CRIMINAL LAW: An Examination of the Poverty-Crime Relationship

This essay examines the intricate relationship between poverty and crime, focusing on the Australian context. It explores this connection through two disciplinary perspectives: social and economic. The essay provides a detailed comparison and contrast of the explanations offered by each discipline, considering factors like unemployment, income inequality, and social structures. It analyzes how poverty can lead to crime through various mechanisms, including mental health issues, lack of education, and limited opportunities. Furthermore, it discusses the economic model of crime and sociological theories, highlighting the complexities of the relationship. The essay also delves into the impact of government policies and societal factors. The analysis incorporates a minimum of fifteen peer-reviewed journal articles to support the arguments. Finally, the essay concludes with an argument as to which discipline provides the better explanation for the poverty-crime relationship, favoring the economic perspective due to factors like unemployment, capital deficiency, and price increases, ultimately illustrating the multifaceted nature of this complex issue.

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CRIMINAL LAW cRIMINOLOGY
AUSTRALIA
[DATE]
[Company name]
[Company address]

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The relationship between crime and poverty has a long historical background. Both
poverty, as well as crime, has a diverse and vast connection with social and economic discourse.
So in this essay, the discussions will be conducted upon two disciplinary perspectives i.e. social
and economics based upon the relationship of crime with poverty. Further, those two
perspectives would be critically compared and contractions will also be drawn thereafter. Lastly,
an argument will also be made reflecting that which of the two perspectives is better (Binns,
Howat, Smith, & Jancey, 2017).
Crime influences the wellbeing of people and families. In Australia, excessive crime fees
are regularly related to poverty, unemployment, low ranges of tutorial attainment, own family
relationship issues and excessive degrees of drug use. The occurrence of crime may additionally
rely upon to be had possibilities and the scale of the ability rewards possibly weighed in
opposition to the threat of detection, apprehension, and punishment. Common responses to
increasing tiers of crime encompass growing prevention and detection sports, and increasing
penalties, including fines or terms of imprisonment (Bihan, et al., 2016).
Crime exists anywhere within Australia in rural and urban regions, inside the East and
West, and among all sorts of people and this point was very clearly explained by Don
Weatherburn Kevin T. Schnepel. This has led many government officials, specifically those in
urban areas, to cognizance in large part on the discount of crime among their respective
constituencies and has led others to speculate on the elements that impact the quantity of crime
and the way those elements can be managed. Poverty's outcomes on crime can be defined
through a selection of motives (Weatherburn & Schnepel, 2015). There is a better rate of
intellectual illness within the terrible than in the wealthy. Poverty can lead to excessive stages of
strain that during turn may additionally lead individuals to devote theft, robbery, or other violent

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acts. Moreover, poverty might also lead to a real or perceived inferior schooling, which could
purpose youngsters to expect less access to first-rate schools, jobs, and position models,
decreasing the opportunity fees of crime and growing the probability of children spending time
on the road associating with gangs, and so on (Bradshaw & Sainsbury, 2018).
According to David Brady and Markus Jäntti, for information the range of the internal
reasons, by way of considering private human nature and outside reasons aimed in the direction
of cultural, monetary, prison or political elements, is critical to capture the causal determinism of
crime (Hughes, 2017). Consequently, the eye is targeted on the economic necessities, schooling
or populace density distribution inside the city and rural areas (Brady & Jäntti, 2016). But there
can be also a comparable interest within the disaster of authority or social disaster at some stage
in Australian society. Further crime, its repercussions and the extended risk of decline, a
remarkable area in literature is occupied through its causal rationalization and, consequently,
through highlighting its determinants. Modern research has hooked up that the sector identifies
three maximum vital training of crime danger elements: (1) natural elements; (2) socioeconomic
factors; and (3) intellectual factors, whether or not due to a bottom-line orientation, or of the man
or woman charge device of these involved within the criminal activity (Brady & Jäntti, 2016).
In Australia numerous people are living under poverty, without having any sufficient
support or the opportunities this was determined by Jonathan Bradshaw, Roy Sainsbury, Poverty
here is basically of two types' i.e. absolute poverty as well as relative poverty (Bradshaw &
Sainsbury, 2018). Absolute poverty is a condition where the necessities such as food and shelters
are also not being fulfilled by the income of the family (Martinez & Perales, 2017). Whereas the
relative poverty is something where the income of the family is low as compared to that of other
families in the society where they are forced to live in. Poverty gives rise to criminality, nobody

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can stay hungry. It is sometimes just to fulfill the stomach a person has to get indulged in
criminal activities (Ratnapala, 2016).
Crime is standard in all the international locations as well as in its multifarious
paperwork, suggesting that there exists a connection among poorer and criminals is to draw
sharp criticisms and accusations on moral and ethical grounds. This should have connotations
that terrible human beings are innately criminal (Skinner, Cook, & Sinclair, 2017). In this way,
while investigating the crime financial evaluation of crime and criminal regulation addresses the
query of person welfare which is relevant for maximizing the optimum allocation of property and
time in keeping with their accurate returns. Under the monetary model of crime, the marketers
contain the maximization of rational utility, while the parties involved here are the criminals,
non-criminals and the kingdom (Fergusson, 2015). On the other hand, the theories of crime are
found to be rooted in the studies of sociology or methodology in a very general sense. By the
theories of sociology framed by Magali Duque and Abigail McKnight, it is tried to establish or
find out those links in between the social and economic factors that could reflect the criminal
behavior and tendencies of the individuals towards the society. From this point, it can be
concluded that there occurs a lot of confusion while describing the relationships between
socioeconomic conditions i.e. poverty and the crime (Smith, 2016).
Crime is justified or is concerned with the economic activities and most importantly upon
the quality of life lead by the people i.e. do they have those sense of personal as well as
proprietary securities. Thus from this statement, it can be held up that it is the social and the
economic condition which can force the individual to become a criminal or help him to lead a
peaceful life (Gugushvili, 2016).

