My guess is that criminals are evenly sprinkled across income distributions, but being prosecuted skews towards poverty because police / justice incentives are set by wealthy elites.
This does make a certain sense, but be careful of:
* Police incentives are set by wealthy elites might be "Higher policed areas are wealthier" or just "Weathier areas are full of people who commit less petty crime / visible violent crime that would be deterred by patrols"
* "Criminals are evenly sprinkled across income distributions" might actually be that Conscientiousness is highly correlated with lifetime earnings AND Conscientiousness is negatively correlated with lifetime convictions
There's tons of conflicting arrows, nothing is settled, but there sure are lots of political reasons to assume it's a clear case.
And yet, in places like NYC, the complaint from many activists is the opposite - that poor people get arrested more because its the poorer areas with more policing.
A simple example in NYC is turnstile jumping. The people willing to risk a ticket/police engagement over a $2.90 fare are likely not high income. Yes you do see it even in higher income areas but not at nearly the same rate. Ride a train that goes through rich and poor neighborhoods and spend 10 minutes at the turnstiles of each.. the disparity is huge.
Some argue it's unfair that people have to pay the fare and it should just be free. To me it seems like moving the goalposts on what we consider crime. There's already programs for reduced fairs for students, elderly, and low income. There's plenty of other examples of this behavior.
>” And yet, in places like NYC, the complaint from many activists is the opposite - that poor people get arrested more because it’s the poorer areas with more policing.”
Couldn’t both things be true? Could different cities and police departments have differing contexts, differing problems?
I think we're circling around the well known correlation between conscientousness and lifetime earnings. A conscientious person is more likely to follow rules and procedures by definition and also more likely to earn money as shown by research.
> Third, a few people might object that the correlation we observe is between convictions and income and perhaps convictions don’t reflect actual crime. I don’t think that is plausible for a variety of reasons but the authors also find no statistically significant evidence that wealth reduces the probability one is suspect in a crime investigation (god bless the Swedes for extreme data collection).
Well wait. Why do allow room for the concept of “incentives” when it comes to police but not when it comes to criminals? Incentive for crime is surely not “evenly sprinkled” across income levels?
But white collar workers are less likely to be living in life or death levels of poverty. Dire circumstances and lack of alternatives incentivize criminal behavior, while accumulated wealth and social factors strongly disincentivize white collar crime. You’re correct, the payout for white collar crime is potentially unlimited but most white collar crime isn’t Sam bankman Fried it’s low level (often teenage) crypto trading.
