The Poverty Crime Discourse:

Errors in the Theorizing

S. Scott & Paul Andrew Bourne

The Poverty Crime Discourse:

Errors in the Theorizing

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© S. Scott & Paul Andrew BourneFirst published 2013 bySocio-Medical Research Institute

Citation of document:

Scott, S. & Bourne, P.A. (2013). The Poverty Crime Discourse: Errors in the Theorizing. Kingston: Socio-Medical Research Institute.

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Introduction

At first glance, the statement: Poverty causes violence, appears simple and

truthful, evoking no real form of objection as we sit back and observe what is happening

in parts of the world today, ‘Third World’ developing countries. This is further reinforced

by the availability of a plethora of rather convincing scholarly writings that put forward

the same idea -in more or less- the same way. However, if we should take a moment or a

cautious step back to really analyze this assertion, we would begin to realize that this is

not only a brash and bold statement but also a rather naive one. Quite frankly, the

situation is not that clear cut. As such, it is the explicit aim of this essay to show that,

despite all the assertions and associations made, there has been and continues to be no

real direct statistical causal relationship between the social phenomena of poverty and

violence. Note carefully, it is not the objective of this paper to disprove the associations

or to dismiss correlations; but it is to disprove that poverty causes violence, which is well

held in criminology in the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica.

In order to begin an intellectual commentary on this statement, it is essential to

define the two most critical terms- poverty and violence. After perusing a number of

articles and texts, the one thing that becomes clear is that the term poverty is synonymous

with an undesirable social problem or state (Levy, 1996; Robotham, 2003; Stone, 1987;

Tremblay, 1995). In fact, Tremblay (1995) and Robotham (2003) go further to argue that

poverty causes crime, with no substantiate empirical evidence. These writings suggest

that individuals or groups, who find themselves in a state of poverty, usually want to

escape and as such require the help of forces greater and more influential than

themselves. In 2007, poverty was 9.8 percentage points and three years later it rose by

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107.1 percentage points coupled with an economic recession mean that many more

Jamaicans were finding it increasingly difficult to survive. During the same period, the

number of violent crimes increased by 39.0, which has been used by some scholars to

support the causation between poverty and crime (or violence). However, an extensive

search of the literature finds one study that empirically establishes no causation between

poverty and crimes in Jamaica (Bourne, 2011), which makes for an interesting

discussion.

Background

A national cross-sectional survey which was conducted by Powell, Bourne and

Waller revealed that crime and violence were identified by Jamaicans as the leading

national problem (Powell, Bourne and Waller, 2007, p. 49). Such a finding means that

there is a crime pandemic in Jamaica, and based on the crime statistics from the Jamaica

Constabulary Force, it more a phenomenon of St. Catherine, Kingston and St. Andrew as

well as St. James than Jamaica.

Since independence in 1962 the rate of increase has accelerated in a geometric-like progression from 3.8 per 100,000 to 41 per 100,000 in 1997. This presents an eleven fold increase in the rate of criminal homicides. Two distinct waves of homicidal escalation may be discerned. The first began in the mid-1960s and was driven by the political struggle for party dominance in western Kingston (Harriott, 2003, 91)

Powell, Bourne and Waller (2007) found that 11 out of every 25 Jamaicans

indicated that crime and violence was the leading national problem followed by

unemployment (15 in every 50 Jamaicans) and education (3 in every 50 Jamaicans).

Using secondary national data on inflation, unemployment, exchange rate and murder for

Jamaica, Bourne (2011) gross domestic product (GDP) and the exchange rate are strong

predictors of violent crimes in Jamaica. Embedded in Bourne’s finding is the association

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between politics and crime, which goes back to the 1970s. However, the phenomenon of

crime and politics dates back to the to the 1940 (Sives, 1007, 2003). An examination of a

work written by Simmonds (2004), it can be extrapolated there that the nexus between

politics and crimes can be traced to early Nineteenth Century, when salves established a

community in Kingston (Western Kingston) to provide a source of survivability because

of the neglect of the political structure at the time.

