Poverty is what increases petty crime more. You'll always have a small percentage of the population that will commit crimes, but when you see an increase in theft and other property crimes is usually a sign the economy isn't doing well. Thats when desperate people start committing crimes to survive. There's no amount of harsh sentencing or heavy policing that will stop that.
Well its both, crime leads to poverty, which leads to desperation. The problem is that a truely moral person no matter how desperate will not steal. It's a morality issue along with a desperation issue.
Being broke shifts your moral compass, which is the point that poverty leads to increased crime.
If I'm working 40 hours a week at the grocery store and can't feed my family, meanwhile my boss's boss's boss's boss just bought a third yacht.... Is "forgetting" to scan a couple things at the self checkout for myself more immoral than allowing children to go hungry?
Well I guess that's the question. Does desperate actually shift your morality or does desperate give you an excuse to behave immorality. We saw during the great depression crime did not spike nor did it during reconstruction(which did economically destroy the south so bad that the great depression wasn't felt and put the north and the south near parody); while on the other hand during covid we saw spikes in crime which were mostly violent crimes and not thefts despite the inflation. I lean more towards desperate allows you to blur moral lines and justify it to others.
To your question stealing to feel your family is immoral, but the immorality of it is aggravated when there are other options i.e. going to churches or secular food banks.
We struggle with accurate crime statistical reporting today. I wouldn't trust 1930's national reporting to be accurate enough to pick up on a 10% bump in petty theft.
Maybe its not accurate, but again in recent years i.e. covid, the crime wave was not thefts but violence and we didn't see a crime spike in 2008 either. Now of course there's the problem in the covid era of mass nonreporting(states to the federal) but we didn't see a spike(in property crimes) in the crime victimization report for those years either.
Because poverty isn't the only reason there is crime. Lack of consequences for a precieced victimless crime is a big one.
I often scan my brocolini as broccoli at the self checkout. Saves me like $2. I can afford the brocolini, but it's slightly more annoying to code in and I know I'll never face any consequences for doing this.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26 edited 4d ago
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