Why do poor people commit more crime?

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/why-do-wealthier-people-commit-less-crime.html

by cubefox • 3 years ago

19 84 3 years ago

In other words, since randomly increasing a person’s income does not reduce their crime rate, the first set of theories are falsified

This a rather false conclusion. I will concede wealth alone isn’t a predictor of weather someone is likely to commit crime. But, being able to generate wealth on your own is. The example of winning the lottery doesn’t prove much, since that person got lucky, they didn’t generate that wealth on their own. If you can’t generate your own wealth legitimately, then you will be tempted to do illegally, winning the lottery doesn’t change that, you got lucky once, but you still don’t have the skills to generate your own wealth legitimately.

jensv• 3 years ago

Most people rely on their employer to generate and capture wealth. Many senior developers would not make it going alone as technical acumen (without salesmanship) is generally insufficient.

steveBK1236• 3 years ago

Yes, I would think of it as higher incomes increases a persons opportunity set. If your circumstances/skills/knowledge/intelligence are such that you are limited to minimum wage in your adult hood, then pickpocketing, sticking up a bodega, or breaking into peoples cars may appear to pay out better than if you are making 6 figures straight of college at a FAANG.

And risk-reward evaluation is going to differ based on where you currently are in life. If you make a FAANG income, the idea of being charged with a crime / going to jail is very unappealing and hypothetically career ending. If you are making minimum wage in a dead end job, then having a criminal record isn't going to reset you downwards post-crime.

I would also say there is probably some inverted causation on all the above. Someone who considers carjacking or gets into bar fights is also less likely to be someone to be able to seek education and hold down a steady high paying job. The people you know from high school who ended up with criminal records by their 20s are probably not surprises, and you might have been able to guess who would have those records before the end of elementary school.

Re: whether randomly giving people decreases their proclivity to commit crime.. I would point out the COVID era we had some historically high levels of stimulus, unemployment payments, loan/rent/mortgage/etc forbearance, etc.. and yet crime levels shot up nationally.

This may point to other factors as well.. like young males having time on their hands being more likely to do stupid things.

48864w6ui2• 3 years ago

The "getting lucky once" hypothesis would suggest it's a poor idea to let oligarchs run a country, under the assumption that most oligarchs, like Rockefeller, made their pile by making poor bets that thereupon paid out big.

steveBK1236• 3 years ago

See: Russia

48864w6ui2• 3 years ago

Anyone have a link to the actual paper? 20k EUR is not exactly life or even circumstance changing, and 20k SEK would only be about 2k EUR. (In addition one expects lottery payouts to skew strongly)

ethbr13• 3 years ago

> One set of explanations suggests that it’s precisely the lack of financial resources that causes crime. [...] Or, poorer people face greater strains
> [or there's a] third variable correlated with both income and crime. For example, higher IQ or greater conscientiousness

Or... the consequences of being prosecuted for crime are heavily weighted towards taking away things you have: freedom, luxury, wealth.

If you don't have any of those things, because you're poor, the relative consequences for getting caught decrease.

Consequently, there's less of a disincentive to avoid crime, especially if it offers you a way to get ahead.

Rich people have a lot that can be taken by the state in retaliation. Poor people, notsomuch.

imtringued• 3 years ago

It is kind of ironic how people don't understand how deterrence works. They think being tough on crime means more deterrence, but realistically those people leave prison one day, with less to lose and the deterrence effect disappears for good.

ethbr13• 3 years ago

Agreed. Convicts having difficulty finding solid jobs seems... words fail me idiotic.

scarby22• 3 years ago

Also people misunderstand how deterrence works. In that if you double the sentence people don't fear it twice as much.

Especially when conviction rates are as low as they are, "getting caught is something that happens it other people, it could never happen to me, I'm too smart"

I've read studies that suggest that high detection/conviction rates and relatively mild punishments is the ideal.

NotYourLawyer3• 3 years ago

That still falls under the first set.

steveBK1236• 3 years ago

I think the idea that relatively rich people have more to lose is important.

Age is also a factor. I worked retail in high school and then office jobs the rest of my life. When I worked retail, half the teen males I worked with were stealing merchandise from the store we worked at. In my 20 years of office work, with all the electronic surveillance of our behavior, I have encountered maybe 2 person I worked with that was crime adjacent.