…the granting of civil rights to the members of the freed population in the 1830s might be viewed as more than the consequence of political demands made by the more privileged coloureds. It can be seen as an attempt to create an ‘aristocracy’ in the community, thereby inserting a wedge between the slaves and some of their more mobile and influential free collaborators (Simmonds, 2004, 31)

Within the context of Simmonds’ perspective, crime cannot be divorced from

politics, which helps to explain many of the crime in the parish of St. Catherine (i.e.

political crimes). The nexus of crime and politics, therefore, has its historical roots in the

Jamaican society long before the 1970s (Simmonds, Sives, 2003, 1997) and clearly the

‘Badness-honour’ which permeates the current nation can be ascribed to the 1970s (Gray,

2003a) although it began even before this date (Sives, 2003). In an article entitled ‘The

historical roots of violence in Jamaica: The Heart Report 1949’ Sives (2003) contended

that “strong-arm politics” was used in the 1940s by the two political Institutions (namely,

Jamaica Labour Party, JLP; People’s National Party, PNP) to see governance of the

nation. She noted that the rivalry was intense and that many people lost their lives in the

process, particularly political followers. This continued and become even more intense in

the 1970s (Gray, 2003a). According to Obaka Gray (2003), both political parties (JLP

and PNP) had political enforcers, killers and political patronage was introduced into the

society, and ‘badness’ became a party of the Jamaican culture. Within the context of the

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intense political rivalry among members of the two traditional political parties (PNP and

JLP), the confrontation of the members to protect resource allocation has led to violent

crimes (Sives, 2003; Gray, 2003a, 2003b) and electoral crimes (Figueora and Sives,

2003). The intense political rivalry between supporters of the JLP and PNP account for

the exponential increase in murders in the 1980 (see Appendix 1), which was unprecedent

at the time. The economic climate in Jamaica has alos contributed to the proliferation and

continuation of the political division among the people, which supports ‘badness’ and

killings in many urban communities. Gray (2003b) aptly captures this:

The failure of economic policies, near-weekly accounts of human rights abuses, and recurrent disclosures of the corruption of power, the political bosses have retained their predominance, and the political apparatus that supports them has remained largely unchanged… (Gray, 2003, 73)Even prior to Gray’s postulations, discourses on the contribution of violence in

Jamaica, has been narrated. The Library of Congress (1987) laid the foundations that

accounted for violence, particularly political violence. The Library of Congress writes:

The nation's political violence derives from the socioeconomic structure of Jamaican politics, that is, social stratification along racial and economic class lines. Increasing political, social, and economic polarization in Jamaica has contributed to both political and criminal violence (Library of Congress, 1987, chap. 2. The page number would have been more appropriate than the chapter since it is a direct quote)

Both Obika Gray and the Library of Congress suggested that politics accounts for

some aspect of violent crimes in Jamaica, which would include murders. This is keeping

with the political rivalry between hardliners of the two main political parties in pursuit of

political power and patronage. The number of political garrisons in St. Catherine from

Portmore to Old Harbour accounts for much of the intense political rivalry between

communities which result in violent crimes in many instances. Studies have established

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the interrelation between politics and crime in Jamaica (Harriott, 2003a, 2003b, 2004a,

2004b; Robotham, 2003) and this plays out in St. Catherine on many ocassions. Many of

the violent crimes in the parish of St. Catherine have been between gangs that support a

particular political party, for example One Order (support the JLP) or Klansman (support

the PNP). The current reality in Jamaica is well documented by Boxill et al. (2007) who

posit:

The murder rate moved from 19.2 per 100,000 to 39 per 100,000 in the same period [1977 and 2000]. In 2004, Jamaica was ranked as a country with one of the highest murder rates in the Caribbean (Boxill et al., 2007, 117)

The murder phenomenon identified by Boxill et al. (2007) has worsened between

2004 and 2009, which increased by 14.2 percentage points (March and Bourne, 2011).

All the murders committed in Jamaica have been during a particular political party’s

tenure in governance (either in the Jamaica Labour Party or the People’s National Party).

