In almost all of the West, crime is associated to poverty. If you commit a robbery, being a poor is an "explanation". Individuals are rarely blamed, your circum

In almost all of the West, crime is associated to poverty. If you commit a robbery, being a poor is an "explanation". Individuals are rarely blamed, your circumstances determine your behaviour not your values. This assumption breaks down once you leave almost any inner-city area, see levels of poverty that are at least as high in rural areas and there are very little crimes against people (although things like drugs are often common). Drugs are part of it, culture, attitudes towards poverty, police behaviour, sentencing, social policy (i.e. welfare state, healthcare)...but yes, crime is basically out of control in societies with virtually non-existent levels of poverty. Also, this doesn't have much to do with the subject. In the US, there have been cases of children walking through residential neighbourhood, a neighbour calls the police, the parents are arrested and then have to give up their children (there was one case where the parents actually lost their jobs too because they had jobs working with children, and they put on a register for child abusers)...suburban people have a fetish for crimes against children, crimes like this get treated very harshly but they let shoplifters or robbers walk free because of inequality, police in the US have no capacity for working with the community, it is completely unrelated to reality.