If you are a 17 year old male making $5/hr hourly in precarious employment, then stealing a $500 electronic device is an interesting proposition, it's also an 80x return.

If you are a married adult supporting your family making $200k in steady employment, then stealing some office equipment or falsifying invoices is a lot riskier of a proposition, and for what?

seanmcdirmid10• 3 years ago

You’d be surprised how many techies making $200k a year will engage in insider trading. The first few cases I heard about were just shocking, because they are very likely to get caught, and their lives ruined.

Simulacra2• 3 years ago

Heard a very similar argument around suicide. People with more education and wealth seem to commit suicide greater than those without. So much of State, so much to lose, so much invested, it's like having the rug pulled out from under you I guess.

imacomputertoo• 3 years ago

Isn't this rejected by the study. If poor people have less to lose, then why doesn't the data show that increasing their wealth reduces their crime rate? If they are awarded more money, then they have more to lose, yet their rate is crime forward but decrease according to this study, no?

PLenz• 3 years ago

Do they commit more crime? Or is there a bias in enforcement and measurement toward the types of crime they commit?

Podgajski3• 3 years ago

This. An example. My homelessness, caused by my disability making me poor, is illegal in many places.

CM30• 3 years ago

The second one feels like a major part of the puzzle here. Poorer criminals tend towards more 'blatant' crimes, the kind that usually bring the police down on them hard (burglary/robbery, assault/murder, dealing drugs and controlled substances, etc). A wealthier criminal seems like someone more likely to be doing things that are harder to convict for, like fraud or tax evasion or something.

It takes more work to arrest and convict a Bernie Madoff/Sam Bankman Fried style than a street mugger, and the latter type of criminal is probably more likely to be from a low income background.

HlessClaudesman2• 3 years ago

My guess is that criminals are evenly sprinkled across income distributions, but being prosecuted skews towards poverty because police / justice incentives are set by wealthy elites.

NotYourLawyer3• 3 years ago

Third, a few people might object that the correlation we observe is between convictions and income and perhaps convictions don’t reflect actual crime. I don’t think that is plausible for a variety of reasons but the authors also find no statistically significant evidence that wealth reduces the probability one is suspect in a crime investigation (god bless the Swedes for extreme data collection).

jvanderbot4• 3 years ago

This does make a certain sense, but be careful of:

* Police incentives are set by wealthy elites might be "Higher policed areas are wealthier" or just "Weathier areas are full of people who commit less petty crime / visible violent crime that would be deterred by patrols"

* "Criminals are evenly sprinkled across income distributions" might actually be that Conscientiousness is highly correlated with lifetime earnings AND Conscientiousness is negatively correlated with lifetime convictions

There's tons of conflicting arrows, nothing is settled, but there sure are lots of political reasons to assume it's a clear case.

steveBK1236• 3 years ago

"Higher policed areas are wealthier"

And yet, in places like NYC, the complaint from many activists is the opposite - that poor people get arrested more because its the poorer areas with more policing.

A simple example in NYC is turnstile jumping. The people willing to risk a ticket/police engagement over a $2.90 fare are likely not high income. Yes you do see it even in higher income areas but not at nearly the same rate. Ride a train that goes through rich and poor neighborhoods and spend 10 minutes at the turnstiles of each.. the disparity is huge.

Some argue it's unfair that people have to pay the fare and it should just be free. To me it seems like moving the goalposts on what we consider crime. There's already programs for reduced fairs for students, elderly, and low income. There's plenty of other examples of this behavior.

2devnull6• 3 years ago

Well wait. Why do allow room for the concept of “incentives” when it comes to police but not when it comes to criminals? Incentive for crime is surely not “evenly sprinkled” across income levels?

HlessClaudesman2• 3 years ago

Yeah you're right, far more money to be made in white collar crime.

skywhopper• 3 years ago

This is a pretty terrible article. “Here’s two underspecified theories about crime vs income and I’ll pretend they represent every possible explanation. Now, this questionably designed study shows that an artificial, one-time, unearned, small-scale income shock doesn’t reduce crime. Thus there must be something third variable that correlates to both, like IQ.”

