Social Class And Victimization

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The relationship between social class and criminal victimization is one that has been studied by criminal justice theorists and sociologists since the creation of our modern criminal justice system. The parameters of social class has been debated by famous sociologist over the centuries, causing the relation to criminal victimization to be somewhat skewed. The criminal justice policies of America are modeled after the common believe that those who are positioned at the bottom of the social class experience an increase in criminal victimization. This theory has had both a negative and positive effect on the members of the lower levels of the social class system. The purpose of this paper will be to examine the effect of social class on criminal …show more content…
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the link between social class and victimization varies according to crime; people tend to commit crimes closer to where they live. The difference between rich and poor households as victims of property crime is not quite as prevalent, although for the more serious crime of burglary, low-income households are at a greater risks than rich ones (National Crime Victimization Survey, 2009). The burglary rate for the poorest households receiving an annual income of less than $7,500 is more than twice that for the wealthiest households receiving $75,000 or more (Walker, 2015). An examination of the United States correctional population lends support to the theory that most of the people serving time for criminal offenses come from the lower end of the social class spectrum. Government statistics show that criminal offenders in prison tend to have a low level of education, more likely to be unemployed, and earn far lower incomes than the rest of the general population (Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2004). According to a 2002 survey conducted on offenders in local jails, about half of those in jail were employed full-time at the time of their arrest and over half earned less than $15,000 a year (Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2004). Overall, people who are not as well-off as those in the upper …show more content…
Although the link to crime and social class is widely accepted, most criminologists argue that measuring crime through the use of official data provide for a biased view on crime. The use of official data to measure crime does not take into account the amount of crimes that go unreported, unnoticed, or simply undocumented (Walker, 2015). In addition, many predictions about criminal behavior are based off of stereotypes about social class as well as stereotypes about race, ethnicity, and/or gender (Walker, 2015). The stereotypical assumptions about social class and crime is what has created a negative effect on lower class areas as most justice policies tend to focus on said areas. For example, disciplinary strategies that attack crime through conservative tactics such as determinate sentencing, the removal of rehabilitation programs from prisons, and “wars” on crime and drugs have resulted in an increase in criminal victimization rates by those who are left with little options but to return to crime once they return to their communities (Walker, 2015). Not surprisingly, this has had the largest impact on the poorer classes. On the positive end, preventative strategies to prevent
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