Inequality and Distribution of Crime

            Theorists attempt to attack the engulfing problem of crime from many different angles. Crime is so encompassing that it is difficult to know where to begin. Often times it is toiling to decide on a definition of the intangible subject of crime. This paper proposes that the problem of solving crime is difficult because crime is very diverse. It is just as equally difficult to devise a plan of action because inequality and crime and crime distribution changes.       This paper will attempt to explore the crime problem through the visions of the anomie‑strain perspective. The ideas behind this theory concern the stress and strain that people feel in everyday life. This theory explains that crime results from the stress people feel when they set goals or aspirations that are too high and unattainable. In order to reduce or attempt to eliminate the stress and strain, people either lower their goals or increase their potential opportunities which usually means that they commit crimes to gain something they ordinarily could not obtain. The anomie‑strain approach also involves social change. The social change programs involve adjusting society so that the socioeconomic levels and opportunity are equal for everyone. The anticipated goals of this theory are to eliminate the greed and selfishness as well as the overreaching aspirations that lead to the strain and stress and eventually crime.           One of the fundamental issues of the anomie‑strain perspective is the optimism versus pessimism debate. The main concern of this background issue is focused on crime control. The concern is whether or not crime control can be effective or not. People on the optimistic side of the debate argue that through hard work, crime can be eliminated. Those on the pessimistic side of the debate argue that ever since history began, people have sinned or committed crimes. Further, in the present, people continue to sin and commit crime. And in the future, people will continue to sin and commit crime. Pessimists believe that there is no way to completely wipe out the sinful nature of people.             The problem foreseen is with concern to how to devise a plan of action to combat crime in the future. As stated before, crime is changing. Crime is becoming more diversified and more distributed. The theories presently devised are directed towards the crime that exists now. There is a lot of crime developing from inequality which includes socioeconomic issues like poverty. But the problem this author feels, lies in explaining and combating the growing trend in more upper world, corporate and organized crime.   In a short preview, this paper will discuss some of the issues involved in crime caused by inequality. Also in discussion will be some of the issues involved in white collar crime, which is not explained by the inequality and crime theory. There will also be an attempt to find a means to explain the disparity between such crime and a means to combat these crimes.

This paper will begin by defining how crime statistics are calculated. Beginning in the 1930's, the United States Department of Justice began compiling national crime statistics. They published these statistics in what is called the Uniform Crime Reports or commonly called the UCR. The crime rate is expressed as the number of crimes per unit of population, typically per 100,000 (Hagan, 1989). The formula is as follows:

 

crime rate= number of index crimes x 100,000

population

 

This author feels that the crime rates usually listed in the Uniform Crime Reports as well as other crime reports or statistics are not accurately representing the crime that exists. Conklin (2003) in his book, Why Crime Rates Fell, reported that police departments sometimes manipulate crime data to suit their own agendas. Sometimes they may classify serious crimes as minor ones to minimize crime problems to keep the community calm and unaware. Also, sometimes police departments may upgrade or exaggerate minor crimes to make the appearance of a crime epidemic in order to receive more funding for the department. Another big issue is the fact that often times the police fail to record some crime for whatever reasons they see fit. While Conklin made the conclusion that crime rates fell in the 90's, he claimed that it had nothing to do with underreporting or manipulation of the statistics. He argued that there was a slight decrease in crime. The crime indicators that he used were the murder rate, the robbery rate, the burglary rate, and the motor vehicle theft rate each measured in crimes per 100,000. Conklin does not even mention corporate or organized crime which can be classified under the terms upper‑world or white collar crimes.