There are so many other variables here, easy to think of if you spend five minutes imagining other people’s lives. Jumping to “there must be something similarly inherently wrong with both criminals and poor people” is a really disturbing leap to want to make.

udev4096• 3 years ago

So, you are saying that the richest people have never done anything atrocious? Give me a break. I bet this whole research is sponsored by some billionaire

NotYourLawyer3• 3 years ago

Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.

Podgajski3• 3 years ago

The guy wrote the article is a right wing libertarian, who went to George Mason University. You don’t succeeded in those universities being against the elite.

Podgajski3• 3 years ago

I wish HN would ban these articles making sweeping generalizations and stereotypes about populations.

The guy who wrote this article is a right wing libertarian, who has never had to experience a day of poverty in his life.

This article is an obvious hit job against Universal basic income.

pasttense01• 3 years ago

"It’s well known that people with lower incomes commit more crime."

No, this is only for certain types of crime. The amount of money stolen via income tax evasion, financial crimes... by the well off is massively, massively greater than the total amount stolen by the poor via shoplifting and other theft crimes.

jonnycomputer7• 3 years ago

It is well known that the crimes committed by poor people are prosecuted more consistently and more frequently than the complicated white-collar crimes committed by wealthier people.

seanmcdirmid10• 3 years ago

It’s not really well known. We’ve almost stopped prosecuting any petty crime at all in some jurisdictions (so it’s like shoplift till you drop). AG’s and county DA’s, on the other hand, make it a point to pursue white collar crime very aggressively, and whenever the Feds are involved (eg for insider trading), they are very aggressive. The issue with white collar crime, is that it is simply very hard to identify, while the guy walking out of Target with a basketful of stuff while avoiding checkout is just really obvious.

It is also a matter of incentives. The only thing goin after most shoplifters will get the state is having to fund their court appearances and incarceration, a net loss. Going after a rich guy for a crime nets them real money, so when they can they definitely will do it (at least where I live, your locale will differ).

pentaphobe• 3 years ago

Spot on - and this doesn't only apply to white collar crime - the wealthy are overwhelmingly more likely to escape prosecution for any crime.

Whether through having resources to get off (legitimately or illegitimately), or just cultural bias (Eg. The mere existence of terms like "white-collar crime")

jvanderbot4• 3 years ago

I read it implicitly as "violent" and "petty" crime. I'm fairly certain there's a bias against "breaking the rules" vs "exploiting the rules" in this discussion.

Eddy_Viscosity2• 3 years ago

Many financial crimes are just that, 'crimes', not exploiting the rules, not bending them, but flat out breaking them. There is also a big difference between 'petty' (e.g. shoplifting, loitering) and 'violent' (e.g. mugging, school shooting,...)

CPLX4• 3 years ago

It’s almost certainly true that the most commonly committed crime is tax evasion, with drug use as another contender. Neither are particularly confined to the lower incomes.

2devnull6• 3 years ago

Is tax evasion distributed differently by income level? How do you control for it just being more complicated to file as income increases? My experience in the lower rungs is that middle class people pay taxes faithfully out of great fear of consequences for not doing so, while lower income and poor friends often cheat or don’t bother with taxes at all (or bank accounts for that matter). I’ve met and known tax cheats but none of them white color workers. I would love to see data. I would predict a u shape, with tax evasion lowest in the middle, and higher for both low income blue color workers (including waitresses), and higher for the upper classes and those who own homes, other major wealth.

gruez5• 3 years ago

The amount of money stolen via income tax evasion, financial crimes... by the well off is massively, massively greater than the total amount stolen by the poor via shoplifting and other theft crimes.

But the article is talking about "more crime", not "more money stolen" or similar. I think most people would agree that there's "more crime" happening when 100 people each steal $5 worth of candy bar from a store, than if a single person failed to report ~$2000 worth of income, and is therefore evading $500 worth of taxes.

magicfractal• 3 years ago

I’m sure billionaires commit 1000 crimes a day (or do the unethical things that don’t qualify as crimes due to loopholes), they are just not prosecuted. What we often see is the criminalization of poverty.

User23• 3 years ago

Because successful criminals are both more likely to become rich and to not get caught.

There’s also the likelihood that both poverty and (street) criminality are caused by a propensity for poor decision making, high time preference, or most likely some kind of cluster of personality and behavioral patterns.

