue to a society where by and large everyone complies).
No, I just point out that extreme inequalities that do not appear to have any sound justification make a fertile breeding ground for crime.
Does that specifically have support in the data? I have various thoughts related to this which I’ll simply list:
1) People have an amazing ability to rationalize what they want to do. That being the case, someone who is committing a crime is likely to rationalize it by claiming that the existing inequalities do not have any sound justification. High crime periods will then likely be times in which a lot of people—namely criminals and would-be criminals—will say that inequalities are unjustified, even if the causality goes in the opposite direction (from the prevalence of crime to the popularity of the claim that inequalities are unjustified).
2) We have a tendency to approve of what happens, whatever it is. We favor the strong horse, and find nice things to say about it. Two possible examples of this phenomenon are (a) that the winners are the ones who write the histories, and (b) Stockholm Syndrome, in which a victim comes to identify with their victimizer. That being the case, a time of high crime, which for economic reasons I expect to be a time in which crime is successful, should tend to be a time in which crime is looked upon more favorably by at least some parts of the population (though not all—specifically not by the victimized groups, aside from those suffering from Stockholm Syndrome).
3) There is one bad, very bad kind of situation in which it is widely believed that inequalities are unjustified, and this belief is obviously (to me) wrong. In particular, if some identifiable and somewhat foreign sub-population proves (by its actual merit) to be disproportionately successful relative to the majority population, this can cause resentment in the wider population (demonstrated by historical examples), which will favor explanations which purport to prove that the sub-population got their wealth by illegitimate means. I believe that Jews in Europe have long been an example of this. I have also read that Chinese subpopulations of non-Chinese populations are sometimes disproportionately successful and are resented and persecuted on that account. I know of other examples of this.
4) The idea that the distribution of wealth is unjustified is well known propaganda spread by revolutionary groups, propaganda which is not necessarily true. Those same groups are liable to perpetrate violence, thus establishing a correlation between societal chaos and the spread of the idea that the distribution of wealth is unjustified. The causality here is that both the violence and the spread of the theory have a common cause, namely the rise of the revolutionary groups which are attempting to take over the state.
Extreme inequality of this kind constitutes “grounds for thinking that others are not complying with the rules”, and if you think that others are not complying with the rules you may reason that it is rational not to comply with them yourself, since complying with the rules hurts you and does not benefit society as a whole (because the benefits of complying only accrue to a society where by and large everyone complies).
I agree with this—in fact, it’s actually a pretty good description of some places I’ve lived in. However, it should be noted that what exactly is perceived as “complying with the rules” is highly culture-specific. (Of course, what counts as “merit” is also highly debatable.)
All that said, when searching for the causes of crime, rather than focusing on the overall level of social inequality, I think a more fruitful approach is to ask whether there exist significant numbers of people for whom turning to crime offers a better chance of raising their status than any legitimate occupation, and if yes, why exactly it is so. Of course, the answers to these questions won’t be completely independent of the overall social inequality, but this approach, in my opinion, makes it possible to analyze the situation with much more detail and accuracy than the crude idea that crime rates can be pushed up or down just by changing some measure of income inequality used by economists.
I propose restructuring the causal relationships implicit in the description. If there is a society in which crime pays well, then as a consequence of this people will become rich from crime, and therefore there will be unjustified inequality. But at the same time, since crime pays well, then it will be rational to commit crime. Both of these are effects of the same cause, which is that crime pays well. Because people are rational and keen observers of their immediate environment (but not such keen observers of society in general), I expect these causal relationships to greatly outweigh the supposed causal relationship between observing that there is unjustified inequality and, as a consequence, deciding to commit crime. People respond well to their immediate environment, to the incentives that they are faced with. If crime pays, it pays locally (i.e. if an individual person commits a crime then that pays that individual person), and people will respond well to these (local) incentives. This response has nothing in particular to do with the larger picture (which is that inequality is unjustified).
If you merely make the society-wide observation that inequality appears unjustified, this does not by itself give you any program for profiting from crime yourself. It does not give you a recipe for profiting from breaking the rules. Whereas if you see an opportunity that you can act on, by for example observing that people are profiting from activities which you could participate in (such as burglary, mugging, or what have you), then this gives you an incentive to participate.
