Cycle of Poverty

Can Theories of Poverty also become Theories of Crime?

The readings that we have done on theories of poverty have given me the feeling of déjà vu . . . “Have I heard this before or am I just really smart?” is the question that kept coming to me as I read American Apartheid by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton. The way that they pointed out Oscar Lewis’s theory that a culture of poverty encourages and prolongs poverty as one that blames the victim sounded very familiar to me. As I continued to read and think about how black society is segregated and how that separation permeates through every part of our lives, it came to me that this did sound like something I’ve heard before. Just as they describe a cycle of poverty that comes from structural problems, criminologists have described a cycle of crime that also comes from problems with policies.

Massey and Denton describe how residential segregation leads to this cycle of poverty and it is encouraged by structural choices rather than individual choices. Urban areas where minorities are concentrated lack adequate educational systems, social and economic services, and most importantly, safety. Because residents don’t have access to proper education, they cannot get jobs that pay more than minimum wage and they often have to work more than one at a time. This translates into not being able to move into a better neighborhood so they can have access to better schools to get better jobs. . . and the cycle repeats, family after family, generation after generation. Massey and Denton place the blame on policy rather than a “defective culture”.

In the same way, criminologists Shaw and McKay were the first to attribute criminality to environmental and structural influences rather than ethnic and racial differences in their published studies of the Chicago area in 1942. They began to recognize ongoing factors that influenced crime and then lead to continued patterns of criminal behavior in urban areas. Modern theories of crime attribute recidivism to a cycle of crime that is in large part due to structural issues in the criminal justice system. Once a person is convicted of a crime, even after their time is served and their debt is repaid to society, they can never reach that sense of normal life again. A criminal conviction automatically disqualifies a person from job opportunities, educational opportunities, and some forms of public assistance. This in turn creates an even bigger obstacle for that individual to make a living for themselves which can lead to a return to criminal activity and a return to prison . . . and the cycle repeats itself.

It’s interesting that these two theories seem to overlap because most of the 2million plus Americans under control by some form of the criminal system are poor. Likewise, a lot of the population considered impoverished have criminal histories. Do we punish people for being poor by making them stay that way or locking them up? Can policies aimed to help people out of poverty also be used to funnel people out of the criminal justice system? Is it our job as concerned citizens to advocate for both or is it the responsibility of the individual to better himself?