On disaggregating the murder statistics for Jamaica, St. Catherine is among the parish

that account for this rise in murders and other major crimes. The current crime problem

that has risen to epidemic proportion in Jamaica, particularly St. Catherine, was even

compared to crimes statistics in New York and figures revealed a serious problem, which

requires immediate divorce between politics and crime. According to the World Bank:

Between 1998 and 2000, according to police report, drug and gang related murder accounted on average for 22 percent of total murders. Domestic violence represented about 30 percent of total murders. The rising severity of the murder problem is highlighted by comparison with New York, a high crime city – while both Jamaica and New York experienced similar rates of murder in 1970, Jamaica’s murder rate had increased to almost seven time that of New York’s by year 2000 (World Bank, 2003, 121)

The empirical evidence of the World Bank coupled with the aforementioned

studies on the crime problem in Jamaica explain the societal consciousness and call for

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the divorced between crime and violence. One sociologist (Don Robotham) opined that

“Probably the most intractable factor contribution to violent crime in Jamaica is the

interconnecting network of criminal gangs, drug running, politics and the police”

(Robotham, 2003, 215). A rationale which supports an examination of the theoretical

framework of the relationship between crime and politics in Jamaica is embedded in this

postulation made by Robotham that “...the political parties, they rely on party ‘soldiers’

[political enforcers] to deliver the vote during elections or, as recent events vividly

demonstrated, to keep the peace during civil disturbances (Robotham, 2003, 217). While

plethora of studies exist on the association between crime and politics in Jamaica

(Robotham, 2003; Harriott, 2003a, 2003b; Gray, 2003a, 2003b; Sives, 2003; Clarke,

2006; Leslie, 2010), the general experiences are similarly the case across many other

nations in the Caribbean (Brathwaite, 2004; United Nations and World Bank, 2007;

Lashin, 2006) and how the police force supports the politics of crimes (Mars, 2004).

Harriott (2004) aptly contextualized the crime phenomenon in the Caribbean when he

postulated that “The problem of crime in the Caribbean – its causes, its consequences,

and its control – emerged as a major concern during the 1990s” (Harriott, 2004, 1). He

went on to say that “The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government

Conference, at its Twenty-Second Meeting held in Nassau, the Bahamas in July 2001

expressed disquiet with regard to this problem and the threats that it poses to public

safety and to the social and economic well-being of the people of the region” (Harriott,

2004, 1). The crime pandemic in the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica was a function of St.

Catherine, politics, economics, organized criminal networks and poor governance. Gary

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Becker’s seminal work on the economics of crime aptly fit this study as many crimes

socio-economical driven.

Conceptual Framework

Crime in the Caribbean had reached an alarming proportion, which brought a

public outcry for immediate solutions. In 1998, the crime pandemic in the Caribbean

which was an urban phenomenon prompted a conference that was hosted in Barbados on

‘Crime and Criminal Justice in the Caribbean’ in order to ascertain measures, policies,

programmes and intervention that can be instituted to redemy the crime pandemic

(Harriott, 2004, viii). Harriott (2004) contended that “The problem of crime in the

Caribbean – its causes, it consequences, and its control – emerged as a major concern

during the 1990s”(p. 1). He went on to state that crime and HIV/AIDS “are wreaking

havoc on our population”(p. 1), suggesting that the crime pandemic is polorazing many

peoples and therefore must be addressed with urgency (See also, Stone, 1987, 1988;

Gray, 2003; Harriott, 2003; Robotham, 2003; Francis, et al., ; Boxill, Lewis, Russell, et

al., 2007). In 2007, a group of academic researchers conducted a cross-national and

cross-border probability sample survey in the Caribbean and Latin American and found

that 10.1 percentages of Jamaicans have been victims of crime compared to 16.9

percentages in Haiti; 19.2 percentages in Hondorus, and 26.2 percentages in Peru (Boxill,

Lewis, Russell, et al., 2007), and opined that “The crime rates vary in structure and

complexity across different countries of the region [Caribbean and Latin America]”(p.

113).

