It Doesn’t Make Sense to Blame Crime on Poverty

New York’s homicide rate dropped sharply after 1990 even as the poor share of population rose slightly

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"Mayor Eric Adams was back in Albany this month asking his state overlords to rethink bail-reform measures passed in 2019 that protect crime suspects from pretrial detention. The number of shoplifting complaints in New York City rose by 45% in 2022 to more than 63,000"

"Mr. Adams argued that soft-on-crime policies hit poor communities the hardest, not only in terms of public safety but also economically"

"“People who state that we’re criminalizing the poor,” he said, are wrong. Moreover, crime is costing the city jobs and businesses. New Yorkers are “unemployed because we’re losing those businesses in our city. We can’t allow repeated offenders to make a mockery of the criminal justice system.”"

"In a previous era, when Americans were significantly poorer than they are today, crime rates were significantly lower. Crime during the Great Depression was lower than during the 1960s, a decade of tremendous economic growth and prosperity. In 1960 the black male homicide rate was 45 per 100,000. By 1990 it had climbed by more than 200% to 140 per 100,000, even though black average incomes by then were much higher, and the black poverty rate much lower, than 30 years earlier.

In a recently published book about criminal-justice reform, “Criminal (In)justice,” Rafael Mangual notes that this disconnect between crime and poverty continues today. Mr. Mangual writes that between 1990 and 2018, murders in New York City declined by 87%, a period during which the city’s poverty rate increased slightly. Black residents today “experience poverty at a lower rate (19.2 percent) than their Hispanic (23.9 percent) and Asian (24.1 percent) counterparts, who account for much smaller shares of the city’s gun violence.”"

"local bodegas are trying to combat the rise in customers looking for five-finger discounts. It featured footage of laundry detergent and other items that had to be kept behind the counter or chained to shelves in the aisles to deter thieves."

"Mr. Adams called public safety “the prerequisite to our prosperity” and stressed that the problem isn’t previously law-abiding New Yorkers turning to crime but career criminals running rampant with no fear of being prosecuted."