The Poor and the Lack of Access To Justice

"Too often, the public and policy-makers alike think of poverty as simply a lack of income. In reality, it is a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing a chronic lack of resources, capabilities, choices, security and power, all building on each other in a feedback loop of disadvantage.

"Therefore, eradicating extreme poverty requires tackling all these aspects, as well as improving access to basic goods such as housing, food, education, health services and water and sanitation.

"Access to justice plays a crucial role in all parts of this equation, as a fundamental human right in itself and also an essential tool for the protection and promotion of all other civil, cultural, economic political and social rights. If people living in poverty do not have access to a remedy when their rights have been violated, or cannot proactively claim their rights and entitlements, then their exclusion, powerlessness and deprivation become entrenched."

(Kate Donald. "The vicious circle of poverty and injustice."

opendemocracy.net. January 22, 2013.)

Kate Donald is a human rights researcher and Program Director at Center for Economic and Social Rights. She has recently worked with the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on a report to the UN General Assembly on unpaid care and human rights. She has also conducted research on the penalization of poverty and examined the interface between human rights and public policy, including sexuality, corruption and business.

Donald writes about the vicious circle of poverty and injustice. She explains that people living in poverty are exceptionally vulnerable to crime, abuse, and exploitation. Inequality perpetuates their world because they lack the ability to take real, effect recourse against these terrible conditions.

Thus, the poor's increased vulnerability and exclusion further hampers their ability to pursue justice; ad infinitum, spiraling down the generations.

Donald says ...

"Poverty will only be defeated when the law works for everyone. Access to justice is crucial for tackling the root causes of poverty, exclusion and vulnerability. Effective and accessible justice systems can be tools to develop progressive jurisprudence on economic and social rights - mandating provision of affordable housing, enforcing the human rights of people living in poverty, or by remedying their exploitation by powerful public or private actors."  

The stigma against those who live in poverty is so apparent. Consider the poor in Scioto County. The classes above them here consider them pariahs, welfare leeches, and the major source of crime and illegal activities. Most of the population detests the poor, believing that they must, somehow, find themselves good jobs with good benefits that will provide them the means to the path of the American Dream -- a family, a home, a productive existence.

The truth is often overshadowed by stereotypes of poor people. Is it any wonder justice is just a meaningless word to those who are less fortunate? Examination reveals some surprising findings about welfare and crime.

Welfare

Poverty presents few such opportunities for most poor folks. Welfare is not a guarantee that a poor person's standard of living will change. For many, it simply represents a means for survival. Yet, critics often argue that government poverty programs perversely make the poor worse off by encouraging unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, and other "social pathologies."

However, in a recent study, Scott Beaulier, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and Management at Beloit College and Bryan Caplan, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University, found that basic microeconomic theory tells us that you cannot make an agent worse off by expanding his choice set.

The research concludes: "The traditional conservative critique of the welfare state is fundamentally paternalist. Once you accept the idea that you can hurt people by giving them more choices, you cannot dismiss the idea that you can help them by taking some of their choices away. In practice, of course, the latter is much more costly and intrusive than the former." It follows that those who think giving welfare choices to the poor is bad actually pay more for the perverse effects of cutting out their options. 

(Scott Beaulier and Bryan Caplan. "Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects

of the Welfare State." Kyklos. 2007.)

Kate Donald says, "Often, the battles of the poor remain unfought because of the huge chasm in wealth, social capital and political power between themselves and their ‘opponents’: those who should be accountable to them, whose actions (or lack thereof) threaten their rights, bodily integrity or livelihoods."
 

A landlord, an employer, a local authority official; a bank that mis-sold them a high-interest loan; a government that has removed their disability benefit with one sweep of the pen: to challenge these powerful figures requires resources (time, money, information) that are often lacking.

According to an analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, families who receive public benefits such as housing assistance, welfare cash assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and Social Security Income (SSI) for the disabled or low-income elderly have much smaller spending budgets than those who don’t receive benefits and spend a bigger portion on the basics such as food, housing, and transportation.

These families also put a bigger percentage of that money toward food, housing, and transportation, devoting 77 percent of their budgets to these necessities compared to about 65 percent for other families. Meanwhile, they spend less, on average, on some things thought to be luxuries like eating out and entertainment.

(Bryce Covert. "Your Assumptions About Welfare Recipients Are Wrong."

thinkprogress.org. December 18, 2013.) 

Crime

Bryan Caplan says that crime is just one of many, many "social pathologies" that are over-represented among the poor: alcoholism, drug abuse, smoking, obesity, illegitimacy, etc. None of these are good escape routes from poverty. So instead of trying to explain why "poverty causes crime" or "poverty causes obesity," it makes so much more sense to look for common causes of poverty and social pathologies.