The current crime problem in Caribbean, particularly Jamaica can be traced to

early nineteenth century in Kingston. The early settlers in Kingston were primarily poor

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and free slaves, and while the establishment of dwellings therein were in response to the

economics at the time, criminal activities were committed only by a small percentage of

the populace (Simmonds 2004). The pull factors to criminal activities were economic

hardship, perceived betterment from the alternative investment schemes and the low

probability of being incarcerated (Becker, 1968). The economic marginalization of the

peasants, income maldistribution, social exclusions and economic progress of the

bourgeoisie (planters) class during slavery provide a justification for social deviances

(Besson, 1995; Gordon, 1987; Stone, 1987, 1988; Beckford, 1972). Criminality being an

economic phenomenon (Becker, 1968; Francis, et al, 2001) provides a justification

criminal networks operating from different geographic locatity in order to carry out their

activities, organised criminality (see Harriott, 2008).

Statistics revealed that the 1980s marks a transition in wanton murders in Jamaica

(Table 1), although its genesis began in the 1970s. Obaka Gray opined that 1)

“...unforgiving ghetto during the party civil wars in the 1970s” (Gray, 2003, 2) “This

study focuses on the period of the 1970s, a time of great upheaval, political violence, and

social polarization in Jamaica” (Gray, 2003, 3), 3) “Activists during the 1970s reported

that Barth [criminal] was familiar with former CIA agent Philip Agee’s critique of U.S.

imperialism...” (Gray, 2003, 28), and 4) Indeed, by the late 1970s urban gangster for both

the political and criminal underworlds were becoming a growing source of patronage

with which politicians had to compete” (Gray, 2003, 30). Those issues highlighted the

emergence of intense criminality, the informal industry which existence because of the

failure of the formal economy to adequately provide for the needs of the people and the

populace was now tired of the vulnerability, wanton killing of people, including the

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wealth and self-interest lead to a new consciousness. Hence, criminality in the Caribbean

has now become cross-border activities as criminals seek to protect, strenghtened, expand

and legitimize their operations. There is empirical evidence to support the transnational

operation of gangs in the region, example the Shower Posse (Blake, 2002) and how these

criminal gangs extort, rape, murder, increase fear and victimization, trade in guns and

drugs, launder money, commit financial crimes, and corrupt public officials (Waller,

Bourne, Minto and Rapley, 2007) in order to materialize their operations.

Since the 19th century, maintain Haralambos et al (2000), researchers have tried

to establish a fixed standard against which to measure poverty. First, there is relative

versus absolute poverty. Measures of absolute poverty are usually based on the idea of

subsistence. In other words, people are in poverty if they do not have the basic resources

to maintain human life. Here poverty is defined in purely material terms and is essentially

viewed as material deprivation (for example shortage of money). However the term can

be expanded beyond simple material deprivation to multiple deprivations. For example,

inadequate educational opportunities, unpleasant working conditions, or powerlessness

can be regarded as aspects of poverty. None of these conditions is necessarily directly

related to the income of the individual. Each implies that broader changes than simply

increasing the income of worst-off individuals are necessary if poverty is to be

eliminated. Measures of relative poverty suggest that the term must be used in relation to

the standards of a particular society at a particular time. Here, poverty is seen as a by-

product of inequality. According to this view, the point at which the dividing line that

separates the poor from other members of society is drawn will vary according to how

affluent the society is. The poor in a society then can be identified as those whose income

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or resources fall so far short of the average that they do not have the particular society’s

acceptable standard of living (Haralambos).

The existence of different categories and forms of violence also calls for a

rigorous classification that is free of biases, ambiguity and short comings (Salmi 1993).

Barak (2003) asserts that violence is “the threat, attempt or use of physical force by one

or more persons that results in physical or non- physical harm to one or more persons”.

Barak’s definition is instrumental as it sets the boundaries (for example violence as

physical) that are necessary for every definition. Though Barak’s definition of violence

will be the type mostly referred to, the definition provided by Salmi will also be useful.

