Nickel believes that pay inequality is one of the reasons for poverty in the UK. “Pay inequality, already higher than in much of Northern Europe in 1979, has apparently increased substantially since then. One thesis that this is due to the drop in demand for unskilled workers and a rise in demand for skilled staff. The decline in unskilled jobs was a particular problem in the UK, as even in the 1960’s there was a large number of very low skilled individuals relative to other countries. By the 1990’s this does not seem to have improved, with around one in five of the working age population having very low skills. This has implications for the level of wages they can expect to receive. Nickel calculated that variations in skill levels could explain about 80 percent of the variation in pay dispersion across countries”.
Nickel looks at the increasing male worklessness and says that “since the 1970’s much of the increase in worklessness has been largely due to men classified as economically inactive (rather than unemployed). For older working-age men, this rise in ‘inactivity’ was the greatest in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This seems to be associated with low skill levels, the relative position of the low skilled having worsened since the 1970’s, inactivity rates for low skilled men have increased over two and a half times. Many inactive men also report ill health or disability (70 percent of the prime age and 50 percent of older working-age men). The two are related : those in the bottom quarter of the skills distribution are twice as likely to have a limiting illness than those with better skill levels. Around two-thirds of the rise in inactivity was attributed to sickness/disability, with around 60 percent of these from the bottom quartile of skills.
Nickell concludes that, “without tackling skill levels, there is no practical possibility of poverty reducing relative poverty to 1979 levels”.
So how do we define poverty to measure who is in poverty? Nickle explains... “to measure low income the government generally uses the threshold of 60 percent of median household incomes before housing costs. In 2001/02, for the whole British population, this represented £187 per week. The child poverty action group’s preferred measure is 50 percent of the mean income after housing costs, representing £169 per week. However the income thresholds translate into different cash amounts depending on family type.”
So, who is in poverty? “In 2001/02 on the measure of contemporary 50 percent mean after hosing costs, 23 percent of the population and 32 percent of children, lived in poverty. One in five working-age adults and one in four pensioners were also poor according to this definition. It also shows that, of people most likely to live below the low-income thresholds half lived in families with children, half lived in families with no savings, two in five lived in families with one or more adults in work, three in ten lived in families classified as ‘inactive’ (i.e.. Not in work or looking for a job), a group which had increased by a third since 1994/95. One in three lived in families with at least one disabled adult, one in six lived in a household headed by someone from black and ethnic minority communities and one-parent families and single pensioners had the greatest risk of living in poverty.”
The conclusion of these statistics shows that the groups of people most likely to experience persistent poverty (i.e.. Below 60 percent median incomes in at least three out of four years) where single pensioners, one-parent families, workless households, people living in the social rented sector and those with no qualifications.
Social Inclusion
Social inclusion concerns the ways in which social exclusion can be overcome. These can include changes in law, changes in the policies and practices of organisations and institutions, support for communities, provision of appropriate or improved services, increasing employment opportunities, creating new employment opportunities, educational and training strategies and improvements in access to services.
Critics point out that the term social inclusion can also denote particular value systems, cultural attitudes and social behaviour. For example, how do people become socially included? Does this happen as a result of ending poverty or discrimination or are they expected to behave in a particular way- attend religious institutions, save regularly, keep their houses neat and tidy? Does everyone in a society want to be included? Some might feel that a particular society is corrupt or repressive and not wish to support or participate in it. In short, the term social inclusion raises the questions ‘who includes whom? on what terms? and in what are they included?’.
It is vital that work on inclusion also involves diversity as we are not looking for a society which is ‘all the same’. Recently, the Government has focused on what it calls ‘social cohesion’ or ‘community cohesion’ which is the idea of creating a society that isn't fractured by racism, violence, poverty, etc.
Government Strategy
Employment is the key tool in the Government's strategy. To be socially included is to work, and to work is to be socially included.
Paid employment is an integral part of any inclusive strategy, although only a partial solution. Despite government efforts to attract investors, the availability of jobs varies across the country. For example, there are more vacancies in the South East of England or Edinburgh than in Glasgow or the Borders. There is often a mismatch between where employers are located and where the unemployed actually live.
