Poverty and Crime
The late political scientist James Q. Wilson
debunked the theory that crime results from poverty, or that redistributive government programs can reduce crime rates by alleviating poverty, by pointing out that “crime rose the fastest in this country at a time when the number of persons living in poverty or squalor was declining.” He added: “I have yet to see a ‘root cause’ or to encounter a government program that has successfully attacked it.”
In modern America, the correlation between high crime rates and poverty has a great deal to do with the proliferation of single-parent, father-absent households.
According to the U.S Census, in 2008 the poverty rate for single parents with children was 35.6%; the rate for married couples with children was 6.4%. For white families in particular, the corresponding two-parent and single-parent poverty rates were 21.7% and 3.1%, respectively. For Hispanics, the figures were 37.5% and 12.8%, and for blacks, 35.3% and 6.9%. According to
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, “the absence of marriage increases the frequency of child poverty 700 percent” and thus constitutes the single most reliable predictor of a self-perpetuating underclass.
Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a
Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime.
According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a
Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime.
According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Discover the Networks
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During the 1960's liberals had the opportunity to prove their theories about reducing crime by "getting to the root causes of crime" with the civil rights legislation and the war on Poverty. The crime rate doubled during that decade.
Social reform and social welfare spending have never reduced the crime rate. The only thing that works is punishment, lots and lots of punishment.