Professor Colin Webster and Dr Sarah Kingston from the Criminology Group and the new Centre for Applied Social Research at Leeds Met have reviewed evidence about the benefits of reducing crime by reducing poverty.
As well as looking at the links how poverty and crime influence one another they have been asked by JRF to explore what contributions policies to prevent and reduce crime might make to their anti-poverty programme. The review is one of a comprehensive series of reviews, consultations and workshops to gather ideas and evidence; and commission analysis, research and modelling. The programme aims to reduce poverty across the four nations of the UK, creating costed, evidence-based anti-poverty strategies by 2016 that it is hoped will have a positive impact on the people affected.
In gathering knowledge and evidence about the interaction of poverty and crime,Prof Webster and Dr Kingston make explicit the direct and indirect influences and causes of this relationship, which have often remained implicit and unclear in much criminological research and crime policy, denying us access to the triggers and mechanisms that account for the ways poverty and crime are linked.
Image courtesy of freedigital photos.net – Stuart Miles
criminology@LMU 