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Transcription
The podcast episode discusses the link between poverty and crime, focusing on Venezuela as a case study. It explains how the overall crime rate is calculated and compares the crime rates in different countries. The collapse of the Venezuelan economy led to a rise in crime and murder rates due to poverty and desperation. The broken windows theory is also discussed, which suggests that minor crimes can lead to disorder and major crimes. However, there is debate about its effectiveness and the potential for discriminatory policing. Policing these minor crimes can criminalize poverty and worsen the problem. It is argued that resources could be better used to address major crimes and make communities safer. The host shares his personal experience of witnessing the link between crime and poverty in Syria and Lebanon during periods of conflict and recession. Welcome back to another episode of the Politics of Poverty and Crime podcast. I am John. Joining alongside me today is my co-host Noah, and in today's episode, we will be discussing the link between poverty and crime. Our discussion will involve a deep dive into this link in both the United States and around the globe. Moreover, we will touch on efforts to address crime in the United States in addition to other concepts. I would like to begin today's episode by explaining how the overall crime rate of a country is calculated. Overall crime rate is calculated by dividing the total number of reported crimes of any kind by the total population, then multiplying the result by 100,000. The number 100,000 is usually done because typically crime rate is reported as an X number of crimes per 100,000 people, and you may have heard the phrase per capita, so the capita reversed to 100,000 people. The overall crime rate in the United States is 47.7 incidents per 100,000 people, while the crime rate in other countries around the globe, such as Venezuela, is 82.1 and 69.1 for Syria, and Honduras at 74.4. The common link that immediately comes to mind, personally, is without any research or deep dive into these countries, is that Venezuela, Syria, and Honduras are all countries that have high poverty rates, and the United States, obviously, in comparison to these countries, does not. To best understand the link between poverty and crime, I would like to examine the case study of Venezuela. Venezuela is what is known as a rentier state. A rentier state is a state that depends on profits from the export of natural resources, such as oil, to fund its economy. The problem with this way of deriving income is that if the price of oil drops, then the country will experience a massive recession because of this lack of diversification. This is exactly what happened to Venezuela in the year 2014. When the 2014 recession occurred as a result of the drop in oil price, inflation soared, and the Bolivar began to completely collapse. A major reason for the collapse of the Venezuelan currency was that imported goods became too expensive, and it forced the government to limit their importation. Everyday necessities became impossible to find, such as medicine and toilet paper, and if they were found, their prices were outrageous. The collapse of the Venezuelan economy resulted in complete chaos in the job market. Businesses began to close, and this in turn made it hard for people to get jobs. Moreover, hunger began to become an issue within the country. Both those who worked and did not work could not afford to feed themselves nor their families. Unfortunately, this creates a recipe for disaster, as people's desperation begins to make them commit crimes, whether violent or petty, and may even lead to them resorting to murder. Prior to the recession, the murder rate in Venezuela was at 79 murders per 100,000 people living in the country, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory. In the year after the recession, in 2015, the number of murders that occurred in Venezuela was believed to be around 27,000. Again, this is according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory. This rate would be around 90 murders per 100,000 residents, if we put it per capita. Venezuela has always had high crime and poverty rates historically, but this massively escalated following the collapse of the economy. In the year 2016, crime continued to rise, and the rate per capita killings in 100,000 individuals became 92, a rise from the year previous. In this same year, Venezuela's capital, Caracas, was named the most dangerous city in the world by the Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Its murder rate was at 110 individuals murdered per 100,000 citizens, an insane rise, and it really begins to show the connection between poverty and crime. This clear rise in murder and crime can be attributed with the desperation that hunger and poverty brings to individuals. Had the Venezuelan economy been more diversified, or had prices of oil skyrocketed, and job opportunities at every turn for hungry Venezuelans, there's a huge possibility that they would not resolve to crime, and in some cases, murder to feed their families as they'd have more resources. So, Noah, I know that you did some research regarding broken windows theory. Can you tell us a little bit about that, please? Yes. So, broken windows theory was this idea that minor crimes result in disorder and lead to major crimes, which then lead to the demise of a community. The metaphor of the theory is that if you leave a broken window in a building unattended, others will soon be broken as well, kind of like a domino effect or a downward spiral. Therefore, the only way to stop the demise of the building is to address the first broken window immediately. What this looks like in a community sense is addressing these crimes of disorder, such as public drinking, panhandling, vagrancy, and prostitution. These types of minor crimes are often associated with people of low socioeconomic status, meaning this theory can lead to discriminatory