I think you’re wrong to focus on the financial incentives for crime. In reality, the only criminals who earn a lot of money are high-ranking bosses of organized crime and white-collar criminals in the business world, with a few very rare exceptions (like e.g. spectacular heists or super-high-skilled cat burglars). Ordinary criminals don’t earn significantly more money than their legally employed peers coming from a similar social class, not even without adjustment for the associated risks—and taking up crime expecting to become a big mafioso is about as realistic as taking up computer programming expecting to become the next Bill Gates (i.e. not impossible, but vanishingly unlikely for a typical entrant into the profession).
The key issue here, in my opinion, is the status one gains by engaging in crime versus legal work. For concrete people, this is primarily an artifact of the status relations in their own social group, rather than the society at large. In this regard, you are correct to observe that if crime pays, it pays locally—but rather than the financial gain, the key issue is whether crime pays locally in terms of status gain in the potential criminal’s community and social network.
I’ll support my case with Paraguay, one of the countries listed as being high inequality/high crime in a list in a recent comment. In Paraguay you can easily buy a stolen car for relatively little (thus participating in a crime). At the same time, your car is likely to get stolen.
So, what do people rationally do in this situation? There is, first of all, an incentive against owning any car at all because of the likelihood that it will be stolen. But this is especially strong as an incentive against paying full price to legally own a car. Because stolen cars are significantly cheaper, this gives you a strong incentive to favor buying a stolen car over a legally owned car.
I do not see any significant status element specifically tied to owning a stolen car in Paraguay. There is of course always a status element tied to owning a car, but it is not tied specifically to the crime. On the contrary, the rich in Paraguay, who are able to afford gated, protected areas to keep their cars, presumably tend to legally own cars (I infer that this is the case from personal observation, because the cars of the rich that I’ve seen look new; the stolen cars that my non-rich acquaintances own look pretty beat up and old). That being the case, it is presumably high status to own a car legally and low status to own a car illegally. I don’t pry, but this is what I gather.
So the widespread corruption of Paraguayan society on this matter has to do with practical realities, not with status, on my analysis. Your argument is that only a tiny minority benefit from engaging in crime. But it seems to me that the ordinary Paraguayan benefits from buying a stolen car, thus participating in the crime. So there seems to be a serious gap in your argument somewhere.
Paraguay is a country in which the government is utterly corrupt. That being the case, the people are not protected—they are essentially on their own. The government is kleptocratic. I was told the sad story of someone whose business was simply seized by a member of the government. In this country, many of the rich are rich because of their connections with the government. And many of the poor are poor because they are completely unprotected from predation and therefore have little incentive to stand out.
In Paraguay, I heard that Korean grocers (who run by far the best small groceries) are filthy because they allegedly sleep in the store. If they do (which, from the one case I know, a Korean grocer who is a friend of a cousin, they do not, though as I recall they sleep in the same building just above the store) it may be because it is the only way to protect their property. Here, by the way, I have an example of a sub-population (Koreans) which is disproportionately successful and which is resented by the larger population.
You’re right—my above comment was too specifically concerned with the U.S. and other developed nations. In places that are poorer and where law enforcement is much less strong and reliable, financial incentives for crime may well be at the forefront even for low-level crooks.
On the other hand, it’s also important to note that when some laws are enforced very weakly or not at all, the very notion of “crime” becomes blurry, and what would clearly be crimes under decent law enforcement may effectively become just regular customary behavior expected from everyone. I find your account of the stolen car market in Paraguay really interesting; from what you say, it appears that since the legal enforcement of property in cars is completely broken, they have been replaced with a peculiar customary system where cars just change hands liberally and randomly. In such a situation, I’m not sure if I would classify buying a stolen car as crime.
There are links all over the place to the effect that the correlation between inequality and violent crime is well attested. There is a lot of quibbling about what kind of inequality correlates with what kind of crime, but the basic link seems sound.
Rich, but does that matter? I’m not arguing that poverty causes crime, rather that inequality does. Whoever is a beneficiary of the inequality tries to maintain it, while whoever is a victim of it tries to correct it. If the inequality is modest and proportioned to merit, we can expect that both will remain within the law in their efforts; if the inequality is disproportionate, both will have an incentive to resort to extraordinary (and possibly illicit) measures.
I’m not denying the existence of middle class crime, but it’s clear that inequality provides lots and lots of opportunity for crime; the greater the inequality, the more the opportunity.