It is evident that employment does not guarantee a reduction in poverty. Despite Government measures, many people in paid work are poor or on the margins of poverty. Deregulation of the labour market over the past twenty years means that employment is insecure.
Exclusion to Inclusion
‘Exclusion to inclusion’ was the heart of New Labour thinking as they launched the Social Exclusion Unit in December 1997. Headed by Tony Blair, its task is shift the focus of antipoverty schemes towards prevention through the Government's ‘Welfare to Work’ programme. Welfare to Work has been developed as the centrepiece to combat the social exclusion of unemployed under-25 year olds.
In December 1999, Tony Blair admitted that progress was slow. He signalled a gear change in the drive to tackle poverty and pledged to bridge the divide between the haves and have-nots. In April 2000 the Government launched the National Strategy for Urban Renewal aimed at bringing the poorest communities up the prosperity league over the next decade.
Have the governments programmes achieved there objectives? According to a report from the social exclusion unit the Government's drive to tackle poverty and social exclusion is beginning to work.
The Financial Times, 22 March 2001 says that the subjects of the first reports from the social exclusion unit which were teenage pregnancy, rough sleeping and school exclusions have all gone down in number but number of truancies remains constant.
The report stresses that many of the programmes the unit has helped to devise, such as the neighbourhood renewal scheme, are extremely long-term in character and will yield results over 10 to 20 years. However, it says that many indicators that were worsening in the 1980s and 1990s have now begun to turn.
Local Issues
If it is the case that unemployment can create more crime in an area, lets look at the North West and see if a correlation appears.
In 2002 / 2003 in the North West of England the total number of all reported crime per thousand of the population reached 790,490 which is more than all of the other regions in England and Wales apart from the London region which reached 1,090,767 according to statistics from the home office. Although a possible explanation for this could be that England’s Northwest has a population density of 486 persons per sq. km, second largest after London as it includes Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.
So now we know the crime statistics for the North West lets look at the employment statistics and compare with England's average. The Region has the sixth highest unemployment figure in the UK, slightly higher than the national average at 14.7%. Merseyside has the worst unemployment figure in the UK. Youth unemployment has fallen recently, but still remains high at 13.7%. Youth unemployment amongst men stands at 17.2%. There are also significant differences in unemployment by gender. In the North West, male unemployment stands at 7.4%, the seventh highest regional level, and above the UK average of 7.0%. Female unemployment in the Region stands at 5.2%, the seventh highest regionally, and is below the national average of 5.4%. In terms of unemployment by age, the highest rates of unemployment are found amongst the 16-24 age group, at 13.1%, followed by the 25-49 age group, at 5.5%, with the rate amongst the 50+ age group at 4.0%. The corresponding national rates are 12.8%, 5.3% and 4.6% respectively. There is also the issue of ‘hidden’ unemployment. This is a term used to describe the number of people who are out of work but do not appear in the claimant count figure. As such, it is considered that due to a lack of services such as public transport in rural areas, the extent of hidden unemployment in these areas could be considerable.
The North West has some areas of high unemployment, for example Merseyside and the second highest crime rate in the country. It may be valid to suggest the two have a direct relationship but I think this is debatable as one doesn't necessarily determine the other. One of the questions that will always be asked is - why some people living in poverty commit crime and others do not if there really is a direct cause and effect relationship? Biology? Psychology? Other reasons?
The fact that youth unemployment has fallen might be related to some of the figures from the Social Inclusion Unit which show a decline in the number of teenage pregnancy, rough sleeping and school exclusions (all objectives of the first Social Inclusion Unit reports).
It is important to look at times in the past when unemployment has been high. In the 1980's Britain seen an outburst of ‘race riots’.
Of all the race related issues raised within the riots, none really suggest that they where ‘race riots’ and evidence tends to point to ‘place riots’ where the residents in the locations of rioting (black and white) have united to create a political demonstration. The common factor in these areas at the times of the riots is the high levels of unemployment amongst residents and even more so amongst ethnic minorities. For example over half of Brixton's population was without jobs at the time of the rioting. On the 6th of April 1981 the government figures released show that unemployment was rising from 1.5 to 2.5 million in a year. Unemployment among ethnic minorities was shown to be rising even faster, it was up 82% in one year. At the time of the rioting the unemployment in Toxteth had risen to 37%, climbing to 60% among young blacks, with 81,000 people chasing 1,019 jobs in Liverpool as a whole. As the end of the school term was approaching the local careers office had information on just 12 vacancies to offer school leavers throughout the city. Manchester had suffered badly due to recession. Moss Side had an unemployment figure of 44% at the time of rioting the main group being young people (both sexes) under the age of 21.