policing of certain communities, as officers will over-police communities where these crimes are prevalent. Broken windows theory attempts to address the perception of the community rather than the reality. Sorry to cut you off, but what do you mean by the perception of the community? It is similar to this idea of public drinking only being allowed when a brown bag is placed over the bottle. As long as the problem is out of sight, there is no problem. If the police can play this kind of night watchman role and people see them, quote-unquote, cleaning up the streets by locking up the perceived disorderlies, then the perception of the community will be that it is safe. The broken windows theory places a lot of stock in the fact that fear is what divides a community. As citizens will withdraw from a community when disorderly conditions and minor crimes increase. Fortner discussed this a little in the Black Silent Majority, where he brought up examples of citizens of Harlem saying that they could not go to church, run a business, or function effectively as a community due to the fear of crime. This led the black middle class to advocate for policing tactics that were rooted in the same logic as the broken windows theory of, you know, cracking down on these minor crimes to better the public perception of the community. Now I assume there was some pushback on this idea of policing. Can you please tell us about that? Yeah, there definitely was. As I touched on a little bit earlier, many believed that policing these minor crimes would lead to more discriminatory policing. Brandon Welsh brought up the fact that many believed that race and style of dress play a role in the perceived disorder of the community. He even said that black people have come to be perceived as the broken windows themselves. This resulted in policies such as Stop and Frisk in New York, which unfairly targeted minority populations and led to the perception that the police view people of color as a danger to the community. So how did this kind of policing impact those who live in poverty? Yeah, like you talked a lot about the link between crime and poverty earlier, and all that holds true here as well, as the crimes of the broken windows theory attempts to target, such as vagrancy and panhandling, come from mainly people in poverty, essentially criminalizing poverty in itself. When you punish people who are in extreme poverty like this by giving them a criminal record, it just worsens the problem, as now they have less of a chance to get a job as they have a criminal record and may have to pay bail costs, which they cannot afford. Rather than attempting to help these issues, such as in the example of vagrancy, an officer could give someone a ride to the nearest homeless shelter. There's major pushback from many that support community policing, as the broken windows theory argues for basically the exact opposite, such as more punitive measures. Many believe that with broken windows theory's idea of policing, you are sacrificing public perception of the police as fair for the perception of the community as safe. That's incredibly interesting. You've talked a lot about the perception of the community being safe, but when implemented, does this form of policing actually make communities safer? Yeah, so there are mixed results regarding how effective this form of policing is, as some say it does result in a reduction of crime, and some say it doesn't. One thing that many agree on, however, is that over-policing these minor crimes is a waste of resources that could go into actually making the community safer. Every officer that is sent out with the intent to catch vagrants and police public drinking could be an officer focusing on major crimes that actually result in harm to citizens. So in that sense, I believe that this idea of policing does not make communities safer, as the resources could be used wiser. John, I know we've talked about Venezuela and the broken windows theory in relation to crime and poverty. You've lived in a number of countries around the world. Have you personally seen the link between crime and poverty in any of the countries you've lived in? Yeah, of course. I'd love to talk about that. So, yes, I have. I grew up in Syria, and because of the civil war, I was forced to move to Lebanon in the year 2013 for a two- to three-year period. I and my family are all American citizens. I was born in Austin, Texas, personally, and we chose to live in these countries because prior to periods of conflict and recession, they were incredibly safe, economically good, and overall had a great quality of life. And so I lived in Lebanon from 2013 to 2014, and then I moved to the United States, and my family didn't really like it there, so we chose to move back to Lebanon from 2014 to 2016. And during this time, there was no issue of crisis in the country at all. It seemed like the Arab Spring had stopped right at Syria. So what was the inflation rate like? Yeah, so the inflation rate at the time that I lived in Lebanon was actually incredibly good. It was so good that, I mean, by heart, I knew the conversion rate from dollar to Lebanese lira. It was about $1 to 1,500 lira, which is a significantly small amount of Lebanese money, not to be fooled by the figure of the thousand. I knew this number by heart, again, because of how stable the currency was in relation to the dollar. What about the overall safety of the country? Yeah, so the country was incredibly safe. I mean, I, as a 12, 13-year-old kid, I'd go to the mall alone with friends, and I'd even get in a taxi alone and go to a friend's house. I'd walk for brief periods of time to go to soccer practice near where I lived. I mean, the country really was overall pretty safe, and there was no issue with gas or petrol at the time. They were able to fuel cars, power homes, businesses, and really other facets of everyday life that a properly economically sound country should be able to. I always felt safe and believed that I really had the best access to the best