贫穷会导致犯罪吗?（英文演讲）短文形式

贫穷会导致犯罪吗?（英文演讲）短文形式
贫穷会导致犯罪吗?（英文演讲）
短文形式

贫穷会导致犯罪吗?（英文演讲）短文形式
Poverty and Crime
By Ellen ⋅ October 4, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment
It is a fact of history that poverty breeds crime. Of course, this does not mean that a majority of people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds become criminals, or that all criminals are the product of poor backgrounds. Nor is poverty the only factor that goes into the making of a criminal. But it is a major one.
A social class suffering from want and need is far more likely to produce individuals who will engage in criminal activities, than the social classes that are well off. This is particularly true of young people in impoverished situations. They are exposed to a greater temptation to steal and to become involved with gangs that sustain themselves by such criminal means as drug dealing and extortion.
Young people living in poverty are more likely than other children and youths to be exposed to domestic violence, alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse, and sex-related crimes. These have all been proven to be factors in the development of low self-esteem and anti-social attitudes that frequently lead a person into a criminal lifestyle. A youth who reaches adulthood in such situations can have a well-entrenched feeling of contempt for law.
Studies of the Victorian Age have shown that the sections of London inhabited by the city's most desperately poor, produced the greatest number of house-breakers, highway robbers, pickpockets, prostitutes and other law-breakers. A large percentage of who were tossed into English prisons or herded onto ships for transportation to penal colonies in Australia were children who had to either steal or starve. In the teeming, squalid immigrant neighbourhoods of large American cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, boys learned criminal ways very early. They formed gangs, often based along ethnic lines, as both a means of intimidating victims and as a form of protection. The leaders of some of these young gangs grew up to become some of the most notorious criminals in American history; their names including the likes of Al Capone, Dean Banion and Charles Luciano.
Today the gangs that plague many American (and Canadian) communities recruit members from the ranks of underprivileged inner city children and teenagers. The gangs lure these kids with promises of money, drugs and excitement. Many who have no real desire to be involved with gangs are forced to join.
The threat of harsh punishment seems to have as little effect on the crime rate as it had in Victorian times. Court systems are overburdened and jails are overcrowded. The crime rate isn't likely to go down, and the gangs aren't likely to disappear, until something is done to rid society of crime's principal breeding ground; poverty!