Essay 5A- Crime and Circumstance

Essay 5A-Crime and Circumstance

Summery: I chose the topic essay question “Crime and Circumstance”. Before writing the essay I deeply researched on Crime and Circumstance. The difficult part was researching and finding the articles that are reliable. There are many articles written bye many people, however, not all of them are reliable, therefore, it was very important to check who has written, supported, reviewed, and published the article. The difficult part was researching, grammar and organization.
Reason: The reason you put forth this topic was, because you wanted us to research and find out the correlation between crimes and unemployment, wages, because that is one of the root causes of the downfall of a city, state, nation, or society in general.
Purpose: The purpose of researching, and writing the essay was to increase our knowledge, and improve the writing skills. In addition, the knowledge from research would help us become responsible and productive citizens.
Direction: I researched and compared the crime rates with unemployment and wages, as well as one period of time with another.
Impression:  Researching on this topic was very interesting because crime exist in every city, state, and nation, and researched showed and gave me a sense of how and why high or low crime rates exist. It also helped me analyze the cities or towns that are better or worse than other, and why they are like that.
 Part 2
There is a direct correlation between the higher crime rates and unemployment and lower wages. The poor economic conditions, unemployment, lower wages, and poverty are the root cause of crimes in a society. The higher the unemployment rates, the higher the crime rates are. In addition, in my research I found that as the wages start to go down, the crimes rate goes up.

Throughout the history, crime rate went up as the unemployment rose. Bruce Weinber, the co-author of the study and the associate professor of economics at the Ohio State University in the article, “Higher Crime Rates Linked to Low Wages and Unemployment, Study Funds” asserts  that “the national crime rates rose from 1979 to 1992, when wages for less skilled men were falling”, in addition he says “the strongest finding in this new study is a link between falling wages and property crimes such as burglary”(Research News).  Also there is clear connection between wages and some other violent crimes as well.

Further more, Steven Raphael of the University of California at San Diego and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer of the University of Linz, support the view of many people that when men don’t have job they are more likely to robe or steal from other people because the risk seems to be more worthwhile. Winter-Ember, and Raphael study shows that “1992 to 1996, a period when unemployment was falling, there was a dramatic fall in all types of crime…a drop of two percentage points in unemployment would mean a 9% decline in burglary, 14% in rape and robbery and 30% in assault”(Center of Economics and Policy Research). The higher numberof  crimes exist in poor areas of a city, because the inhabitants don’t have jobs, and  in order to survive and support their family they have to commit illegal activities. Peter Rossi in his article explains that crime rates are almost always higher in poor areas, and poor people are arrested, most of the time. The reason of poor people or lower class of people being arrested is that they commit more crimes and the economic conditions are the reason behind that.

       
To improve the condition of inner cities and lower the crime rate, it is important to improve the economic condition of the people living there. In order to improve the economic condition the government will have to design and enforce better economic policies. More funds should be available to educational institution in poor areas.
The children of poor people are less likely to graduate from high school and go to college. Uneducated lower class people are more likely to commit crimes, therefore, it is important to fund and and improve the public school system in poor areas. The government provides more funds to better schools than failing schools. Jonathan Kozol in his book Savage Inequality, explains “that schools in the rich suburbs of New York City spent more than $ 11,000 per pupil in 1987, while those in the city itself spent only $5,500”. Improving the living conditions, providing more welfare to poor people will help reduce the crimes in the cities and towns across the United States.



 References:
·  Bruce Weinber, “HIGHER CRIME RATE LINKED TO LOW WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT, STUDY FINDS”.  Research News, Columbus, Ohio. http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive//crimwage.htm
·ڌi耀耀  Charts: Chronological of Unemployment and Property Crimes. Unemployment and Property Crimes. http://www.documentingexcellence.com/modeling/unemployment_crime.htm
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ABSlovak*  Peter Rossi. “Crime and Property: Some Experimental Evidence From Ex-offenders”. UMass-Amherst. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2094894
·  Steven Raphael, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, “Identifying the Effect of Unemployment and Crime”. Centre for Economics Research Policy.  United Kingdom. http://www.cepr.org/press/dp2129.htm