Does crime cause poverty or does poverty cause crime?

The stress is on the "may". In the case of crime and poverty, it's a chicken and egg circle, with such a litany of other factors, that it simply cannot be boiled down to this.

Crime breeds poverty, poverty breeds crime, but the real issue is lack of opportunity and lack of education, a cycle which perpetuates as politicians feel less inclined to invest in poor areas with high crime, as the core voters are middle class people who feel neglected when to much resources go to not them, and such the cycle goes, around and around.

Joe can't get a job, but he has to feed himself, and because crime in poor areas previously made it unpopular to invest in programs fighting poverty, Joe can't find one. But the crime is still there through necessity, so Joe becomes a criminal, and then he goes to jail and loses so much opportunity to better his life, having to spend 20 years in a jail so starved for resources they offer little to no education and betterment, and Joe's now another statistic reinforcing people not investing in programs fighting poverty, and on and on and on and on...

/r/AskSocialScience Thread Parent