Socioeconomic Status And Crime Essay

Deviancy and criminality is present within any society (Walsh, 2011). Depending on the crime itself, society then equates a certain punishment that is deserving of the act. The media is frequently portraying certain individuals and groups in a way that define them and often distinguishes them from another group (Walsh, 2011). In terms of contemporary crime, the various social constructs have been dissected by social scientists in order to analyse how society perceives crime and perceives criminals. Three core identifying factors, including class, gender, and race illustrate an often differing statistical representation when compared and contrasted with each other.

Intersectionality is a term in itself, linked with the cause of Feminist Theory and Marxist Theory (McCall, 2005), where it is the “relationships among multiple [human] dimensions and modalities of social

Tittle, (as cited in Walsh, 2011) cites Durkheim’s theory, arguing that strain theory occurs during “times of rapid social change” (pp.65), whereby social, economic, and political strains occur, which contributes to crime. It could be argued, and reinforced quite thoroughly, that Indigenous Australian’s and African American’s are two groups that have been disproportionally encapsulated in the poverty cycle (Walsh, 2011; Dottolo & Stewart, 2008). Walsh (2011) lists the correlation, and possible relationship between race and poverty, using the 2007 US Census Bureau statistics, where Asian-American’s had a median income of $75,000 and African-American’s median income was $38,000. If we correlate these median incomes, with the rate of crime – African-American’s having the highest crime rate, and Asian-American’s having the lowest, there appears to be a relationship between income and class, and the rate of