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Comment by pyuser583 | Hacker News Reader

> why crime occurs (mainly because poor people need money badly, secondly because people in sufficiently dire poverty stop caring about the social norms of the middle class)

This is not my understanding at all.

Crime seems to have fallen during the Great Depression. Murders, which are almost always reported, fell.

Things get complicated once mass surveys replace crime reports.

Rape almost certainly increased when marital rape was outlawed. Embezzlement almost certainly decreased when cash registers were implemented.

One common way to “get rid of crime” is to gentrify, which inevitably lowers crime in a specific geographic area.

Another way to “get rid of crime” is to send criminals to prisons, where it’s extremely difficult to report crimes, and surveys of victimhood are never conducted.

I’m open to being convinced on this, but I don’t think the “mainly” cause of crime is poverty.

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Start with googling "did crime fall during the great depression" because reputable sources will show you that no, during the first part it did not and then it only fell after recovery programs began to be put in place to put people to work. As well as noting there is going to be more correlation with property crime and poverty than with violent crime. You also have to consider confounding factors such as that in cities crime went up during Prohibition and then back down when Prohibition was repealed in 1933 which overlaps with Great Depression years.

I mean nothing social has a completely deterministic behavior. There are lots of higher-order effects that act differently on different types of crime. Nevertheless it's not hard to find studies documenting the very strong link between poverty and (certain types of) crime [0]. For sure few people in poverty are committing insider trading, but when it comes to property or violent crimes the stress and desperation of poverty are clearly huge motivators.

[0] Here's one example: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/crime-ra...

>the very strong link between poverty and (certain types of) crime [0].

"Very strong" is not a very useful description. Quantitative explanations are important. Unfortunately, your linked paper is not available. This one is:

https://www.academia.edu/download/3521147/Pratt___Cullen_200...

Poverty is listed, but it is not a stronger effect than religiosity, family disruption, or firearms ownership. The strongest effects found in this meta-analysis were from "strength of non-economic institutions" and "unemployment (length considered)".

It is always a little frustrating to hear from a certain kind of politically motivated poster who is very interested in in-depth critiques of any theory of crime except their own conviction that poverty is the sine qua non of theft and violence. The evidence does not support this view.

> It is always a little frustrating to hear from a certain kind of politically motivated poster who is very interested in in-depth critiques of any theory of crime except their own conviction that poverty is the sine qua non of theft and violence.

I don't know if I said anywhere that poverty is the only contributing factor, or is fully required for crime to occur (clearly white collar crime is a counterexample), but I do strongly believe that it is a leading factor for many varieties of crime, particularly the "guns and drugs on the table" types of crimes that the police love to prosecute. Thanks for your condescending evaluation of my motivations and your correction of my language summarizing a study. I disagree that "very strong" isn't a useful descriptor of quantitative findings, but I suppose everyone is free to have their own preferences. Sorry for your frustration, but I do think that it's misguided.

> The strongest effects found in this meta-analysis were from "strength of non-economic institutions" and "unemployment (length considered)".

Unsure how strong your understanding of multivariate regression is, but I would imagine that including two big covariates of poverty in an analysis would reduce the effect size of the actual poverty variable. "Family disruption" seems like another big correlate of poverty. The link you provided doesn't work for me so can't investigate any of these deeper, but I imagine that drawing out a little causal diagram of all these possible causes might help you reconcile the study you found with the one I provided. Have a good one!

It’s no mystery that “guns and drugs on the table” crime is perpetrated by low-IQ psychopaths. I’m tired of people’s political views unleashing this group of people in my neighborhood. I would appreciate another approach.

> It’s no mystery that “guns and drugs on the table” crime is perpetrated by low-IQ psychopaths.

This is simply and empirically wrong, but you're free to believe it if you find simple falsehoods more comfortable than nuanced truths.

> I’m tired of people’s political views unleashing this group of people in my neighborhood.

People need to stop using "political" when they mean "contrary to my prejudices about the world".

> I would appreciate another approach.

Likewise.