Yup, drugs supplied by poor countries to rich countries: inequality in law enforcement (which comes down to economic inequality) amplifying existing economic inequality.
The causal connection, however, is at best controversial. (Though of course it’s fashionable and high-status to assert things along the lines of “inequality causes crime,” because it sounds enlightened and caring.) For one, there are historical examples of societies with extreme inequalities and nevertheless extremely low crime rates—late Victorian Britain, to take a notable example, and most of the 19th century Western Europe in general. And certainly there are numerous ways how the correlation between crime rates and various measures of inequality could emerge without any causal connection.
Am I misreading you, or do you actually believe that inequality proportioned to merit is likely to be less severe than otherwise? What do you base this conclusion on?
Agreed: it cannot be established from correlation only.
That would be overreaching. No, I just point out that extreme inequalities that do not appear to have any sound justification make a fertile breeding ground for crime. Extreme inequality of this kind constitutes “grounds for thinking that others are not complying with the rules”, and if you think that others are not complying with the rules you may reason that it is rational not to comply with them yourself, since complying with the rules hurts you and does not benefit society as a whole (because the benefits of complying only accrue to a society where by and large everyone complies).
Does that specifically have support in the data? I have various thoughts related to this which I’ll simply list:
1) People have an amazing ability to rationalize what they want to do. That being the case, someone who is committing a crime is likely to rationalize it by claiming that the existing inequalities do not have any sound justification. High crime periods will then likely be times in which a lot of people—namely criminals and would-be criminals—will say that inequalities are unjustified, even if the causality goes in the opposite direction (from the prevalence of crime to the popularity of the claim that inequalities are unjustified).
2) We have a tendency to approve of what happens, whatever it is. We favor the strong horse, and find nice things to say about it. Two possible examples of this phenomenon are (a) that the winners are the ones who write the histories, and (b) Stockholm Syndrome, in which a victim comes to identify with their victimizer. That being the case, a time of high crime, which for economic reasons I expect to be a time in which crime is successful, should tend to be a time in which crime is looked upon more favorably by at least some parts of the population (though not all—specifically not by the victimized groups, aside from those suffering from Stockholm Syndrome).
3) There is one bad, very bad kind of situation in which it is widely believed that inequalities are unjustified, and this belief is obviously (to me) wrong. In particular, if some identifiable and somewhat foreign sub-population proves (by its actual merit) to be disproportionately successful relative to the majority population, this can cause resentment in the wider population (demonstrated by historical examples), which will favor explanations which purport to prove that the sub-population got their wealth by illegitimate means. I believe that Jews in Europe have long been an example of this. I have also read that Chinese subpopulations of non-Chinese populations are sometimes disproportionately successful and are resented and persecuted on that account. I know of other examples of this.
4) The idea that the distribution of wealth is unjustified is well known propaganda spread by revolutionary groups, propaganda which is not necessarily true. Those same groups are liable to perpetrate violence, thus establishing a correlation between societal chaos and the spread of the idea that the distribution of wealth is unjustified. The causality here is that both the violence and the spread of the theory have a common cause, namely the rise of the revolutionary groups which are attempting to take over the state.
I agree with this—in fact, it’s actually a pretty good description of some places I’ve lived in. However, it should be noted that what exactly is perceived as “complying with the rules” is highly culture-specific. (Of course, what counts as “merit” is also highly debatable.)
All that said, when searching for the causes of crime, rather than focusing on the overall level of social inequality, I think a more fruitful approach is to ask whether there exist significant numbers of people for whom turning to crime offers a better chance of raising their status than any legitimate occupation, and if yes, why exactly it is so. Of course, the answers to these questions won’t be completely independent of the overall social inequality, but this approach, in my opinion, makes it possible to analyze the situation with much more detail and accuracy than the crude idea that crime rates can be pushed up or down just by changing some measure of income inequality used by economists.
I propose restructuring the causal relationships implicit in the description. If there is a society in which crime pays well, then as a consequence of this people will become rich from crime, and therefore there will be unjustified inequality. But at the same time, since crime pays well, then it will be rational to commit crime. Both of these are effects of the same cause, which is that crime pays well. Because people are rational and keen observers of their immediate environment (but not such keen observers of society in general), I expect these causal relationships to greatly outweigh the supposed causal relationship between observing that there is unjustified inequality and, as a consequence, deciding to commit crime. People respond well to their immediate environment, to the incentives that they are faced with. If crime pays, it pays locally (i.e. if an individual person commits a crime then that pays that individual person), and people will respond well to these (local) incentives. This response has nothing in particular to do with the larger picture (which is that inequality is unjustified).
