I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:04 am Post subject: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
One of the more constant ideas embedded in our speculations about the social effects of Peak Oil is that the economic decline it brings will bring torrents of crime, violence, and societal decay. This is so often seen as inevitable that my natural skepticism perks up.
My question is, what evidence to we have that violence and crime will rise, inversely correlated with oil production? After all, centuries of, albeit politically motivated, sociological studies on crime have produced little hard evidence of its origins.
I haven't been able to find any trustworthy statistics on any rise or fall in violent crimes during the Great Depression. (Some right wingers are citing a decline in murder rates to support their views that crime is a function of "moral" decay rather than economic woes - but this is kind of like a tautology... "they commit crimes because they are immoral and they are immoral because they commit crimes.")
Does anyone have a good source for historical crime rates in the US going back through the GD?
Does anyone have any non-hysterical comments to make on the likelihood of a gruesome and desperate spike in crime bearing down upon us?
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:39 am Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
I'm not sure if there have been studies that prove a causality or correlation between poverty and crime.
I am sure that if I'm cold/sick/hungry/dying and I know the neighbors aren't I'm going to do something about it, regardless of legality, and I think most humans are the same way.
Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 815 Location: Eastern NC
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
Though not a statistical arguement, how about the news running right now:
Gridlocked cities, empty shelves and bloodshed as fury at soaring costs spreads
And to the response:
I am sure that if I'm cold/sick/hungry/dying and I know the neighbors aren't I'm going to do something about it, regardless of legality, and I think most humans are the same way.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:48 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
desultorypawn wrote:
I'm not sure if there have been studies that prove a causality or correlation between poverty and crime.
There are none. At least, none that are generally accepted by the scientific community. I'll explain why:
It's only a crime if someone who is poor does it. Rob some guy at an ATM to feed your family, you're a criminal. Rob a billion people through inflation? Well that's just economics. _________________ The whole of human history is a refutation by experiment of the concept of "moral world order". - Friedrich Nietzsche
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:50 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
JoeW wrote:
Why not just ask your local police department where the criminal activity is in your area?
Chances are, it is in the "poorer" part of town.
That may be true, but you are ignoring the correlation v. causation problem. Here are some dynamics that can obfuscate the issue:
First, people who are involved in chaotic behavior from addiction or predeliction to antisocial behavior in our current affluent society, will tend to end up poorer because they are marginalized or because their behavior destroys wealth as a side product, through say addiction or other risky behavior. Here there is a correlation between poverty and crime, but not a causation - in fact a better case can be made that violent or criminal behavior causes poverty than that poverty causes violent behavior. And so there is no reason to think that if the general economy suffered, people who would have otherwise lived non-violently would suddenly switch because they are poorer.
Second, people who have money and can afford to do so will tend to move out of high crime areas, while poorer people will be unable to move. this again would cause a correlation between poverty and crime, but not causation. So if the general economy suffered, decreasing mobility more generally, the nonviolent would remain in place and dilute the criminal activity.
So, I don't find the current correlation between crime and poverty, by geographic area to be a very convincing predictor.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:56 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
Dreamtwister wrote:
desultorypawn wrote:
I'm not sure if there have been studies that prove a causality or correlation between poverty and crime.
There are none. At least, none that are generally accepted by the scientific community. I'll explain why:
It's only a crime if someone who is poor does it. Rob some guy at an ATM to feed your family, you're a criminal. Rob a billion people through inflation? Well that's just economics.
While I do agree with this statement, I am wondering more about the validity to the claims people make on this site that violent "street" crimes will spike, and that personal safety will become compromised as a result of peak oil.
It is unfortunate that white collar crimes are not looked at with the same censure, as their effects can be just as injurious. but they don't produce the same visceral fear in people as street crime does. And so you don't get as many people in hysterics about the looming onslaught of white collar crime that Peak Oil will bring.
Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 815 Location: Eastern NC
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
Aflurry
Your arguement of causation vs correlation is one of the best I've seen presented here. Ecomonic decline has been blunted in the past with Welfare and Unemployment programs also. As governments run out of money and these programs are abandoned even further will be a greater test.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 2:04 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
Quote:
It's only a crime if someone who is poor does it. Rob some guy at an ATM to feed your family, you're a criminal. Rob a billion people through inflation? Well that's just economics.
I don't agree that the thug who robs people at the ATM or at home or at the gas station is going to take that money and buy a loaf of bread and two pounds of bologna, so that his children might eat. Around here, that money goes to buy crack and other nasty drugs. Your criminals must be much more noble than our criminals.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 3:09 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
hope_full wrote:
Quote:
It's only a crime if someone who is poor does it. Rob some guy at an ATM to feed your family, you're a criminal. Rob a billion people through inflation? Well that's just economics.
I don't agree that the thug who robs people at the ATM or at home or at the gas station is going to take that money and buy a loaf of bread and two pounds of bologna, so that his children might eat. Around here, that money goes to buy crack and other nasty drugs. Your criminals must be much more noble than our criminals.