Anyhow we have absolutely tons of solid data on this now due to Raj Chetty’s superlative work. Naturally he presents his findings in a way that keeps the midwits at Wapo and NYT from accurately presenting them. That this coincidentally keeps him from getting cancelled is no surprise.

bigbillheck• 3 years ago

Do poor people actually commit more crime, or do they just get caught and prosecuted more? (The usual example is wage theft vs shoplifting).

(Also note that the comments in that post are pretty repulsive)

petepete• 3 years ago

It depends on whether you measure it by frequency or quantity.

We lock people up for stealing a few pounds worth of food but people who make millions from corrupt business dealings, like Baroness Mone, will probably get a slap on the wrist.

jonnycomputer7• 3 years ago

Along with a lot of the other excellent skeptical commentary here, I'd add that intergenerational time-frames are probably necessary, or at the very least, a great deal of time. Just because you won the lottery doesn't mean you aren't still addicted to crack, or don't have to deal with that idiot relative of yours who is. Just because you won the lottery doesn't mean that your brain has re-trained itself to respond to minor provocations as if they were not existential threats.

Caveat: I haven't read the paper.

But still.

scarby22• 3 years ago

This is essentially part of what the authors are saying.

Just having more money doesn't fix the environment you grew up in, your lack of education, your exposure to criminals etc.

cubefox3• 3 years ago

Or the genes you have.

jl62• 3 years ago

No, I think the parent is saying that having money might not fix you but it might fix your kids.

jl62• 3 years ago

In other words, since randomly increasing a person’s income does not reduce their crime rate, the first set of theories are falsified.

Too strong a conclusion. Crime is complex and there are no easy black & white answers that definitively establish “the” cause. It is much more likely that there are many factors that interact in ways that are difficult to disentangle.

At best, this study is suggestive that simply giving people money is not the whole answer (some may say, “duh”).

cubefox3• 3 years ago

It's not just not the whole answer, giving people money didn't help at all. Which suggests that poverty doesn't cause crime, even though it's correlated with crime.

tdsanchez• 3 years ago

I stopped reading at "It’s well known that people with lower incomes commit more crime."

I suspect the article is neoconservative garbage.

2devnull6• 3 years ago

Didn’t read the study but I don’t think 50% of Swedes having a whatever the name was savings account is “representative” but I’m not a Swede. I would think that 50% is not randomly distributed. Like could that 50% be older and lower income, more likely to be recent migrants, etc… at least in America people who play the lottery are below average.

I could read the paper, but I’m dubious it or any other study can answer this question to any degree of confidence, with much generalizability.

cubefox3• 3 years ago

Why was this [flagged]?

gmuslera• 3 years ago

Wouldn’t this study fall into Simpson’s Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox)?

D13Fd• 3 years ago

People who make bad choices tend to commit the kinds of crime that tend to get caught. People who make bad choices also tend to have more expenditures than income, so they don’t have a lot of money.

Changing the amount of money they have (e.g. winning the lottery as mentioned in the article) doesn’t change a person’s propensity for making bad decisions, so it’s not surprising that they continue to commit crimes, including the kinds of crime that tend to get caught.

Note - there are many ways to become poor that have nothing to do with committing crimes, so just because a person is poor doesn’t mean they are someone who would commit a crime.

naasking• 3 years ago

Along with all of the other issues already mentioned, like systematic biases and such, there is another simple possibility that is definitely a factor: impulse control.

If you have good control over impulses, you like are less likely to give in to the impulses to spend money unnecessarily, and this more likely to be financially responsible and thus less likely to be poor. I'm certain plenty of spontaneous petty crime comes down to poor impulse control in the moment.

xtiansimon• 3 years ago

A few random thoughts… Curious what they consider to be a “crime”, such that a person comes into money, does something ‘criminal’, and is subsequently labeled a recidivist.

If you lived your entire life with financial struggle versus having fallen on hard times, I think the former would have the imagination of the hustle, which would not be entirely subverted by ‘winning the lottery’.

How does one rehabilitate their moral judgment? Education? Not by only winning the lottery.

I’m reminded of Malcolm Gladwell’s reporting of the Starvation Experiment in his podcast Revisionist History. He discusses how the participants were effected their entire life by the experience of near-starvation.

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-rise...

Why do poor people commit more crime?

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