resources while I lived there. But after the year 2016, my family decided to move back to Boston. So when you visited Lebanon again after moving to Boston, how was it different from when you lived there? Yeah, so I visited Lebanon right after the pandemic, and in the six years that have gone by since I wasn't there anymore, the country had experienced a numerous amount of events that led to the deterioration of its economy. So in 2019, the Lebanese bank system began to experience an issue of liquidation shortage. The country's economy was suffering, and it was clear that the scenario in which the Lebanese government could default on its debts was a very real possibility. I know in America we joke like, oh, who are we in debt to? But this is a really bad thing that can happen in countries. This resulted in the October 17th revolution and mass protests that were gathered after the government announced new tax measures. The purpose of these protests was to call for the resignation of the president and his entire cabinet. Now, after these protests ended, Lebanese banks closed for two weeks, and when they opened up again and people tried to go take their money that they have lawfully outside of their accounts, they were restricted and weren't able to do so in dollars. They were only told, hey, you can only take a certain amount of money out every month. And that was like maybe like $300. And I'm talking about people who need this money to depend on their lives and to pay rent and stuff. So I mean, I personally know several people that still struggle with this issue and can only withdraw a certain amount of cash from their own bank accounts every month. And because of this issue now and lack of liquidation, the black market began offering its own exchange rate. And this is what really the country functioned on. So the dollar to Lebanese ratio was at one point with a dollar 1.5 that doubled to 3000. And then it jumped to 14000 in March 2021. And then when I visited in the summer of 2022, it was around a dollar for 23000 lira, an insane hyperinflation that really resulted in Lebanon that both horrified and broke my heart. What were some other effects of this lack of liquidity? So because of this crisis, there was massive lines at gas station. I mean, it was Lebanon had to decrease the imports that came into the country, as we saw with the case of Venezuela. And as a result, there was a really, really tough issue with importing oil into the country. Parts of the country that could not afford private generators or the new price of oil to power them were left completely dark. There was a massive increase in homelessness and businesses that were closed. It is estimated there are 785 cafes or restaurants were closed down between September 19th and February 22, and around 25000 employees lost their jobs. So, yeah, did you have any interactions with people who worked in cafes and hear their experiences? Yeah, I sadly did. Waiters and hotel staff would constantly tell us horrible stories of how they're barely getting by and how dire the situation is. And we and they just tell us they couldn't function. Their basic needs were no longer being met. There's no medicine, hyperinflation in the country, no fuel made it hard to live. I mean, some of these people didn't even have power, an hour of government power a day. So it's really hard to live. So to give some context about why this is happening, a thousand dollars during the time that I lived in Lebanon equates around one million Lebanese Lira. However, once I visited, that was only a hundred dollars, a massive drop in price. And these people's salaries weren't being adjusted. So the waiter that would tell the story has seen his salary go from a thousand dollars a month to a hundred in a period of no time. So how did this economic catastrophe and subsequent rise in poverty affect crime? So the collapse of the economy and increased poverty in Lebanon resulted in increased crime. Unfortunately, desperation changed the behavior of individuals, sadly. And people would take up arms and go to banks and hold them hostage, demanding that the money they had in their accounts be given to them because there was no other way they could do that. They had to take action in their own hands. And this sometimes worked and sometimes resulted in really sad, tragic incidents. Moreover, I began to feel a sense of anxiety that I never felt before when I was in Lebanon, especially going to places alone at night. I no longer felt completely safe because I understood the reality of the situation, that poverty causes increases in crime. And parents seeing their children go hungry or sick without medication will eventually reach a point where they decide that they have to do something to fix the situation. And unfortunately, crime was so often the only thing they could think of in the answer in Lebanon because nothing else was working. I know you looked more at the American side of things, Noah, and how Biden has attempted to address crime during his presidency. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So throughout Biden's time in office, gun violence has been spiking nationwide and gun control has been a hot topic of debate between the two parties. In March of 2022, Biden announced his budget for 2023, where he poured heavy funding into law enforcement to address gun crime. Biden has stated his preference for community-based policing and the importance of building relationships between citizens and the police. By allocating this money to city and state law enforcement, Biden increases the scope of federal input on law enforcement, which could rub many conservatives the wrong way, as they could see this as an overreach by the federal government. Key pieces of Biden's budget were money for new U.S. marshals to help state law enforcement with violent offenders and increase in attorneys to prosecute cases quickly and effectively. I know. I just want to ask, how does Biden's approach compare to the broken windows theory idea of policing that you talked about