Research Proposal Part IResearch Proposal Part ICJA/334August 24, 2015Research Proposal Part IThe issue under examination is that poverty, characterized by factors such as low-income, a poor education, lack of opportunity, and even dysfunctional homes is a phenomenon that causes crime. This is a significant issue because poverty and crime are elements that affect our entire country. Poverty and crime may be concentrated in specific areas but when gentrification comes to crime-ridden impoverished neighborhoods the criminal element moves to other tranquil areas and engage in criminality therein (Freeman, Braconi, 2004). The issue of poverty and crime is also compelling because poverty (the Independent Variable), has a close relationship to crime (the Dependent Variable). This relationship is negatively meaningful because government officials who want to eliminate poverty must also address and confront crime. Simply put, throwing money at the problem would not be enough. Furthermore, a critical element of this issue is that poverty, not race or ethnicity, is more closely related to crime. It may also not be sufficiently clear while millions of Americans who have lived in poverty have not engaged in crime while others do. This issue is also significant because other North American countries such as Canada are becoming criminally affected by the ravaging patterns of crime and poverty (Glotzer, 2006). It is alarming that a study of 236 cities revealed a relationship between violent crime and cluster poverty (Stretesky, Schuck, and Hogan 2004). Last but not least, mental illness has found an ally in poverty to unite and contribute to crime (Markowitz, 2006). Simply put, a mentally unsound individual who is denied or deprived of professional mental health care has a higher propensity to engage in crime. All of the aforementioned factors and conditions are the reason why this issue is worthy of examination.
General Area of StudyThe general area of study is that poverty, whether concentrated, isolated, or scattered, is the causation of crime. The writer of this paragraph lived in a crime-free town in North Carolina where interestingly a single block of government housing units marked by poverty was the only place that was crime-ridden. Although some scholars may not have been able to establish an intimate link between poverty and crime, numerous studies indicate that where there is poverty there is also crime. It is also arguable that poverty and crime may even share a symbiotic relationship. For those who want to disproportionately focus on race when it comes to poverty and crime, scholarly research has demonstrated that extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods, whether inhabited by
one-half white, one-half black, or one-quarter Asian, are where crime is concentrated. Furthermore, while several large studies have estimated a link between poverty and crime, these studies have never shown strong evidence. Indeed, studies have been unable to prove that crime is a major contributors of poverty. Thus, to prove that the economic basis of crime is not that of poverty as well as of crime as defined by these studies, a number of scholars have sought to identify a strong causal link between the geographic composition of poverty and crime. As noted earlier, many scholars who have reviewed the literature of crime have concluded that:
It is impossible to establish a causal link between poverty and crime. It is thus difficult to provide epidemiological results of a statistical nature, especially in an area where the overall population is of high risk.
However, there is some very strong evidence that poverty is a significant predictor of crime.
What is important about poverty, however, is that the evidence strongly supports, at least in part, the notion that the economic, social, and cultural basis of crime are connected to it.
It is not that a poverty or a crime is a natural part of social existence. One can see the economic rationale behind both the poverty and crime hypothesis, including a wide variety of socio-economic and legal factors that may contribute to a particular crime.
Many people have also noted that social and cultural norms that are associated between poverty and crime and the underlying moral and political issues surrounding criminal behavior may have a much higher probability of being influenced or even reinforced by crime than those that are not.
Some scholars believe that the problem of poverty and crime is not solely economic. The general analysis of studies of poverty and crime suggests that it is a general problem in which human society tends to treat poverty as a specific problem, rather than an individual problem.
Society has the freedom to change poverty in order to keep it a problem. This flexibility is especially apparent in crime where there are few public infrastructure. Thus, in addition to reducing poverty, governments tend to create or enforce some types of social security in order to maintain its level of social stability. There is strong evidence to suggest that this kind of social security is not the entire problem that creates the problem but rather an issue of social cohesion. In addition to creating or enforcing social security, it is also possible to keep poverty under control on a social, moral and political level.
The fact that the vast majority of non-criminals and violent felons are still incarcerated, on parole, or in correctional facilities is probably the highest proportion of people who can be rehabilitated at all.
While efforts to increase police brutality and other criminal offenses have focused on nonviolent offenders, criminologists have found that an often overlooked mechanism is the increased use of nonviolent offenders in prisons. However, it appears that these efforts have failed to produce positive results. This does not mean that there are no opportunities for improvement in criminal justice. It is true that criminal justice reform efforts appear to be on the decline.
Despite advances in data