Causes Of Urban Crime And Government Remedies

Unemployment and Urban Crime

Urban crimes involve the various illegal acts done by the people in a given town or city. Such actions are done by people to avoid social strain for a living and becoming financially stable. Some of these urban crimes include physical injuries, rape, murder, theft, kidnapping, housebreaking, shoplifting, car theft among many others. This paper examines the causes of these urban crimes and the remedies that the government should put in place to stop or reduce the rate of crimes happening in various cities

Unemployment is one of the major causes of urban crime. A report carried out by the United States Bureau of labor statistics in 2014, about 7.9 million people were unemployed  (Cassidy & Inglis, 2014). This contributed to 5% of the total potential workforce. With no job, many active people are left wandering in the nation looking for means of survival. Circumstances then force such individuals to engage in urban crimes. In most cases, those people who are not employed and are not seeking for any employment chance, are associated with many urban crimes. Urban crime has been an avoidable obstacle in the global society for a very long time now. Research shows that due to unemployment, the gap between the poor and the rich is widened hence leading to unequal income distribution and therefore economic disparities in the community.

Secondly, drugs abuse and the use of alcohol attribute to criminal acts. This is because in most cases, people commit crimes not in their stable mindset but under the influence of drugs. As a result, such people make impaired judgments which might lead to severe sociological crimes. There have been many cases in the past where husbands have murdered their wives and children out of drug affection (Taylor, 2018). Others, decide to rob people out of drug affection. Due to these drugs, in most cases, such individuals do not take into account the consequences of their illegal acts. People have been killed, and others injured severely through robberies carried out by drunkards. Women and children have also been raped due to the same drug affection. According to psychological experts, people ego drive them to unlawful acts. Some of them feel guilty for their actions when their superego comes to its conscience. It is due to this fact that some drunkard murderers kill people and out of regret to kill themselves.

Poverty is another reason that would lead to urban crime. In simple terms, economists define poverty as the state of being unable to fulfill the basic needs due to the lack of financial resources that are needed to earn a minimum living  (Miller, 2014). It is out of poverty that many people in the world turn to criminal acts, trying to fulfill their basic wants. A person would think of robbing a bank, steal from this neighbor or even harm a person if that is the only easiest way to get food, shelter or clothing.  Psychologists claim that poverty is a very substantial social problem that leads to stress, depression and other forms of mental discomfort  (Kposowa & Breault, 2014). It is from all these challenges that people engage in criminal acts trying to relieve themselves from such adverse psychological problems.

Drugs and Alcohol Influence

Thirdly, bad influences by people especially people who do crimes as their habitual acts, lead to urban crimes. As guidance and counseling experts say, a lousy company destroys good morals (Graif & Gladfelter, 2014). In most cases, when individuals are from a poor conditioned neighborhood or background, and the only individuals they see as being successful in life, are the people who do some criminal activities, then such people are influenced to join crime (Gorr & Lee, 2015). Such individuals learn techniques and understand all the motivation they need to go into such criminal acts from the criminal experts who are experienced in the act.

On the other hand, making wrong moral and ethical choices also lead to urban crime. This is very different from affection by drugs, emotional stress or poverty. In this case, individuals make the wrong alternatives. In their sober minds, such people decide to murder to gain property, rape children, or even harm individuals to fulfill their unethical and immoral desires (Braga & Clarke, 2014). In other words, it is not because they have lost control of their emotions or influenced by substance abuse, especially when it comes to property felonies such as theft but they do so knowingly, even though they know it too as immoral.

Furthermore, the person knows he or she should not steal or perform other violent acts, but they do not care about it and decide to do it (Stults & Hasbrouck, 2015). Most people see poverty and being homeless as connected to the crime rate in a given area. Social strains by individuals in an urban area to achieve stability regarding their financial state is the cause for such people to act out in ways and means that are unwanted since legal means to achieve stable financial state are unavailable to them.

The government has put in place policies to reduce or stop the level of crime rates in our cities. Some of these mitigations are discussed below.

The government has established more prisons to hold more criminal offenders arrested by the police. Initially, criminal offenders were more likely to hurt people in the streets and take their belonging, but nowadays, such individuals are likely to be found near refreshment places meaning fewer individuals in our cities who are involved in committing crimes arrested and put into prison. Under statistics, the number of people who were under imprisonment was over of one million toward the end of the year 2007, while the number criminals were deteriorating due to decreasing criminal acts by the end of the year 2010.

Recruiting of more security officers under patrol in cities has helped much in solving urban crimes. The government has strategically distributed security officers especially in the bigger cities like Los Angeles and Houston, Orem, and Springdale (MacDonald & Fagan, 2016). Currently, many people working in law enforcement are mostly assigned by local governments, partly by the federal government, and some by the state governments. Initially, it was difficult to evaluate which city was the first because towns with more security officers had more crime than the cities with fewer ones. Finally, there were notices that as crime levels rose due the number of the security officers in various cities would rise, so measures were put in place to determine the causes of the rising number of security officers looking into crime levels in multiple cities.

Poverty and Psychological Effects on Crime

Advanced methods of analyzing crime have continued to reduce urban crimes gradually. Improving such methods as statistics show has led to a reduction in the crime rate in New York City compared to that in Chicago and Illinois (Baumer & Wolff, 2014).  Some years back, a CompStat system was put in place in New York. Its role was to collect information from criminal data which focused on securing more dangerous areas in the cities. It also made it easier for security personnel to detail the questions they got from their wards and implement suggestions offered by security officers to improve their security techniques (Malleson & Andresen, 2015). This improvement has helped to reduce the number of criminal acts that usually occurred, and at the same time cutting the population put into prison.

On another hand, allowing secret weapons is another solution to urban crimes. Some few years ago, court decisions permitted residents in certain cities that had gun bans on carrying concealed weapons (Keith & Griffiths, 2014). The use of such weapons enables the citizen to get more security to themselves when encountered by a problematic situation. For example, there was a court decision in Washington, D.C.  in 2008 which overturned a ban on guns which paved the way for the decrease of crime rate which was prior increasing twice faster than the entire part of the nation  (Bernstein & Wiek, 2016).

The government has installed surveillance cameras in various public places which are used to investigate multiple criminal acts although this proves to be a costly way of preventing illegal activities to the government. In Los Angeles, for example, each dollar spent on cameras resulted in over four dollars in pain and suffering associated with prevented criminal acts (Newton & Felson, 2015). Surveillance cameras are the most effective and efficient when they are more in number. Trained experts are hired to monitor them. Installation of cameras also helps to reduce or eradicate potential theft cases because such an individual will not have explicit knowledge on the availability of the cameras thus put under tension.

Conclusion:

Conclusively,  it is evident through the above discussion that urban crimes cause peace instability in an area through potential thefts and robbery among other crimes which further cause people in that urban center to live in great insecurity. It is an appreciation to the government for putting in place some policies that help to eradicate or reduce the level of crime rates happening in our cities. For the prosperity of any urban center to accrue, peace and stability are critical essential because it allows businesses and other organizations to run their activities smoothly. All achievable efforts to seize urban crimes should, therefore, be embraced without hesitating.

References:

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