Poverty, Inequality, Political Instability and Property Crimes in Pakistan: A Time Series Analysis

Abstract

In a formal econometric analysis of crime statistics in Pakistan, this paper estimates five systems of equations determining crime rates against property, conviction rates and police and justice input using time series annual data. The study finds substantial empirical support for the model of crime, punishment and deterrence based on economic theory. The main conclusion of the study is that in the fight against crime Pakistan needs to divert resources from the provision of legal justice through various deterrence measures, like a large police force, conviction and punishment, towards the provision of social justice in the form of the fight against poverty, inequality and unemployment and maintenance of political stability. Resources also need to be diverted from punishments to apprehension of criminals.

Profiling Crime in Pakistan: An Aggregated and Disaggregated Socioeconomic Analysis

“…Phillips and Land, 2012) that higher rate of unemployment in society lowers the consumption level, thus minimizes the need of the monetary assets through criminal activities to fulfil the desires. Similarly, unemployment rate is likely to have a negative influence on the crime against property as most of the people are sitting idle in their home, thus can look after their possession and control the criminal activities (Syed and Ahmed, 2013). The short run estimated of our study, are also exhibiting the same trend for crime against property in short run.…”

“…Poverty and not being able to benefit justly from the legal activities can offend an individual and persuade him to choose earing means otherwise. Syed and Ahmed (2013) drawn the similar results for Pakistan. They emphasized that resources must divert from large criminal justice system to the provision of social justice.…”

“…The model depicts the effect of certain variables on aggregate crime i.e unemployment (Carr-Hill and Stern, 1983), social sector spending (Anser et al, 2020), education (Khan et al, 2015), population density (Fisher, 1987), per capita income (Syed and Ahmed, 2013), GDP growth (Goulas and Zervoyianni, 2013), poverty (Anser et al, 2020), income inequality (Umair, 2019b;Wu and Wu, 2012) and police strength (Chalfin and McCrary, 2017…”

“…The following shows factors effecting crime against property, derived from the literature i.e. social sector spending (Ehrlich, 1973a), GDP growth, per-capita income, income inequality, Poverty (Detotto and Otranto, 2012;Han et al, 2013a;Howsen and Jarrell, 1987;Kposowa, Breault, and Harrison, 1995;Syed and Ahmed, 2013), unemployment (Gillanni, Khan, and Gill, 2011;Narayan and Smyth, 2004;J. Phillips and Land, 2012), education (Nguyen, 2019) (5)…”

“…While profiling the socio-economic factors effecting of crime, one needs to see how crime interacts with different and heterogeneous fields? Crime rate has increased at an alarming rate in Pakistan, leaving the justice system choked with thousands of pending cases (Syed and Ahmed, 2013). Crime is precisely related to poverty (Carr-Hill and Stern, 1983;Pratt and Cullen, 2005) Social exclusion and deprivation (Higgins, Gabbidon, and Martin, 2010), unemployment (Chiricos, 1987;Freeman, 1994;Imrohoroglu, Merlo, and Rupert, 2001) wages and income inequality (Burdett, Lagos, and Wright, 2003;Chiu and Madden, 1998;Ehrlich, 1973b;Fleisher, 1966) and level of education (Lochner, 1999;Lochner and Moretti, 2001;Wilson and Herrnstein, 1998).…”