Do you think the police will care, or even bother to ask why the guy decided to rob? Motive isn't an element of crime. _________________ The whole of human history is a refutation by experiment of the concept of "moral world order". - Friedrich Nietzsche
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 3:55 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
It's very difficult to talk about the causes of crime without tying it into political agendas... I am a liberal and in favor *in principle* of well executed social programs for the poor. Though many may see, or imagine they see these programs exacerbating the social ills or moral failures present in poor communities, i am inclined to regard those theories of causation as as poorly thought out as the supposedly liberal idea that poverty leads to crime and so solve poverty > solve crime.
I guess i just think the causal chains are far more complicated, situation specific, and have far too many links for this kind of blunt analysis. My support for social programs is independent of any theory of their link to crime.
Trying to locate information on crime and the great depression, I found this helpful link, and a bunch of right wing agenda sites that use the apparently low crime rates during the Great Depression as fodder for their argument that
Quote:
The real cause of crime is not a poverty of resources but a poverty of values.
Which is at best a tautology (what proves they have a poverty of values...? well, that they commit crimes... therefore a poverty of values causes crime... well I'll be damned!) ...
and that
Quote:
A major part of the prevention effort should be to continue to reform the welfare system, which destroys families and therefore creates the “poverty of values” that leads to criminal behavior.
...which is just facile reasoning.
All this doesn't matter. It's such a tired old political fight.
But if it is true that crime decreased during the depression, I view it as an optimistic indicator.
and if I am allowed to speculate on some other causes of crime... i could point to affluence itself. our economy is based on constant drumming up of desires and needs. advertisers constantly prey on people's insecurities and find us inadequate, that we have to buy this thing or join that club or do something or take advantage and become successful, and it is never enough. it isn't about needs at all. it's about all the dark feelings of failure and envy and unquenchable thirst for ever greater success.
now I certainly don't think that a major depression would alleviate this mess, but i do think our modern affluence is nested in the creation of this psychology, and was enabled by a century of cheap oil. so insofar as crime and violence are tied to those dark emotions of need and desire and failure and inadequacy, it's difficult to see how a rupture of that system would necessarily produce more of the violence the system encouraged in the first place.
that's just my thoughts... again, it's hard to find any good data.
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 602 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:32 am Post subject: Re: Evidence for correlation between crime and economy.
desultorypawn wrote:
I'm not sure if there have been studies that prove a causality or correlation between poverty and crime.
I am sure that if I'm cold/sick/hungry/dying and I know the neighbors aren't I'm going to do something about it, regardless of legality, and I think most humans are the same way.
There are weak positive correlations between poverty and crime (more incentive to obtain resources by robbery and theft) and between the degree of urbanization and crime (proximity of the criminal element and their potential victims). But there's a much stronger correlation between crime and racial demographics. The very best predictor of the per capita crime rate in a region is the percentage breakdown of the races who live there. There is no "social" factor that accounts for this rate as reliably.
aflurry wrote:
First, people who are involved in chaotic behavior from addiction or predeliction to antisocial behavior in our current affluent society, will tend to end up poorer because they are marginalized or because their behavior destroys wealth as a side product, through say addiction or other risky behavior. Here there is a correlation between poverty and crime, but not a causation - in fact a better case can be made that violent or criminal behavior causes poverty than that poverty causes violent behavior. And so there is no reason to think that if the general economy suffered, people who would have otherwise lived non-violently would suddenly switch because they are poorer.
Second, people who have money and can afford to do so will tend to move out of high crime areas, while poorer people will be unable to move. this again would cause a correlation between poverty and crime, but not causation. So if the general economy suffered, decreasing mobility more generally, the nonviolent would remain in place and dilute the criminal activity.
So, I don't find the current correlation between crime and poverty, by geographic area to be a very convincing predictor.
Well said. This leads again into what I said to desultorypawn. Just for illustration, I'll dig out some statistics.
In 1995, there were 218.3 million Whites and 33.1 million Blacks resident in the United States. Of these, 11.2 percent of the Whites and 29.0 percent of the Blacks lived in economic circumstances below the federal poverty line. Doing the multiplications, we find that there were 24.4 million poor Whites and 9.5 million poor Blacks living in the United States that year. Poor Whites outnumbered poor Blacks in the United States by a factor of 2.57.
If poverty were the fundamental cause of violent crime, as the liberals say it is, then for each 100 (let us say) murders in the United States committed by Blacks during 1995, there would be about 257 murders during the same time frame committed by Whites. But that is not what happened.
In fact, about 55% of all murders in the United States in 1995 having a single perpetrator and a single victim were perpetrated by Blacks. In other words, for each 100 murders committed by Black US residents in 1995, only 82 murders were committed by all non-Black US resident groups combined. Even if you were to assume that Whites committed all the murders in the United States in 1995 that Blacks did not commit, the Whites could have been responsible, at most, for only 82 murders for each 100 murders perpetrated by Blacks.
The "poverty causes crime" hypothesis does not agree with observational evidence, and we must conclude, therefore, that it is false, however fond liberals might be of it.
Jerry Abbott
Last edited by Jenab6 on Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:26 pm; edited 3 times in total
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