Essentially, Salmi sees violence as “any act that threatens a person’s physical or

psychological well-being, integrity or wholeness”. Note carefully, in all but one instant

(which will be pointed out) Barak’s violence will be the type that this paper speaks of.

As indicated in the introduction, many people believe that there is a clear link

between poverty and violence. Using the Frustration Aggression Thesis (FAT) of Dollard

et al (1939) it can be understood why this belief would seem logical. Influenced by

Freudian ideas, and anchored in the Behavioralist school of thought, this thesis suggests

that aggression is always a consequence of frustration and cyclically, frustration always

leads to aggression. This aggression may be disguised, deflected, or delayed, however it

is always there. Under the umbrella of this theory, poverty whether material or multiple

deprivation, would be an instigator of frustration which would undisputedly lead to

aggression (violence).

This analysis or reasoning finds it support, for example, amongst the literature of

many scholars. Harriot (2003) maintains that the extraordinary high inclination to

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violence in the Jamaican inner cities or ‘ghettos’ is not surprising as, for the most part,

these are the areas deprived of a material economic base whereby its members can

adequately maintain themselves. Harriot goes further to speak of blocked legitimate

opportunities and social exclusion (characteristics of poverty) that result in an illegitimate

opportunity structure, (created by frustration with the legitimate structure) that engenders

aggressive behavior and violence. To this, Headley (1994) adds that the root causes of the

alarmingly high levels of Jamaican street crime and violence are in a society that either

“withholds or denies prized possession from a significant number of its citizens”. He

maintains that these citizens resent their situation and “resentment has a way of

developing into acrimony and bitterness, which later influences crime and violence”

Pfannl (2004) asserts that poverty appears as both the cauldron for violence and

the result of the violence exerted by society on the weakest, most vulnerable of its

members. In situations of hopelessness, without work or any chance for upward socio-

economic mobility, people become desperate and frustrated. As in real life, the poor

Brazilian children in the movie, City of Gods, grow up in desperation in the outskirts of

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For them, violence by way of guns, drugs ad killings appears the

only way out. With all this being said, we must be careful to realize that these authors

never indicated that one factor- poverty explicitly or directly causes the other- violence.

The above literate merely reiterates the view that there is a relationship between the two

factors. Where poverty is persistent, there appears a rising trend towards violence;

however this is not the same as saying poverty causes violence.

There are host of reasons why we can not take this assertion for granted. The first

and most important reason lies in the criteria necessary for establishing a causal

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relationship. According to Haralambos et al, scientific quantitative methodology dictates

that for A (poverty) to cause B (violence) then A must occur before B. This criterion

evokes a number of controversial arguments. For example, many authors put forward the

view that it is violence that causes poverty and indeed not the other way around. Pfannl,

in his study of the violence ridden slums of Brazil, purports that violence does not

originate from poverty. It is poverty, he argues, that is produced and sustained by direct

and indirect violence. When poor children are abandoned by society in their most basic

needs of care and decent education, this constitutes an extreme form of violence, albeit

indirect, exerted by society. This violence, we may recall, is essentially covered by Salmi

in his definition. Pfannl continues that without the opportunity to go to school and receive

quality education, there is no hope for personal advancement or a better future.

The second criterion for establishing a causal relationship states that A and B

must be correlated. According to Haralambos et al, a correlation is a tendency for two or

more things to be found together, and may refer to the strength of the relationship

between them. When there is a strong correlation or association between two or more

types of social phenomena, one may suspect that one of this phenomenon was causing the

other to occur. In this instant, it becomes easy to assume that poverty causes violence

because they have infact been found together in more than one instance. However it is

crucial to understand that correlation or association does not equal causation. This is as

other factors may exist and play an influencing role in this relationship. This leads

directly to the third criterion which states that for direct causation to occur there must not

be an intervening third variable to explain away the variance. When a third variable

comes into play, it raises a question of causality. Statistics have shown that in the very

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large majority of cases, if not all instances, poverty has no direct relationship to violence.