earlier? So, yeah, Biden wants to take a proactive approach rather than the reactive approach of the broken windows theory like I talked about. He included $30 billion to support crime prevention and stressed the importance of community intervention to stop these problems before they start. He's also focusing heavily on important major crimes such as gun crimes, and he didn't mention anything specific about this policing of minor crimes that broken windows looked at so heavily. This shift of focus is needed as the policing of minor crimes and policies such as stop and frisk, like I talked about earlier, have not produced viable results of decreasing violent crime. So it sounds like Biden is taking major crimes pretty seriously, but has he done anything to address the link between poverty and crime? Yes, Biden acknowledges this link between crime and poverty and proposed several plans in 2022 that passed alongside his budget. One of these plans was an employment program for at-risk youth and formerly incarcerated people. Biden allocated $75 million and cited that summer employment has been shown to reduce youth violent crime. Again, this is another proactive step to attempt to solve these systemic issues at its roots with children at the forefront. Biden also wants to provide more funding to cover mental health care for those who are formerly incarcerated. There's a common theme between many of Biden's plans to reduce crime and poverty and involves providing support to people that after they are released from jail or prison. In our Memphis policy presentation, we saw how Mayor Young believed that most of the crime in Memphis fell on reoffenders. Biden wants to provide a support system to the formerly incarcerated to reduce the number of reoffenders and use jail and prison as places of rehabilitation rather than punishment. Biden also allocated more resources to schools and housing to try to reduce poverty, which he believed in turn would reduce crime. John, you've looked at the relationship between crime and poverty across the globe. How does this trend fare in cities in the U.S.? Yeah, so unfortunately, it seems to be present out of the top 10 states with the most probability of becoming a victim of violent crime. New Mexico is first with a 1 out of 28 chance of becoming a victim of violent crime. And then Arkansas second following with one out of 150 chance of becoming a victim of violent crime. And Louisiana short following with one out of 159 chance of becoming a victim of crime. Now, moving on to in terms of poverty rate, all these states are unfortunately also inside the top five. Louisiana comes in second at 17 percentage of poverty rate. New Mexico third with 16.8 percentage of poverty and Arkansas fifth with 15.2 percent of poverty rate. So unfortunately, again, we've seen in these states that poverty seems to align with high crime rates in the country. And in order to truly understand that these trends are accurate, however, and not just mere anomalies, we must conduct a case study in one of these states and answer the question, has poverty going up or down resulted in seeing the same trend showing the crime? To answer this, we should examine the case of Louisiana. In the year 2011, Louisiana's poverty rate was at 20.4 percent and the total number, the total crimes committed that year was around 194,000. And from 2011 to 2018, the crime rate decreased by 8.4 percent, while the poverty rate decreased by 1.8 percent. Both crime and poverty levels in 2018, one of the lowest experienced in Louisiana since 2000. And the fact that cities with high crime in the United States and have high poverty and Louisiana's case study from 2011 providing us with similar numbers allows me to unfortunately reach the connection that again, here, poverty seems to be linked with crime. And moving on from Louisiana, Noah, I know that you grew up in Memphis and have lived here your entire life. Do you want to provide some kind of overview on Memphis as it relates to crime? Yeah, so especially recently, Memphis has had an extremely high crime rate when compared to other U.S. cities. As of April 2nd of this year, 2024, Memphis has the highest aggravated assault rate in the country, the second highest robbery rate in the country and the third highest murder rate. In 2023, Memphis had the highest murder rate of any large American city. Major crimes such as violent and property crimes have risen in recent years in Memphis. This rise in crime coincided with many citizens leaving the city for the suburbs. 30,000 people have left the city of Memphis since 2017. And in the last five years, the city of Memphis has seen its population decline by 5 percent. This data supports the broken windows theory that I talked about earlier and how when the community is perceived as unsafe, people will withdraw from it. It also supports the links between poverty and crime as those people with enough money will leave the city for the suburbs, which leaves many of the people in the city being of low socioeconomic status and does more crime in the city. Most of the crime in Memphis is committed in a few concentrated areas, often those with the highest poverty levels like South Memphis and Orange Mounds. Speaking of that link between poverty and crime, what is the condition of poverty in Memphis? So, yeah, Memphis has had an overall poverty rate of around 21 percent last year in 2023, which is about 10 percent higher than the U.S. average in the city. Memphis has the fifth highest overall poverty rate of any city in the country. The poverty rate of white citizens is lower than the poverty rate of Memphis' minority citizens. Even worse than their overall poverty rate is Memphis' child poverty rate. Memphis has the third highest child poverty rate in the country at around 33 percent. I know it's cliche to say, you know, children are the future, but it's true. And the fact that the child poverty rate is over 10 percent higher than the overall poverty rate in Memphis does not bode well for Memphis' long term economic