Sociology, Inequalities, And Crime
POVERTY, INEQUALITY, AND CRIME
"Poverty is the normal condition of man" (Robert Heinlein)
Poverty, or stratification by social class, was the first sociological variable ever looked into as a possible cause of crime. Some sociologists would say religion was the first sociological variable, but the field of criminology claims a slightly different heritage. There are two reasons why social class and poverty came to be of particular interest: (1) it was an enduring social problem in all societies across time; and (2) it was suspected that something in the causes of poverty were the same as the causes of crime. The heart of the criminological mode of inquiry, from the start of the sociological perspective, was that deviant behavior and crime …show more content…
Their assessment is partially shaped by the sociocultural environment, but there is no isomorphic (one-to-one) relationship between aggregate (national statistic) measures and psychological factors; this is called making the ecological fallacy. If inequity is perceived, there must be some interpretive or intervening mechanism that channels or diffuses the effect in different directions. In criminology, that intervening mechanism is referred to as relative deprivation, and some individuals respond by resorting to property crime to address their grievances, and other people develop a deep anger which can be manifested in violent ways. Relative deprivation is illustrated in the following …show more content…
The concept of relative deprivation is usually revised to a concept of "resource deprivation" which is just one cluster of relative deprivation. According to this conception, crime is greatest in cities that have extensive residential segregation; i.e., blacks live on one side of the tracks, whites on the other. Research results using this approach have been mixed, however, but are suggestive enough that many urban groups regularly make it an issue in housing debates, and so-called "projects" (which often have less crime than other places) are continually pegged with bad
"Poverty is the normal condition of man" (Robert Heinlein)
Poverty, or stratification by social class, was the first sociological variable ever looked into as a possible cause of crime. Some sociologists would say religion was the first sociological variable, but the field of criminology claims a slightly different heritage. There are two reasons why social class and poverty came to be of particular interest: (1) it was an enduring social problem in all societies across time; and (2) it was suspected that something in the causes of poverty were the same as the causes of crime. The heart of the criminological mode of inquiry, from the start of the sociological perspective, was that deviant behavior and crime …show more content…
Their assessment is partially shaped by the sociocultural environment, but there is no isomorphic (one-to-one) relationship between aggregate (national statistic) measures and psychological factors; this is called making the ecological fallacy. If inequity is perceived, there must be some interpretive or intervening mechanism that channels or diffuses the effect in different directions. In criminology, that intervening mechanism is referred to as relative deprivation, and some individuals respond by resorting to property crime to address their grievances, and other people develop a deep anger which can be manifested in violent ways. Relative deprivation is illustrated in the following …show more content…
The concept of relative deprivation is usually revised to a concept of "resource deprivation" which is just one cluster of relative deprivation. According to this conception, crime is greatest in cities that have extensive residential segregation; i.e., blacks live on one side of the tracks, whites on the other. Research results using this approach have been mixed, however, but are suggestive enough that many urban groups regularly make it an issue in housing debates, and so-called "projects" (which often have less crime than other places) are continually pegged with bad