In the slums of Brazil, for example, it is essentially the drug trade, rather than poverty

that causes the violence. The perverse cycle of poverty (multiple deprivations) results in

male youths (as early as age 11) joining the drug trade. It is this drug trade that essentially

causes the rather high levels of violence. The drug trade then is the intervening variable.

This is essentially the case in Colombia also. For example, it is not unlikely that after

eradicating poverty from the Brazilian or Columbian societies, the drug trade could

continue to flourish and hence perpetrate high levels of violence.

According to Rummel (1963), empirical evidence shows that a country’s poverty

has little correlation with its foreign and domestic violence. The argument that poverty

causes violence can be further thwarted by a sizeable amount of cases where poverty is

pervasive and violence, great enough to impede development, is virtually absent. Aiyar

(2000) asserts that poverty can be an exacerbating factor in the poor areas but is rarely the

originating factor. To support this view he lends the examples from India. India had a

bloody insurrection for over a decade in Puntab, one of there richest states in India. In

addition, the revolt was spearheaded by the Jat Sikhs, the richest community in the state.

He goes further to state that some of the poorest and most inegalitarian areas of India for

example, North Bihar and Karnataka have relatively low levels of violence. Other

countries for example Chad and Gabon in Africa are testimony to this argument. For

years, these countries have been recorded in the United Nations Development Program

(UNDP) studies as having rather high levels of poverty however these countries have

relatively low levels of violence. This evidence is supported by critics of the FAT

(mentioned above) who maintain that frustration need not generate aggression.

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Individuals respond differently to frustration. According to Aiyar, this holds a chief

lesson for those who may be tempted to see the poverty as the chief cause of violence.

As indicated before, if poverty indeed causes violence, it follows that removing

poverty would result in a disappearance of violence. Logically then, when we observe

large economically developed countries where mobility is present and poverty is not as

pervasive, for example the United States, we would expect to find relatively low levels of

violence. Like wise, in small developing or underdeveloped countries with a large social

divide (inequality) and social immobility, we would expect to find high levels of

violence. This is because of the economist reasoning that as a country moves up or down

the development scale, social mobility or immobility eventually becomes a factor that

characterizes the society. Mobilization alters the state of mind of the individual as it

makes him or her aware that they have access to certain societal values. However is this

always the case? This paper will first examine the two situations (Brazil and Jamaica)

where this idea is largely supported then it will look at cases that refute the idea.

Pfannl maintains that Brazil is one of the countries with the most inequality in

terms of the gap that exists between the very wealthy and the extremely destitute.

According to the World Bank (2001), one fifths of Brazil’s 173 million people account

for only a 2.2 percent share of the national income. This, in effect, leaves millions of

Brazilians with little influence, recourse or hopes to deal with their dire situation in

society. In the larger cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, a third of the population

lives in the surrounding slums characterized by poor social conditions. In 2001, the

country’s official unemployment figure was 6.4% however, in the slum areas around the

largest cities, employment is much worse and likely not fully recorded in government

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statistics. This lack of educational opportunities serves only to aggravate the extreme

inequality that already exists among the country’s citizens.

The situation in Jamaica is similar to that of Brazil. Headley holds that in Jamaica,

disarticulated or one-sided developmentalism has been one of the conditions creating

severe inequalities among the country’s citizens. In 1991, a Carl Stone’s publication in

the Jamaican “Daily Gleaner” listed the high levels of inequality and lack of social

mobility as one of the five characteristics of a country with a very high rate of crime and

violence. The Jamaican Survey of Living Conditions (SLC) in 2001 indicates that there

exists a large social divide between the rich and the poor. The SLC asserted that the

wealthiest 20% of the population accounted for 45.9% of the national consumption while

the poorest 20% accounted for only 6.1% of national consumption. This inequality breeds

contempt and bitterness amongst affected citizens as they become aware that they have

very little access to societies values (Headley 1994).

