Causal factors for the increase of crime

1. Academic analysis of rise in crime

(Source: The Rise of Crime in Malaysia; An Academic and Statistical Analysis, of the Kuala Lumpur Royal Malaysia Police College, No. 4, 2005)

David Downes, in his paper “Why Inequality is still a factor” highlighted the
reasons for the increase of crime and found that increase of crime and
inequality (which are results of unrealizable aspirations) are profoundly
linked. He based his argument on the following:-

The paradox that crime has risen steeply with growing
prosperity but persistent inequality during the post-war periods
in the U.K. only goes to show that when greater affluence is
combined with growing inequality and the rise of what has been
called a winner/lose culture, crime has climbed even more
steeply (James 1995).

• The social control theories by Emile Durkheim and Robert
Merton30, which depended on the weakening moral guidelines
and the blurring of distinction between right and wrong, could
explain the above as unrealizable aspirations that are capable
of generating disillusionment which thus leads to deviance in
general.

• The damage inflicted by the economic changes has also
particularly affected the youth, a minority of young men and
boys under the age of 25, who are disproportionately drawn
from the urban, under-educated, under-employed working
class. Youth and crime are so strongly linked because
adolescence is a limbo between childhood dependence and
adult maturity. Youth with no foreseeable hope of gaining self respect
through regular well-paid work will seek fulfillment
through the manufacture of excitement, thus crime (Campbell
1993)31

• There is also an exceptionally close relationship between
unemployment and crime. For example David Dickinson
(1993)32 found that the rates of burglary were linked closely to
unemployment rates for young men under 25 years. Steven
Messner (1980)33 also found that higher homicide rates were
linked with several indicators of social inequality.