Upper‑world crimes fall under Uniform Crime Reports Part II offenses. Only the crimes that are resolved by an arrest are put into the statistics. Brown, Esbensen, and Geis (2001) argue that most upper‑world crimes are private in nature or are very difficult to detect. So, it is very likely and very characteristic that many of those crimes are underestimated. The Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, 1998 (2000) shows in Figure 1.1 compiling data from October 1, 1997 to September 30, 1998 that fraudulent crimes including embezzlement and fraud make up 12.7% of all offenses which is more than violent offenses including murder and robbery that make up only 4.8% of all offenses. This paper must note that in the research that was found, most sources do not even mention upper‑world, white collar, corporate, or organized crime. Nor does the research mention poverty or inequality crimes. For purposes of discussion, violent, some drug, and some property crimes will be indicative of poverty in crime. Fraud, embezzlement, some property, some drug, and public order crimes will be indicative of white collar or upper‑world crimes. Support for these positions come from ideas found in Tom O’Connor’s lecture notes on poverty, inequality, and crime (2001) and the lecture notes on the varieties of strain theory (2002). The notes argue that people who perceive themselves on the lower end of the social cultural ladder and perceive the inequality or disparity, as opposed to those who are on the higher end of the social and cultural ladder, feel deprived and react by committing property crimes or violent crimes that have deep seeded roots in intense anger towards deprivation. The lecture notes pertaining to Durkheim’s spin on strain theory, as this author felt it pertained to white collar offenders, states that “The more one has, the more one wants.’’  Durkheim suggests that there is no restraint upon the aspirations that one possesses. People’s appetites are not controlled by public opinion and therefore become distorted. “A condition of anomie results from passions being less disciplined, precisely when they need more disciplining.” (Durkheim 1897). Merton’s ideas on strain theory suggest that high achievement and economic aspirations exist throughout the social classes, but it is the lower class who are the most vulnerable to experience the strain because they continue to hold on to their aspirations in the face of failure. This author disagrees with that idea because the higher class also experiences the strain and vent in a negative way, breaking the law.

Donald Cressey (1961) uses a statement he read before that says, “The principle in the criminal law if democratic nations is that criminal behavior is behavior that is punishable by law; the principle does not state that behavior is not criminal unless it is punished.” Further, Edwin Sutherland argues that white collar crime, which was not often studied, has been placed in a category of its own. He continues that there is only one definition of crime and that is the legal one. Sutherland says that white collar crime is by legal definition a crime, but through certain laws, including the Sherman Antitrust Law, is given separate procedures for dealing with those criminals that is different from the procedures for the other types of crime. Based on data that Sutherland collected on 70 large corporations, there was an average of four convictions per company in criminal courts. A simple, ordinary criminal would after four convictions be labeled an habitual offender. Among those 70 largest industrial and mercantile companies in the United States, 97.1 percent were found to be recidivists. This author is exclaiming that there is a huge problem that exists with the increasing world of white collar or upper‑world crime. This epidemic needs to be more than recognized, it needs to be stopped. Crime can not be deterred or prevented over night, but at least there needs to be some serious punishments being handed out. It is not enough to just punish these large corporations or other white collar criminals with a slap on the wrist or pinch in the wallet, like Enron whose stock dropped 91 percent to $0.26 per share and was forced to file for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy (Weiss, 2003), they need to be punished in the same manner as the everyday street criminal. According to the Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics,1998 from the United States Department of Justice, data depicted in Figure 2.2, compiled from October 1, 1997 through September 30, 1998 shows that violent offenders were more likely to be prosecuted than public order offenders. Also, drug and public order offenders, associated with higher class individuals, were more likely to have their cases settled through alternative resolution than property offenders, usually descriptive of lower class individuals.

Robert Merton building on Emile Durkheim’s concepts on organized or white collar crime explained crime or deviant behavior as a result of society and culture. Merton termed pathological materialism as an American preoccupation with economic success. Here, stress is put on the goals of monetary success and material property while the means of attaining those goals and the legal or moral controls are placed on the back burner. Anomie comes in when people are forced to face the contradiction between their goals and the means they have for attaining them. Merton explains, “[People] become estranged from a society that promises them in principle what they are deprived of in reality.” The increasing need for governmental intervention has led to specialized federal law enforcement agencies. Though the agencies exist, federal law enforcement agencies are divided and uncoordinated. These agencies need to be the more coordinated and advanced agencies in order to combat white collar crime because it only takes an ordinary police officer to catch an ordinary street offender, but it takes education, skill, and expertise to catch the more highly educated white collar offender.

Emile Durkheim, who has written some theories on suicide, but is considered to be a homicide theorist, constructed a plane that he argued could be used to map any society. The plane is demonstrated below: