RALEIGH — Advocates of the “root causes” approach to fighting crime argue that only by addressing social ills such as poverty can a state hope to reduce its level of criminality. Conservatives have often been seen ridiculing this idea, pointing out that there is little historical correlation between poverty rates and crime rates. A good case in point is the Great Depression, during which the crime rate was for the most part far lower than it is today.
Come to think of it, I might well have been one of those ridiculers.
But I’m afraid that by challeging the “root-causes” folks on crime, their critics have thrown something out with the bathwater — if not a baby, then at least some mildly interesting bath toys.
After all, to suggest that there is no correlation between national poverty rates and national crime stats is not to disprove the thesis that the two might be linked. Few would suggest that the most important factor influencing criminality is economics. The sensible advocates of the position would merely argue that it is a contributing factor, that those with little economic means are more tempted to steal or burgle than those flush with cash. If I remember my Aristotle, there are four distinct types of causes of events that exist simultaneously.
The first is the material cause. This is simply the existence of that which serves as the substance to be changed. In the case of a burglar, I guess, the material cause of the crime would be that there is a house with valuable stuff in it. (By the way, I’ve seen studies that suggest a different set of trends for some crimes, such as motor-vehicle theft: in those cases, the crime rate rises with the health of the economy, presumably because there is more valuable stuff to steal.)
The second is the formal cause. This refers to the form taken by the material cause, and the action upon it. So the formal cause of a burglary is that homes are private property, so entering them without permission and stealing what does not belong to you is criminal.
The third is the efficient cause. This refers to the agent taking the action. A burglar must choose to commit the act, no matter what the temptation to do so.
The fourth is the final cause. This refers to the intent or goal of the agent taking the action. In this case, the burglar wants to have something for nothing. Here’s where the temptation of poverty may kick in, though it’s worth noting at this point that the vast majority of poor people don’t give into this temptation and some non-poor people do, for kicks.
Anyway, it turns out that you can sometimes find correlations between poverty rates and crime rates if you are comparing neighborhoods or cities, rather than comparing nationwide rates at different points in time. But even so, what have you proven? Not as much as the “root-causes” advocates think.
Correlations don’t prove causality. At least two alternatives exist. First, there could be a third variable that is the real cause of the two correlated variables. In this case, poverty itself has causes. One that seems to play a significant role is family structure. Single-parent families tend to be poorer (even with child support from the absent one) than families where the parents stay together. It turns out that children who grow up in single-parent families are also significantly more likely to commit crimes as adults, after adjusting for other factors, than those growing up in intact families.
The second possibility is that the direction of the causality is the opposite of the one theorized. In this case, it could be that crime causes poverty rather than the other way around. In fact, there is pretty good evidence for this effect. For example, a recent Business Week articles reported the interesting fact that during the 1990s, American inner cities actually grew faster than the nation as a whole did — in population, in income, in home ownership, and in the proportion of families above the poverty line. While there were undoubtedly many factors at work, including a strong overall national economy, these factors had been at work during previous periods without a similar improvement in life in the inner city. One thing that did change in the 1990s, vs. recent decades, is that the crime rate fell. Cities and states changed their approach to law enforcement, putting more cops into the community, increasing the certainty of punishment, and making that punishment more severe through lengthier sentences. Private actors also helped to reduce crime through better security, lighting, and community watches. Increased security is a prerequisite for the kind of investment and commercial activity that creates jobs and economic opportunities in inner cities.
Inner cities remain poorer than the rest of the country. But their relative improvement during the 1990s was heartening — and could well mean that there is a link between crime and poverty, only it works differently than the activist set might have expected. The moral of the story is that social trends are complex phenomena, that they resist easy explication, and that policymakers should think carefully before acting.
Oh, and however many causes you identify, without an efficient cause — a choice — there is no crime.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.