Ironically, it has been seen where countries with high levels of development and

mobility have high levels of violence. A classic example can be taken from the European

countries of Germany and France in the 17th century. Theoretically, the revolution was

expected to occur in stagnant Germany rather than France, as it was France that was

becoming increasingly developed and egalitarian at the time. Another more

contemporary example can be taken from the developed United States. The American

Dream (successful job, house, vehicle and children) is the symbolism of social mobility;

however it has been identified as one of the associating factors in the high levels of

poverty crimes that occur in American states. Bringing us closer to home is the example

of Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad undoubtedly, is one of the faster developing countries

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of the Caribbean. However instead of a decrease in the levels of crime and violence, as

would be expected, criminologists have observed the opposite.

The point in saying all this is that development or lack thereof, does not cause

violence. There is no concrete evidence available to conclude that there is a direct causal

relationship between development and violence. What we can assert however, is that

there may be a relationship between development and poverty. Development is often

regarded as the determinant of poverty. Less economically developed countries are more

likely to have higher levels of poverty than more developed ones.

Empirical evidence to the poverty-crime discourse

Research Question 1

Is there a statistical correlation between poverty and major (or, violent) crimes in Jamaica

The scatter graph shows that there is weak statistical correlation between prevalence of

poverty rate and the number of violent crimes in Jamaica (Figure 4, R2 = 0.064), with the

correlation being a curvilinear one. From the squared r value, we can conclude that

poverty accounts for 6.5 percentage points of the variance in violent crimes in Jamaica. It

should be noted here that the relationship between the two aforementioned variables is

not a simple one, that proposing an argument that poverty is directly associated to crime

is incorrect as the data does not support this position.

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Figure 4: Scatter plot of Violent crimes and prevalence of poverty rate in Jamaica, 2000-2010

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Research Question 2

Is there a statistical correlation between poverty and murder in Jamaica

The scatter graph shows that there is weak statistical correlation between prevalence of

poverty rate and the number of murders in Jamaica (Figure 5, R2 = 0.354), with the

correlation being a linear one. From the squared r value, we can conclude that poverty

accounts for 35.4 percentage points of the variance in murders crimes in Jamaica and that

the relationship is an inverse one. There is a general position held in Jamaica that poverty

and murder are positively related, and today this perspective has been refuted by

empiricism. This means that people in Jamaica do not commit murder because they are

poor. In fact, there are more murder when poverty is lower indicating that a part of the

economic of crime is refuted somewhat as poverty is not an inducement into committing

murders.

Figure 5: Scatter plot of murders and prevalence of poverty rate in Jamaica, 2000-2010

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Research Question 3

Is there a statistical correlation between violent crimes and Gross Domestic Product

(GDP) in Jamaica

A moderate positive statistical correlation existed between GDP per capita and violent

crimes in Jamaica for the period 2000-to-2010 (Figure 6). The graph shows that even

when GDP per capita is zero, there will be violent crimes in Jamaica and that violent

crime will change at a constant rate of 683, with GDP accounting for 54 percentage

points of the change in violent crimes. Hence, this means that people become more

engaged into committing criminal activities in economic prosperity than in economic

recession as was widely held by many people.

Figure 6: Scatter plot of violent crimes and GDP per capita in Jamaica, 2000-2010

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Research Question 4

Is there is statistical correlation between murder and GDP per capita in Jamaica

A negative statistical correlation existed between murder and GDP per capita, with a one

percentage point change in GDP per capital accounting for a 13.9 percentage points

movement in murders (Figure 7). The inverse relationship between murders and GDP per

capita denotes that murders will be greater in period of negative GDP and lower in

periods of positive GDP per capita. The economic of crime is explained hereby as during

periods of economic downturn people are more likely to kill each other, suggesting that

the deprived people will kill to order to survive.

Figure 7: Scatter plot of murders and GDP per capita in Jamaica, 2000-2010

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Conclusion

In conclusion, understanding the relationship between poverty and violence is

essential because of its scale and depth in many developing countries. However there

exists a marked difference in trying to understand a relationship and asserting that one

exists. There is undoubtedly a relationship of correlation or association of the social

phenomena of poverty and violence. This is indicated by many authors and in places like

Brazil and Jamaica (just to name a few). However because correlation does not equal

causation we can conclude that there is really no causal relationship between poverty and

violence.

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