There are multiple replies linking you to studies which speak to the contrary. You are of course, free to selectively address them (or ignore altogether) if they cause mental discomfort, but please do not make sweeping generalizations that they are "simply and empirically wrong".

In your own words, the truth might be more nuanced than the current falsehood-du-jour.

All the studies linked in this thread agree with what I'm saying, please feel free to provide counterexamples

> All the studies linked in this thread agree with what I'm saying

Exhibit A: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37756115

Can't tell if this is a low effort troll, or if you're just confused about who you're replying to or what this comment was saying. The linked comment has a quote from the article confirming the points I made in my initial post:

> Indicators of "concentrated disadvantage" (e.g., racial heterogeneity, poverty, and family disruption) are among the strongest and most stable predictors.

Absolutely nothing in the article being discussed in this comment aligns with the comment I was replying to:

> It’s no mystery that “guns and drugs on the table” crime is perpetrated by low-IQ psychopaths

Moreover, I both saw and discussed this article, so it's absolutely not the case that I'm ignoring inconvenient truths. The truths under discussion are both extremely convenient to my point, and directly addressed by me.

> Very strong" is not a very useful description. Quantitative explanations are important. Unfortunately, your linked paper is not available. This one is:

> https://www.academia.edu/download/3521147/Pratt___Cullen_200...

Err, not for me, it isn't.

So I looked up the Pratt/Cullen 2005 paper (https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/655357), and right off the bat, the abstract doesn't seem to agree with you:

> Indicators of "concentrated disadvantage" (e.g., racial heterogeneity, poverty, and family disruption) are among the strongest and most stable predictors.

Also, what makes you think your counterexamples are unrelated to poverty? I would expect "unemployment length" and "poverty" to be HIGHLY correlated, and unemployment is #2 on the list.

There is a strong link between poverty and crime within a society but that strong link starts to weaken when you look across different societies, especially in the same region. And in a society as rich as the US, most are stealing because of a want, not stealing to fulfill a biological need like housing, medication, or food.

There are many traits that increase both your risk of poverty and criminality, such as poor impulse control.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc

> but that strong link starts to weaken when you look across different societies, especially in the same region

I'm not surprised by this, one would expect things like the ease of getting a weapon, cultural norms, and social welfare services to have big interactions with the poverty - crime relationships.

> And in a society as rich as the US, most are stealing because of a want, not stealing to fulfill a biological need like housing, medication, or food.

This is not as clear to me, though I imagine it also strongly depends on the type of theft under consideration. Certainly I concede that most theft in the US is probably not pure Jean Valjean-style "I just needed a loaf of bread", but in my experience the people committing like smash+grabs out of a parked car are not typically very affluent. Maybe they're doing this because they can't afford the iPhone they want since all their savings went to rent and food, but I don't think you can fully say that it's purely "desire" causing them to act criminally.

Re the poor impulse control side of things, I think it would be very hard to isolate the causal direction between it and poverty. I can imagine someone working multiple part time jobs to get by is going to have a harder time controlling their impulses purely out of fatigue and stress. Not sure if this is what you're thinking

I would bet money the correlation between number of hours worked and criminality is inverse. (Here's some evidence that increasing the minimum wage increases crimes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727272...)

In terms of impulse control, here's a study that shows people commit less crimes on Adderall than off of it, which in addition to all the correlational studies is pretty strong evidence that improving impulse control reduces criminality. Also in my personal life I know people who are poor and rich and too a man everyone I know who's committed the types of crimes we care about had some combination of poor impulse control or psychopathy.

> I would bet money the correlation between number of hours worked and criminality is inverse.

So someone working more hours at a legit job is less likely to commit a crime? I think that's likely. For one, more hours worked probably means somewhat less need for money. But I would also imagine that it's indicative of some personal traits which correlate negatively with criminality.

> In terms of impulse control, here's a study that shows people commit less crimes on Adderall than off of it, which in addition to all the correlational studies is pretty strong evidence that improving impulse control reduces criminality.

