The Disconnect pt2

Complex Problem, Complex Cause, Complex Solution     

A popular explanation for crime is that poverty causes crime and blacks spend more time in poverty than whites. After all, if you go to any ghetto, you generally find high crime as well as a high concentration of black people. Blacks in America reported a lower average income than every other group (Bowman, 2010). Blacks are also twice as likely to be living in poverty in comparison to the rest of the population (Poverty rate among African Americans nearly double that of White Americans, 2010). On the surface, the causal relationship seems obvious and logical. If a person is lacking the income to attain the standard of living he aspires to, he is more likely to rob someone than someone who has plenty of money. Fifty-three percent of people in prison earned less than $10,000 in the year prior to their incarceration (Williams, 2007). People with little access to money usually have a lower education level than those with plenty. In Detroit, one of the poorest sections of America, the graduation rate is between twenty-five to forty percent of all students (Williams, 2007). This also holds true for the mascot of crime in the ghetto, the crack dealer. These are people who make the equivalent of minimum wage or less while standing in the open on the street corner, hoping that a rival dealer doesn’t gun him down (Levitt, 2009). In a study done by Sudhir Venkatesh in the book, Freakonomics, Venkatesh is granted a rare look inside the inner workings and financial dealings of a Chicago crack gang. The low level dealers making between three and seven dollars an hour are largely uneducated. The one with the college education found himself as the leader of the local gang. He made, on average, $8500 each month. Lack of education led the lower level associates to a life of crime with very little pay while the educated criminal saw very high pay. Why did the leader turn to crack dealing, even after getting a college education? It was because of a lack of integration at the office in which he worked. He felt out of place.

            The question we are asking in this section, however, is whether or not poverty directly causes crime. This has been a controversial topic over the years. However, a look at the numbers can provide us with insight here as well. During three periods in America’s history, we have seen the economy both rise and fall and have had the opportunity and ability to track the overall crime rate. The Great Depression was a huge downswing for the economy causing a large increase in poverty. We recovered and rolled into the 1960’s, a time of prosperity and an economy that was going up. Since 2008, we have been in a downswing again in our economy (Mac Donald, 2010). According the “poverty causes crime” theory, crime should have risen in the Great Depression, fallen during the 1960’s, and should be on the rise again today. However, facts show a different tale. Crime plummeted during the Great Depression. As Heather Mac Donald states, “The Great Depression also contradicted the idea that need breeds predation, since crime rates dropped during that prolonged crisis.” During the prosperous times of the 1960’s, crime was on the rise again. Even though more cushy, government jobs were being opened for inner city residents, homicide went up by forty-three percent. Today, as our economy goes down again, we should be expecting to see a rise in crime only if we have not been paying attention to history and we are not let down; crime has fallen to the lowest it has been since the early 1960’s. So, we can be fairly sure that while people in poverty may be more likely to commit crime, poverty itself does not cause crime. So, does this mean that black people truly are committing ten times more crime, per capita, than white people? So, knowing that poverty itself does not directly cause crime, we can move past poverty and income as a major factor.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation keeps very detailed records of crimes committed. A quick look at their statistics reveals that, while black people compose a higher percentage of arrests than they do of the general populace, with blacks composing twenty-eight percent of total arrests to the sixty-nine percent of arrests from white people, it doesn’t bear out a tenfold increase over the rate of arrest for white people. This does not hold true however for homicide. When comparing homicide rates, the black rate very well could be ten times higher than the white rate. Blacks account for thirty-seven percent of homicide arrests (Crime in the US, 2009, 2010). When it comes to drug arrests, thirty-three percent of those arrested were black as opposed to white people accounting for sixty-five percent of the arrests. This means that blacks were arrested at a rate nearly three times higher than their percentage of the population would suggest. As I pointed out in my example of the crack dealers in the ghetto, crack-cocaine is indeed a problem in the black community. However, the group Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP), has compiled data that shows that blacks comprise only eleven percent of the nation’s drug users while making up nearly sixty percent of those in state prisons for felony drug convictions. They also point out that prior to mandatory minimum sentencing, blacks received sentences six percent longer than whites. Four years later, black prison terms were ninety-three percent longer than white prison terms. A big portion of that disparity comes from the disparity in enforcement of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Crack is largely used in the black ghettos whereas powder cocaine is generally the drug of choice more affluent, usually white users. In order for a person in possession of cocaine to receive the same sentence as a person possessing crack, he must have one hundred times the amount of powder by weight than the person with crack. To add to it, while other drugs require the intent to distribute in order to get the harsh sentencing, one must merely possess crack to be hit with the harsher sentencing (The EFFECTIVE NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY 1999, 1999). Since crack has such harsh sentencing and is generally a black drug, it is largely black people who get sent away for these long prison terms for possessing crack.  The Institute on Race & Poverty had this to say: ” African Americans constitute 13% of the country's drug users; 37% of those arrested on drug charges; 55% of those convicted; and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.” (Institute on Race & Poverty, 2000). No matter how you cut it, there is a definite bias coming to light.