More recently we have seen what is known as ‘the 2001 Mill-town riots’ or ‘the summer of discontent’. Riots where concentrated in the areas of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford all of which have a large Asian population.
Again reasons for these riots have largely been associated with unemployment in these areas. There has been a decline in the textile industries in these areas and not only does this mean high unemployment in these areas but it also has the implications of the competition for jobs which fuels ethnic tension. The industries that closed were places with ethnically mixed employees and therefore there is a lack of the segregation that exists within schools and housing in these areas. Another reason given for the rioting is the change in attitudes of the Asian residents to be less passive and therefore confrontations will occur. The provocation of the extreme-right was of major influence to these confrontations. Their anti-immigration views have grown in popularity and there are claims that the extreme-right had the ‘race riots’ on their agenda.
Social Exclusion and Crime
In the governments definition of social exclusion, they recognise areas of high crime as a problem associated with social exclusion.
One of the governments main concerns for tackling social exclusion is tackling unemployment as they realise that unemployment may increase the chances of criminality. Economic and social disadvantages have been identified as widely occurring features in the background and upbringing of many young adult offenders.
Re-offending
When I was young I held the view that a criminal would be excluded from society and this would be part of the punishment for their crime. If this is the case there would be high rates of re-offending if social exclusion is an appropriate explanation for criminal behaviour this could explain re-offending.
For those serving short prison sentences in particular, rates of reconviction are high and rising. Around three-quarters of those who have served sentences for burglary or for theft for example are convicted of a further offence within two years of release. We know that one of the surest ways to stop re-offending is by helping someone to stay in employment.
Possession of a criminal record constitutes a significant barrier to employment for young adults, which may leave them economically disadvantaged and indeed increase the chances of re-offending. The barriers which face ex-offenders lie on two main fronts: first, employer discrimination; second, the low levels of skills and qualifications amongst offenders, their poor self-esteem, and behavioural and health problems which can reduce their chances of securing a job.
Another hurdle that seems apparent is that amongst those leaving prison is that 90 per cent have poor literacy and numeracy skills and no immediate prospect of employment, while two-fifths will be homeless. By helping ex-prisoners reintegrate effectively into society, we will prevent more crime and tackle the effect that re-offending has on communities, often those which are already in the most deprived areas.
The link between poor communities and crime has also been discussed by Charles Murray in his work ‘the Emerging British Underclass’.
Underclass
Charles Murray (1989) was the sociologist who used this term to describe a feature of American society. He said, “throughout the 1970s something strange and frightening was happening among poor people in the US. Poor communities that had consisted mostly of hardworking folks began deteriorating, sometimes falling apart altogether. Drugs, crime, illegitimacy, drop out from school, casual violence, … showed large increases, focused in poor communities. As the 1980s began, the growing population of the “other kind of poor people” could no longer be ignored and a label for them came into use. In the US we began to call them the underclass”(Murray, 1989)
He included in this category are the long term unemployed, those in short term, low-paid and generally unpleasant forms of employment, including migrant workers, and some women and members of ethnic minority groups. Single parent families and the elderly on state pensions are also included.
But of what relevance would this be to Britain? Lash (1994) claimed that, In Britain the underclass would be overwhelmingly white, concentrated above all in the housing estates of Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle and elsewhere. In the USA such concentrations of white urban poverty simply just do not exist”. Charles Murray also claims that Britain in following in the same path as the USA!
Although the existence of an underclass seems a relatively new phenomenon Marx and Engles had a similar classification which they called the lumpenproletariat. Lumpenproletariat can be translated to the ‘proletariat of rags’, form the German ‘lumpen’ meaning ‘rag’. Marx and Engles were two of the first nineteenth century writers to recognise the existence of a class drawn from all classes, living on the margins of society, not in regular employment and gaining their subsistence mainly from crime. According to Marx, the composition of the Parisian lumpenproletariat in the mid-nineteenth century included vagabonds, discharged soldiers and jailbirds, escaped gallery slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel-keepers, rag pickers and beggars. These groups where sharply differentiated from the industrial working class by both politics and by being outside the normal social relations of wage labour.