I think you forgot to link the study, but I believe the results. I absolutely don't dispute that impulse control causally effects crime. I just think that impulse control may be impacted by environmental circumstances such as poverty and a lack of quality education. Someone in tons of debt who can't afford to pay for rent or food is probably not going to feel like they have much to lose, and therefore may not care too much about the consequences of their actions.

> So someone working more hours at a legit job is less likely to commit a crime? I think that's likely. For one, more hours worked probably means somewhat less need for money. But I would also imagine that it's indicative of some personal traits which correlate negatively with criminality.

Agreed

> I think you forgot to link the study, but I believe the results.

I definitely did forget to link the study. I'd try to find it again if it was a point of contention but it doesn't sound like it is.

> I just think that impulse control may be impacted by environmental circumstances such as poverty and a lack of quality education.

I think peer group and culture have a large impact. I'm not aware of any studies showing you can train self-control in any meaningful sense (if we could we wouldn't need to put so many people on adderall). And I'd be surprised if we can't train self-control when we try to train it, but are very successful at training it at school where we aren't specifically trying to train it.

Also just from personal experience I've seen a few poor->rich and rich->poor transitions and it didn't seem to meaningfully affect their personality. But if you have studies or anecdotes that tell a different story, I'd love to hear them.

> Nevertheless it's not hard to find studies documenting the very strong link between poverty and (certain types of) crime [0].

That doesn't mean causation. The same behaviors and character flaws of a person will both make them poor and make them commit crime. A man that is unreliable, selfish and violent will be unemployable. He will also be inclined to crime because of those personal traits. What's interesting is the underlying reasons why people turn out to be that way, but people rarely want to have that discussion. They judge the world as they judge themselves, and they know that they would have little qualms about committing violent crime if they were broke.

> That doesn't mean causation.

You might be interested to learn about the field of causal statistical analysis. There are many, many ways that a researched might infer a causal relationship from observational data. No doubt each individual case is complicated, but I trust professional researchers over your armchair epicyclic theory of the causes of crime.

You are citing a correlational study from 1986 on 1970 data as strong evidence? That study doesn't even establish the direction of causality: it's very plausible high crime rates lead to poor economic outcomes, versus the opposite. That also squares with the fact that most poor people aren't criminals and don't have criminal tendencies but are unable to absorb the cost of crime.

First one that came up in Google from a source with a TLD that I trusted. Feel free to do your own research, I don't believe you will find much substantial disagreement with the older study but if you do please pass it on to me.

edit: here's a more recent meta-analysis helpfully linked elsewhere in the thread which confirms the findings https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/655357

Punchline is:

"""

Across all studies, social disorganization and resource/economic deprivation theories receive strong empirical support; anomie/strain, social support/social altruism, and routine activity theories receive moderate support; and deterrence/rational choice and subcultural theories receive weak support.

"""

I can't click through since your link 403s.

Not sure what kind of meta review was occurring in your link, but there's lots of evidence that adding more police would reduced crime in US cities: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/100/1/167/58429...

Basically every type of crime rate goes down for every cop you add, with murder going down the most. You might be arguing that for a fixed level of policing, most criminal behavior is explained by desperation, but adjusting the level of policing is the most effective way to change the level of crime.

This also intuitively checks out: you could have ~0 crime in a dystopian police state with high levels of desperation, but you would definitely have crime in a police-free state with no desperation (lots of well-off, rich people commit crimes!).

Check out “routine action theory” (which I came across due to the above meta-analysis, can’t explain why it 403d for you, paper is Pratt & Cullen 2005). Posits crime as occurring when three conditions are met:

* Motivated perpetrator

* Vulnerable victim

* Lack of guardianship

Presence of police reduces factor 3, increase in socioeconomic deprivation increases factor 1. It’s unclear to me how you can confidently make the statement that “more police is the most effective” as that doesn’t seem to be attested to anywhere in that study (though I can only read the abstract), however thinking about the balance of these three factors brings our two arguments somewhat into line.

The "main" cause of crime are laws against victimless, consensual acts. The number of times drug laws are broken every second in this country absolutely dwarfs the number of violent and property crimes being committed.

I'm breaking one right now.

And gentrification gets rid of crime because…?

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