Is poverty the mother of crime?

Question

Is poverty the mother of crime?
I believe that Marcus Aurelius uttered this statement quotPoverty is the mother of crime.quot Was he correct?

Answer

I dont think you can point to any one thing and say that it is the quotmother of crime.quot Different people have different motivations for committing the same crime, and one person may commit different crimes with different motivations. Poverty is one motivation for quotcrimequot in that in the face of a lack of other ways to be able to eat, most people will steal. On the other hand alcohol, drugs, passionate rage, and greed are all common motives. Many minor crimes are even committed by accident, for example speeding, selling alcohol to a minor, or bringing fruit across a border when it is forbidden. In these cases, people just arent paying attention.brbrThat said, I believe that your question is on a deeper level, you want to know whether poverty will always produce crime. Not that every poor person is a criminal, but whether a persons poverty level can be a reliable predictor of criminal activity, or whether there is a strong correlation between criminal activity and poverty level. I think that poverty does encourage people to commit certain kinds of crimes. A sense of hopelessness leads people into drug abuse for example, and many homeless people find that laws target them, so they are charged with trespassing and unlawful as a result of their search for a place to stay dry over night.brbrHowever, many other crimes are committed almost exclusively by rich people, and these crimes are perhaps less often brought into the open and prosecuted. Many people already answering this question have cited Enron as an example. Martha Stewart is another well known case of quotwhite collar crimequot as it is called. However, much more common are the people who cheat on their taxes, who violate wage labor laws, who hire undocumented immigrants, or children who are too young to work and pay them less than the minimum wage. Poor people rarely are computer hackers, nor are they usually responsible for the newest computer virus that makes us afraid to open emails. All of these crimes are very common, but generally committed in the privacy of ones own home, and often gotten clean away with.brbrTherefore, I believe that there is a positive correlation between poverty levels and criminal convictions, at least inside of the United States, however not necessarily between poverty and crime levels.