Payne et al (1996) claims that poverty is not a class situation, although aspects of it can be thought of as arising from many very poor people's lack of opportunities to sell their labour in the market. Although, it seems fair to say that exclusion exists within Britain today! There are some drawbacks with the term ‘underclass’ and with the work of Charles Murray in his study.
Now I will look at which theories would tend to use the notion of ‘social exclusion' as a possible cause of crime.
The Theories
Different theories believe in different reasons for why people commit crimes. Sociological and Interactionist theory are likely to use social exclusion as part of the explanation for crime. Sociological theory generally believes that people commit crime as they do not see the benefits of adhering to conventional social values, and believe crime is a way to improve personal social conditions. They believe social environment is the cause of criminal behaviour, with weak or broken bonds to family, school, and religion being the catalyst to criminal Behaviour. These social conditions and environments could be a result of social exclusion.
Interactionists believe that association with other criminals is the factor most contributing to criminal behaviour among individuals along with the failure of self-direction, and inadequate social roles are the root causes of criminal behaviour. This could also be brought about by social exclusion.
Theories which would criticise the notion of social exclusion would be the classical, biological and psychological theories. Classical theory believes that crime is caused by the individuals free will. Human beings are rational, and make decisions freely and with understanding of consequences. Biological theorists attribute crime to genetics. These basic determinants of human behaviour may be passed from one generation to the next; criminal behaviour is genetically inherited. Human DNA, environmental contaminants, nutrition, hormones, physical trauma (especially to the brain) and body chemistry all combine to contribute to criminal behaviour. Finally psychological theory suggests that crime is due to chromosomal anomalies, reactions to foods, vitamin deficiencies, or environmental allergies, combined with a particular genetic makeup, that will predispose some individuals to criminal behaviour.
Conclusion
I conclude from this that although social exclusion can be a significant factor that causes people to commit crimes, it tends to be more complex with multiple reasons behind the decision to break the law.
When defining Social exclusion we must remember that social exclusion do not always means something negative. There are some situations where exclusion is positive. For example, excluding children from viewing sexually explicit material. The same can be said about inclusion. All the times inclusion is positive, but if it is against person's or group's will, it can turn to a negative side.
Word Count - 3994
Bibliography
Books
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, David Jary and Julia Jary, 1991, Harper Collins Publishers (page 675, 363)
The emerging British Underclass, Charles Murray, London: IEA, 1993 (page 24)
The Making of an Underclass, S. Lash, Brown and Rompton, ‘A New Europe?’ London: Uni College Press, 1994 (page 171)
Journals
Journal of the Child Poverty Action Group. Issue 115. Summer 2003 (Research review - page 18 / Poverty watch - page 19)
Websites
Crime and Social Exclusion - www.oup.co.uk/doc/college/maguire/ch14.doc (visited 30/12/03)
Definitions - www.resource.gov.uk/documents/socialinc05.doc (visited 21/12/03)
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EHH Glossary - (visited 21/12/03)
England's North West - http://www.englandsnorthwest.com/englandsnorthwest_news/facts_and_figures/ (visited 03/01/04)
Exclusion and Inclusion - (visited 23/12/03)
Lothian Anti Poverty Alliance - (visited 30/12/03)
News vote 2001 - (visited 12/12/03)
North West regional Chapter - http://www.defra.gov.uk/erdp/docs/nwchapter/section13/NW132.htm#unemployment (visited 03/01/04)
Poverty - http://www.poverty.org.uk/indicators/44.htm (visited 29/12/03)
1981 Riots Timeline - http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/U/untold/programs/riot/timeline.html (visited 02/04/03)
Social Exclusion and Ex prisoners - http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page2849.asp (visited 03/01/04)
Social Exclusion Unit - http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/Exclusion.html (visited 02/01/04)
Social Inclusion 2000 - (visited 20/12/03)
Why do people commit crime? - http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/social/law30/unit02/02_06_sh.html (visited 03/01/04)
