Title: How Poverty Influences Crime Rates – Vittana.org
Headings: How Poverty Influences Crime Rates
How Poverty Influences Crime Rates
Poverty Isn’t Just About Having a Lack of Resources
Isn’t Poverty a Reflection of a Person’s Choices?
Greater Socioeconomic Gaps Also Encourage Greater Crime
A World Where Not All Crimes Are Created or Treated Equally
This Means There Are Two Key Issues Which Must Be Addressed
Instead of Incarceration, a Focus on Treatment Creates a Reduction in Crime
What Does This Mean for Poverty and Crime?

Content: There will always be crime, but urban crime tends to always be located in high poverty areas. How does poverty influence crime rates? The answers may actually surprise you. Poverty Isn’t Just About Having a Lack of Resources
The effects that poverty has on crime can be explained in multiple ways. For starters, there is a higher rate of untreated mental illness that is in populations struggling with poverty compared to wealthier populations. Now most people who struggle with a mental illness will never commit a crime, but there are some types of severe mental illness which increase the risk of an individual committing a crime. Untreated severe mental illnesses are particularly significant when looking at links between poverty and homicide. On the other end of the spectrum, those who are mentally ill are also victimized by violent crime at much higher levels than the general population. Yet despite these facts, the number of beds at mental health hospitals and treatment facilities are lower in the United States today than they were in 1850. But a mental illness isn’t the only link that there is between poverty and crime.