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Poverty & Criminal Activity

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Poverty and Criminal Activity

If you look anywhere in our country you will see poverty. It touches every single state, leaving none untouched, however in this research study we are strictly looking in Texas because many believe that it doesn't exist in their own backyard. Yet people are living destitute and in deplorable conditions all around us. It seems that in highly populated impoverished areas criminal activity is at an all time high. History has shown that poverty and crime appear to go hand in hand. Desperation to care for a family can cause one to do almost anything, even if it goes against the law. This isn't making the assumption that all people living in poverty will commit a crime or that all crimes committed are being done by the poverty stricken. Crimes are committed everyday by people that are not effected by poverty. Why couldn't one say that crime causes poverty? The intent of this study is to find out if living in impoverished circumstances indicate a greater possibility of criminal activity. Aristotle did say that "poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." We will look at factors of poverty such as unemployment in the area, age distribution and the population density and see the relationship to crime in that area. This will be looking at all crimes committed, not just theft, which seems to be the crime committed the most in poverty stricken area's. Hopefully a correlation between the two can be shown through research. In Texas alone Dallas County, Tarrant County (Fort Worth area) and Harris County (Houston area) there are over 150,000 people living in poverty with crime rates 50% higher than counties with lower poverty rates. Some of the methods that will be used during this research will be existing statistics research. Any research that has been done on this topic will be found and expanded upon.This is a topic that is very complex

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