Poverty, or Social Inequity?

Like it or hate it, I'm on the crime thing again. Some people seem to think that certain ideas expressed are a little far fetched. Some see poverty as a condition with no cure, and to suggest a link to crime, is ridiculous. Never stopped me before. You can draw your own conclusions.

Some research claims it's not poverty at the root of crime, but social inequity. By their devinition a social class is a socio-economic status (SES), consisting of three variables: Education, Occupation, and Income. Claiming that Education is this most important part of the equation, which allows you to apply it to Occupation, which in theory results in Wealth or Income.
While I'm not the smartest dude in the world, it sounds like a different way of saying poverty. If you have an education, you're usually not poor. If you have an occupation, you're usually not poor, and so on. There has always been rich people and poor people, and maybe even a middle class. They explain it like this- A country in which everyone is poor will have poverty, but no inequity. Likewise, a fairly well-off country can have inequality, but no poverty. They don't however, go on to say which country would have more crime.

Quoted from the website-
Not all people who perceive wage inequality resort to crime. Some become entrepreneurs, others get involved in political action, and still others direct the feelings of anger and frustration toward themselves. The type of crime traditionally associated with economic inequality is property crime, but this may be simply an "opportunity" explanation (since when poor people live side by side with rich people, there's more opportunity). In recent years, however, the "deep anger" explanation has become more popular, and many criminologists now associate economic inequality with violent crime. Perhaps the most common association is with "conventional" or street crime. For example, when unemployment goes up 1%, there's a 4% increase in homicides, a 6% increase in robberies, a 2% increase in burglaries, and measurable effects on rape and other crimes.

Ok, doesn't that say when poverty increases, crime increases? The site uses a lot of high dollar words, and formulas to prove their point. If you want to check go to the
Poverty, Inequality and Crime website.

Under the heading of Concentrations of Poverty is this statement-
Poverty and inequality tend to concentrate in cities, although rural poverty is a less-studied reality. Within certain cities, distinctive clusters tend to form that are economically self-contained ghettos, barrios, slums, or enclaves. Residents in these areas often have some ethnic or minority status that they share. Some of these places have elaborate decorations at their entrances, such as Chinatowns. Others provide no signs or warning that you are entering the area, such as Skid Rows. Such areas form in cities primarily because they are areas that no one else wants. Homeless people usually move into such areas first, and then a settlement pattern, involving immigrants, tends to follow.

In the Chicago "Back of the Yards" prostitution became acceptable to the so-called working girls in the neighborhood. In Detroit's African-American ghetto, businesses won't stay and churches can't get a foothold. In San Francisco's Chinatown there is a long history of organized crime. Most of the restaurants have back rooms for illegal gambling, and most nightclubs have rooms that serve as brothels. But, some Asian groups have established prosperity by creating banks, shopping malls, TV and radio stations, and making use of educational opportunities.

So, what are our options here? Did those who succeeded in cleaning up their areas kill all the poor people? Or did they clean it up, get the ones who wanted to work a job, and let the bums go elsewhere. It seems to be a pretty cut and dried idea. But what about our city? We have Goose Creek, Horizon Homes, Castlewood, and the Lido or whatever it's called, to name a few. We seem to have more than our share of concentration of poverty level.