Janie,

To the best of my knowledge, I have not stated a position on the issue of whether or not poverty causes crime. Since I have said nothing about it at all, I fail to see how I "over-simplified" the issue.

I responded to a different issue: whether or not there are, as Dorothy Parshall stated at 10:45 a.m. on June 7, "thousands in prison for the crime of being poor". As Ebbie and kendall have pointed out, it is one thing to say that poverty produces conditions which increase the crime rate (or the arrest rate or the incarceration rate). It is quite another to say that people are in prison "for the crime of being poor".

There is a strong correlation between maleness and imprisonment, far stronger than the correlation between poverty and imprisonment. Azizi's statistics (9:29 p.m.) indicate that 53% of those imprisoned are poor, but over 90% of those imprisoned are male:http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:BqjLYBnegqIJ:www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm+prison+population+by+gender&cd=1&hl=en&ct=cln   

What would your response be if someone were to state that there are "thousands in prison for the crime of being male"?

My response would be to point out that none of the prisoners or ex-prisoners with whom I have worked have even claimed that they were "in prison for the crime of being male". Writing that would not constitute a denial that maleness and imprisonment are correlated.

There are many problems with the American way of life. Imprisoning people "for the crime of being poor" is not among them.


Kent