Until Avaserfi comes along and proves me wrong with academic articles and sociological studies
Have no fear, I am here!
I'm going to say that most property crimes are poverty related.
I can't really argue with this statement, I just wrote a paper on it today, in fact. I will say that poverty is not really the root issue, instead, it is factors that create poverty, but that is being picky
.
That makes it political since so many politicians seem to make a career of campaigning to end poverty. Yet the policies they enact appear determined to perpetuate or increase poverty as if never ending poverty were job security for career politicians.
Agreed.
I would argue that the best way to decrease property crime is to create a healthy economy in which the greatest number of people can participate and gain the benefits.
I would have to take some issue with that point. A healthy economy is great at reducing the total number of individuals who would commit crime, but there is a large amount of research that shows there are structural forms of marginalization which inhibit certain groups from attainment. So, I would elaborate and say that a healthy economy and a socially conscious government working to create a society of equal opportunity. This does not mean throwing money at a problem per say, but that is another discussion that should be had.
Now on to a larger issue. In the United States there seems to be this notion that crime is ubiquitous and getting worse. That is flat out wrong, blame the media for sensational reporting and political fear-mongering. Since Nixon declared a war on crime there has been an astronomical increase in incarceration of individuals. We were the world leaders in the 1980s, now 30 years later we are the only country who has had an increase in incarceration level aside from the Netherlands. At the same time, over the last 30 years there has been a 28% percent drop in crime!!!! About 2-5% of this drop can be attributed to the increase in imprisonment rate which has gone up about 65%. The worrying part is, due to the poor retributive system currently in place, most people who are imprisoned are not be able to assimilate back into normal life. This causes high rates of recidivism. If we switched to a rehabilitative program (some states are experimenting very successfully) short term economic costs would be higher, but long term social and economic costs would be greatly attenuated. Of course, there are billions of private dollars invested in the prison system so this is unlikely. You can even look to what Cheney did before leaving office to how the political elite manipulate laws to their financial advantage.
The basic point is that crime rates have gone down drastically, but policy has become more strict to no avail except costing the tax payers billions and harming those who are put in prison, their families and the communities they are a part of. Also, note most criminals in prison these days are not their for violent offense. Most likely it is a nonviolent drug crime. If you look into drug laws you will see many are rooted in racism*, misunderstanding of the drug and various lobbyists. Only after government propaganda took effect was
there a moral crusade against the drug which still exists today.
* Don't believe me? Look into the legal history of marijuana where some representatives who voted to make it illegal didn't even know what it was! The target lower class Hispanic immigrants. Another example is the discrepancy between crack (lower class drug) and cocaine laws (higher class drug).
If you are interested in a good book on the subject of crime inequality
Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western is a good start.