If you merely make the society-wide observation that inequality appears unjustified, this does not by itself give you any program for profiting from crime yourself. It does not give you a recipe for profiting from breaking the rules. Whereas if you see an opportunity that you can act on, by for example observing that people are profiting from activities which you could participate in (such as burglary, mugging, or what have you), then this gives you an incentive to participate.
I think you’re wrong to focus on the financial incentives for crime. In reality, the only criminals who earn a lot of money are high-ranking bosses of organized crime and white-collar criminals in the business world, with a few very rare exceptions (like e.g. spectacular heists or super-high-skilled cat burglars). Ordinary criminals don’t earn significantly more money than their legally employed peers coming from a similar social class, not even without adjustment for the associated risks—and taking up crime expecting to become a big mafioso is about as realistic as taking up computer programming expecting to become the next Bill Gates (i.e. not impossible, but vanishingly unlikely for a typical entrant into the profession).
The key issue here, in my opinion, is the status one gains by engaging in crime versus legal work. For concrete people, this is primarily an artifact of the status relations in their own social group, rather than the society at large. In this regard, you are correct to observe that if crime pays, it pays locally—but rather than the financial gain, the key issue is whether crime pays locally in terms of status gain in the potential criminal’s community and social network.
I’ll support my case with Paraguay, one of the countries listed as being high inequality/high crime in a list in a recent comment. In Paraguay you can easily buy a stolen car for relatively little (thus participating in a crime). At the same time, your car is likely to get stolen.
So, what do people rationally do in this situation? There is, first of all, an incentive against owning any car at all because of the likelihood that it will be stolen. But this is especially strong as an incentive against paying full price to legally own a car. Because stolen cars are significantly cheaper, this gives you a strong incentive to favor buying a stolen car over a legally owned car.
I do not see any significant status element specifically tied to owning a stolen car in Paraguay. There is of course always a status element tied to owning a car, but it is not tied specifically to the crime. On the contrary, the rich in Paraguay, who are able to afford gated, protected areas to keep their cars, presumably tend to legally own cars (I infer that this is the case from personal observation, because the cars of the rich that I’ve seen look new; the stolen cars that my non-rich acquaintances own look pretty beat up and old). That being the case, it is presumably high status to own a car legally and low status to own a car illegally. I don’t pry, but this is what I gather.
So the widespread corruption of Paraguayan society on this matter has to do with practical realities, not with status, on my analysis. Your argument is that only a tiny minority benefit from engaging in crime. But it seems to me that the ordinary Paraguayan benefits from buying a stolen car, thus participating in the crime. So there seems to be a serious gap in your argument somewhere.
Paraguay is a country in which the government is utterly corrupt. That being the case, the people are not protected—they are essentially on their own. The government is kleptocratic. I was told the sad story of someone whose business was simply seized by a member of the government. In this country, many of the rich are rich because of their connections with the government. And many of the poor are poor because they are completely unprotected from predation and therefore have little incentive to stand out.
In Paraguay, I heard that Korean grocers (who run by far the best small groceries) are filthy because they allegedly sleep in the store. If they do (which, from the one case I know, a Korean grocer who is a friend of a cousin, they do not, though as I recall they sleep in the same building just above the store) it may be because it is the only way to protect their property. Here, by the way, I have an example of a sub-population (Koreans) which is disproportionately successful and which is resented by the larger population.
You’re right—my above comment was too specifically concerned with the U.S. and other developed nations. In places that are poorer and where law enforcement is much less strong and reliable, financial incentives for crime may well be at the forefront even for low-level crooks.
On the other hand, it’s also important to note that when some laws are enforced very weakly or not at all, the very notion of “crime” becomes blurry, and what would clearly be crimes under decent law enforcement may effectively become just regular customary behavior expected from everyone. I find your account of the stolen car market in Paraguay really interesting; from what you say, it appears that since the legal enforcement of property in cars is completely broken, they have been replaced with a peculiar customary system where cars just change hands liberally and randomly. In such a situation, I’m not sure if I would classify buying a stolen car as crime.
That’s why I said “causes” instead of “correlates with”.