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With reference to Hélène Bihan, Kathrin Backholer, Anna Peeters, Christopher E.
Stevenson, Jonathan E. Shaw, , and Dianna J. Magliano, the social factors such as education and
health, etc. and the economic factors such as welfare, employment, and income, etc. are very
essential requirement of all the individuals to lead a better and prosperous life, but lack of any of
these may create imbalances and hence may give birth to criminal activities (Bihan, et al., 2016).
Unemployment or poverty i.e. less paid are the major economic factor which tends to provide aid
to criminality (Hartwell, 2017).
Tackling crime may be finished simplest from a multidisciplinary perspective to attention
on all its capabilities. One can emphasize the prevention guidelines to combat in competition to
corruption on the social stage, the organizing of guilt, the right ranking of the offense or, even
more elaborately, recall the forms of terrorism manifestation. Difficulties in conceptualizing
crime derive from its diverse manifestations, every for establishments and individuals, with
profound effects and results at the financial, social and crook feel (Hemphill, Heerde, & Scholes-
Balog, 2016).
The etiological and fundamental trust of crime requires the know-how of crook attitude
self-discipline. More effectively, the way in which people understand the context wherein they
show it, the given significance for the method of fascinating the needs and, closing, however no
longer least, the training level and the mental capability to distinguish among legal and illegal
methods (Pridemore & Rogers, 2016). Many factors can affect crime and are correlated with
poverty as properly. Higher unemployment would in reality growth poverty and at equal time
result in extra crime due to depression associated with being unemployed. Personal income in
keeping with capita, that's inversely correlated with the poverty stage, nonetheless may also
boom crime because extra wealth means extra benefits to thieves and robbers (Lee & Koo,

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2016). Furthermore, because of social elegance gaps, personal income in keeping with capita
charges might not affect poverty to a high-quality extent (the income can be focused on a small
percent of the populace). It might even intensify the difference between the upper and lower
training, thereby inducing greater crime (Whiteford, 2015).
Poverty can affect the crime at the various levels and some of them are first, the
happiness and money which are positively connected as a minimum to a threshold degree.
Poverty and subsequently no longer being capable of making the fundamental ends or meet up to
lead frustration and better pressure level among individuals that in turn drive them to devote
crimes out of sheer desperation (Wuepper & Lybbert, 2017). The second one can be the
youngsters who are brought up in poverty are most usually deprived of proper education and an
apt environment for healthful upbringing. They don’t go to colleges and that they don’t go to
faculties (Weatherburn & Schnepel, 2015). They rarely get the correct organization, instead, they
spend their time on streets freely, making them more vulnerable to get into terrible stuff. The
third reason can be a few inherent attributes in people consisting of greed, apathy, being overly
aggressive, jealousy, etc. can make them commit crimes of numerous sorts. Poverty in contrast to
these is an outside stimulus and not an inherent bad characteristic of an individual, etc. (Walsh,
2015)
The link between unemployment one of the most essential part of economic perspective
and crime has been the point of interest because it has obtained the lion's share of studies'
attention. Yet unemployment is manifestly the best one size of financial adversity. Another
component is income. There were few time-series research on the relationship between earnings
and crime but the cross-sectional dating among them has been tested each in phrases of absolute
profits and profits disparity (Treiber1 & . Wikström, 2016).

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Thus to sum up with both the disciplinary perspective of crime i.e. social as well as the
economic one it can be well determined that poverty which is a social as well an economy is the
basic cause of crime in most societies be it in Australia or any other. But when the question
occurs before the individuals that which of the two perspectives is better as compared to the
other one. Then in this case according to me the economic disciplinary perspective explains the
relationship of poverty and crime in a better way as compared to that of the social perspective
(Rucell & Shildrick, 2015).
The major reason behind my beliefs are as follows, firstly due to the growth of population
as well as the politics the unemployment and underemployment are growing at the very vast and
that becomes the biggest reason behind poverty which may hence lead to crimes. Secondly
deficiency of capital, which is needed to set up an industry, transportation, and many other
projects, which becomes hurdles in the development process of a nation due to shortage of
capital and hence leads to poverty. An increase in the price rates can be the next point i.e. heavy
raise in the prices give rise to or affects the poor people at large poverty also reduces the income
of the nation (Moran, 2016). Due to the growing politics in all the fields, there arises a huge
shortage of skilled labors in all the industries and thus leads to poverty. Poverty is one of the
biggest reason which has given birth to many a crime and the main reason behind this was that
all the humans want that his basic essentialities are to be fulfilled so he could lead a happy life,
but if their these needs or desires are not fulfilled then they need to do at least something to
fulfill their stomachs and committing crime seems them a better option rather than any other.
Lack of proper (Hartwell, 2017) industrialization, deficiency of entrepreneurs, etc. all hamper the
growth rate of the economy. There are other reasons also such as improper use of natural

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resources, lack of infrastructure, etc. may also lead to economic deficiencies and hence to
poverty and lastly to crime (Weatherburn & Schnepel, 2015).
Therefore to finish this essay it could be stated that it's far very vital at this juncture to throw
some mild at the problem that arises because of the opportunity of joint causality between
poverty and crime. This has been addressed via several researchers in numerous research
especially specializing in crime deterrence variables such as expenditure upon the police strain or
some of the cops. Activities with the aid of negative humans can be more likely criminalized
Because they lack the electricity to influence criminal regulation in comparison to the wealthy
individuals who can foyer to avoid their acts to be criminalized. In this scenario, unavoidably
there may be an excessive correlation between poverty and crime.

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