-The impact of crime on the individual, the community, the society
-Taking a look from the flip-side of the coin

By M Margaret Burke
IT is widely believed and with much statistical data to support the point that poverty is a

major causal factor of crime. These statistics have been derived from much researched work –- in many cases from reputable bodies to support the work done over many years. These are undisputed facts that no one should try to argue over. On the contrary however, is the fact that crime is also a contributory factor to poverty.

Maybe the most under-discussed subject matter, when looking at the social issue of ‘crime and poverty’ is that ‘crime causes poverty’, not that the reverse is not true, for it has been proven over the years, but enough is not being discussed on the effects of crime as it relates to causing poverty.

There is the old saying that “crime does not pay” and in this sense impoverishes the victim, the criminal and the community. High-crime areas discourage businesses and their customers, as well as residents; high levels of crime at any level tend to stall or discourage growth and development, be it within the home; within communities, and the nation in general.

White collar crime
Senior Lecturer of the University of Guyana, Mr Andrew Hicks, in an invited discourse stated, “It is customary when looking at the relation of crime and poverty in society, to treat crime as the dependent; that poverty is the predictor of crime and not very often it is viewed as crime being the predictor of poverty.
“In the context of white collar crime — tax evasion and all those kinds of things, where governments are responsible for providing public goods and services and one such good has to do with health; education… and those are social sector services that are aimed at socio-political, cultural and sometimes economic transformation.

“Through education we may be able to transition from one level of the class spectrum to another, but if as individuals and as companies we are not engaged in paying our fair share of taxes, then what in fact we are doing is impoverishing the state and by virtue of impoverishing the state we are impoverishing every other citizen and in the circumstances you are creating some disabilities within the state that limits the state’s capacity to provide meaningfully, in terms of the dispensation of public goods and services, for example in education and in health.”

Mr Hicks, who served the university as Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Head of the Department of Sociology, is of the view that, “If we cannot provide an acceptable quality of education, then what it means is that the citizens are going to be under-educated and therefore they are going to be without the capacity to contribute to the economic transformation or economic development of their respective economies of scale, whether it be at the level of the family, whether it be at the level of our regional constituencies or at the national level.”

In reinforcing the point of crime being a predictor or poverty, Mr Hicks noted that Sutherland (Edwin Sutherland is an American criminologist) did speak about the whole issue of ‘white collar crime syndrome’, “and so my argument therefore is that those of us who perpetrate various forms of white collar crime are in fact contributing to the perpetuation of poverty, because we are robbing citizens of an opportunity for government to meaningfully invest in their socio-cultural development and by extension an investment that speaks to their personal empowerment and transformation.”

Domestic violence
Mr Hicks has over the years been paying special attention to the family structure, youths, peer education and counselling stated, “If we look at domestic violence as another form of crime, then clearly, we can also find that there is a relationship between crime and poverty.”

He noted that while this view makes a departure from the traditional liberal economic perspective, he believes that this is a perspective that is still valid; in the context of economics, there is a tendency to evaluate production and development from the perspective of the GDP as a determinant of the levels of collective wealth that is earned by a nation, Hicks noted that just as white collar crime contributes significantly to the reduction of national wealth, “…similarly in the context of domestic violence, the continued maiming of our women; abuse of our women, contribute significantly to the perpetuation of poverty.

Women and social reproduction
And I hasten to say this because in its classical sense, women have been the main contributors to what is called social reproduction and when we speak about social reproduction, we are talking about the amount of time and resources that are required to make a new member of the society develop into a functional individual, who is capable of making a valuable contribution to the development and sustenance of that society.”

Hicks noted that women do this by substituting their own economies of scale in the context of income within the family; they help to engender substitutes by reducing the spending on unnecessary imports; by ensuring that the members of the family have the necessary nutrients and so on. He said that women, particularly our rural women, tend to have kitchen gardens, domestic birds that they rear, as a means of substituting family income, “and so in that context women are involved in what is called social production and social production is an informal economic arrangement, which is employed essentially by women within the context of their family systems to generate incomes as a means of substituting the economic needs of the family to guarantee sustenance; to guarantee social reproduction to make a new-born functional adult.”

A mother working in her kitchen garden
Therefore, he said that while the conventional economic system does not account for these contributions, we still cannot ignore the contributions of women in this context. “And so when we injure our women; when we abuse them, what in fact we are doing is inhibiting their capacity to substitute the income of the family in the context of social reproduction… creating a gap within the family system, and you are creating forms of economic hardship that are the result of domestic violence, but is separate and apart from the direct effect of the violence,” he posited.

A battered and traumatised woman
Mr Hicks pointed out that what we are speaking to here is the indirect effect of the violence, in that it means that our women no longer possess the inherent competencies to fully nurture members of the society and oftentimes when they are injured; when they experience incessant abuse; there continues to be the production of, “mal-socialised; malnourished; mal-equipped; and mal-prepared children, who are incapable of contributing meaningfully to the system of economic organisation, social organisation, political development and as a whole, societal development.”

Significant contributor to poverty
“Domestic violence again is also a significant contributor to poverty because not only are we undermining the socio and economic capacities of our women, but we are also undermining the potentiality of the newborn and therefore that newborn member of the society is unable to fully develop as a result of the poor opportunities at socialisation and therefore becomes mal-productive or a counter-productive new member of the society. In fact, they oftentimes become dependent on the society as a result of the experience of violence in the society,” Hicks said.

He noted that beyond domestic violence as a crime, there is also a social, as well as an economic cost and as the sociologist would always say, from a functional perspective, that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For example, when women continue to be maimed and injured, not only will their nurturing competencies and capacities be affected, but other demands are also being created in terms of the health of our women because obviously if women are injured, whether mentally or physically as a result of domestic violence, it means that government has to find additional resources to respond to what is considered the increasing phenomena and that means that if government has to provide more resources to help with the repair of the health of women; the children – boys and girls, it means that less resources are available to provide for the funding of education; to provide for the funding of micro-enterprises; to provide for investment opportunities.

“So in fact, the answer again is very clear, that domestic violence (as a crime) produces poverty, Mr Hicks offered.

He said that clearly the literature tells us and affirms that given the fact that crime and poverty share a positive correlation, there is a clear indication that when crime increases, poverty also increases and vice versa…that is fair evidence that crime impacts poverty.

This takes us to Part Two – dealing with crime and the criminal justice system, as it relates to crime as a predictor of poverty.” mercilinburke2017@gmail.com