outlook. This is why I agree with Biden's budget proposal earlier of investing in youth in order to propel them forward into society and reduce the juvenile crime rate, which Memphis has had a problem of as of late. So what kind of policing strategies is Memphis taking to address the crime problem it's facing? So one staple operation of the Memphis Police Department has been their Blue Crush operation that was implemented nearly 20 years ago in 2005 by former Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin. And it's still in use today. Blue Crush used statistics and data to find where these crime hotspots were and thus to deploy officers to these locations and catch more crime. The idea behind this new policing strategy called predictive policing was it would allow the police department to be effective in the deployment of their resources and therefore they could catch more crime and thus make the community safer. Godwin stated that the program immediately paid dividends and crime fell. He also said it was preferential to the old system of foot patrols as it was data driven and thus wasted less resources. So what were some criticisms of Blue Crush? Yeah, Blue Crush has come under fire recently with police brutality being discussed more in the media, especially in Memphis with the death of Tyree Nichols last year. Many believe that Blue Crush is a self-fulfilling prophecy as if you send more police to a certain area, they're bound to catch more crime. These high crime areas in Memphis tend to be areas with high poverty and predominantly black citizens and dispatching more police there contributes to the mass incarceration of predominantly black Americans. The Blue Crush program also seems a bit outdated in terms of policing techniques as many including President Biden believe community policing and proactive approaches to crime should be preferred to getting tough on crime and punishment. By increasing police presence in predominantly black neighborhoods for the sole purpose to crack down on crime, the negative perception of police in that community will continue and worsen. Some have compared the program to the now disbanded Scorpion unit, which is the unit that the officers who killed Tyree Nichols belong to. They say the training needs to be thorough in order to make sure there is no discriminatory treatment that could result in harmful interactions between the community and the police. In my opinion, it seems that the Blue Crush system is outdated and obviously is not the most effective form of policing as you can see with Memphis' crime problem. Hopefully, new city leaders like Mayor Paul Young can enact more proactive approaches to crime that not only provide stronger relationships between police and community members, but also help reduce the crime rate. John, since I've just spoken about my hometown, the U.S., would you like to provide some input on your city? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So overall in Boston, violent crime and poverty are fairly low in comparison to other urban cities. The violent crime rate in Boston stands at 6.2 incidents per 100,000 residents, and the poverty rate, meanwhile, is at 16.5 percent. This number on face value, again, may seem high, but as I just mentioned, it's pretty low in comparison to highly populated urban cities. And this continues to support the trend that we see, which is that poverty and crime are aligned. So what are some reasons that Massachusetts is so good on crime? Yeah, so Massachusetts has pretty strict gun laws. Actually, it's the fourth strongest gun laws in the country. And this results in a low rate of gun death, which is 3.7 deaths per 100,000 individuals compared to 14.4, which is the national average. And moreover, Boston engages in community policing, which emphasizes that the police should build relationships with the community. This program has resulted in incredibly positive outcomes and has seen the reduction of crime rates all through Boston. The implementation of this program has resulted, again, also in multiple decreases of drug related offenses and other crimes. Tight drug laws and community policing are two examples of great work that Boston has done to reduce their crime rates alongside very, very good gun laws. Part of the system, Boston's experience includes being proactive rather than reactive. I know you mentioned this a lot in Biden's legislation. And so this includes issues as partnering with Roka to bring Rewire 4 training to the department. And Rewire 4 is a cognitive behavioral skill based practice designed specifically for police officers in use for the field. It arms them with methods to use it when on duty and when they're interacting and responding with individuals and events. Rewire 4 gives officers the ability to understand the brain science and trauma that in turn provides them with methods to safely and efficiently intervene. Overall, after close examination of cases across the globe related to crime and poverty, in addition to instances in the United States, there really seems to be a common theme here. Unfortunately, the theme is that crime and poverty have a strong relationship. When poverty becomes a factor, crime rates go up. This is for a number of factors, but mostly most probably desperation that results from lack of hope in certain people's circumstances and situations. And I would suggest crime have helped, but the root cause is still being neglected, that the people who are suffering from poverty need help and resources to escape from this life. And if we solve that issue or at least help it greatly, we may even begin to see a true reduction in crime. And thank you for tuning into another episode of the Politics of Poverty and Crime podcast. This has been your host, Jon and Noah. We really hope you enjoyed this episode about poverty and crime and are looking forward to the next episode. You can find the Politics of Poverty and Crime podcast on your streaming platform of choice, such as Spotify and Apple Music. Thank you again very much and goodbye.