(Bryan Caplan. "Why Do the Poor Commit More Crime?" econlib.org. June 13, 2007.)

Andrew Ward, adjunct professor of Psychology, believes living in an area of concentrated poverty can be a catalyst for futility.

“It’s not just being poor, but it’s being around lots of poor people,” Ward says. “The relationship between poverty and crime is in areas of concentrated poverty, like these inner city areas.”

Ward continues,“It can be a contributing factor of hopelessness and despair. 'What do I have to lose? I might as well commit a crime.’ (People say) But really, anyone can go into despair.”

(Ben Markley. "Poverty on trial: Does poverty cause crime?" The Campus Ledger. Johnson County Community College. May 08, 2012.)

Another factor is what Ward called the “escalation of violence.”

“There is phenomenon among people who live in concentrated poverty,” Ward said. “I call it pre-emptive aggression. If you’re someone who lives in an area that’s kind of dangerous, you commit an act of crime so people know not to mess with you. You need to show you’re tough, but now I have to be tougher than you, so I need to go commit a worse crime.”

Aristotle wrote: "Poverty is the parent of crime." But research by Amir Sariaslan of the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, and his colleagues, just published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, casts doubt on the chain of causation -- at least as far as violent crime and the misuse of drugs are concerned.

Sariaslan found, to no one’s surprise, that teenagers who had grown up in families whose earnings were among the bottom fifth were seven times more likely to be convicted of violent crimes, and twice as likely to be convicted of drug offences, as those whose family incomes were in the top fifth.

Yet, the interesting twist that Sariaslan did find was that when he looked at families which had started poor and got richer, "the younger children -- those born into relative affluence -- were just as likely to misbehave when they were teenagers as their elder siblings had been. Family income was not, per se, the determining factor."

That suggests two possibilities:

1. A family’s culture, once established, is “sticky” -- that you can "take the kid out of the neighborhood, but not the neighborhood out of the kid." Given, for example, children’s propensity to emulate elder siblings whom they admire.

2. Genes which predispose to criminal behavior (several studies suggest such genes exist) are more common at the bottom of society than at the top, perhaps because the lack of impulse-control they engender also tends to reduce someone’s earning capacity.

So, will money alone turn poor people from their criminal ways? According to this study, there exists a distinct possibility that intergenerational poverty may be self-reinforcing, and those who have genetic issues who can still control their behavior stand a better chance of avoiding criminal behavior such as violent crime and drug abuse.

(Amir Sariaslan, Henrik Larsson, Brian D’Onofrio, Niklas Långström, Paul Lichtenstein. "Childhood family income, adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: quasi-experimental total population study." The British Journal of Psychiatry. August 2014.)

Justice For the Poor

The Census Bureau reported in 2011 that a record 46 million Americans -- 15% of the population -- were living below the poverty line. It is common knowledge that a widening gap between the richest and poorest Americans exists and shows no sign of decreasing. But, Ryan Messmore, D.Phil. of the Freedom Foundation says this about justice, inequality, and the poor:

"We must ask whether justice is always synonymous with equality, and explore the economic realities underlying the claim that a resource gap is inherently unjust. Such an examination will show that the left's intense focus on the income gap is severely misplaced — and that, if we fail to correct their error, our society runs the risk of neglecting the poor for the sake of an ill-advised ideological quest."

(Ryan Messmore. "Justice, Inequality, and the Poor."

The Heritage Foundation. December 19, 2011.) 

Messmore concludes that growth, mobility, and continuing prosperity do more to bring justice to the poor than beating our heads wondering how to close the income gap. He continues ...

"How, then, can we foster a national conversation focused more directly on helping those in need rather than on income inequality? One place to start is by making sure we talk about others as fellow citizens or neighbors, rather than as targets of envy or victims of greed. We should care about the condition of the poor because we want our fellow citizens to thrive, not because we resent those who have done especially well for themselves.

"We should be moved by compassion, not bitterness; we should want to help the poor make something of the great benefits and advantages of our free society, rather than to limit the ability of the wealthy to do so. Reframing the debate about poverty can help us shift moral attention back where it belongs: to changing conditions that hinder economic mobility and to helping all citizens — especially the poor — improve their lives.

"Changing the focus of the conversation is the responsibility of leaders in civil society and government alike. This debate touches our core sense of what justice and human equality are all about, and those intuitions are formed by parents, teachers, and other moral leaders. Religious leaders especially have the opportunity to shape public notions of justice, human dignity, envy, compassion, and mutual responsibility."

In hopes that this food for thought encourages all of us to value justice for the poor, I present these findings. In Scioto County, where positive opportunities for poor people are scarce and empathy for social programs is even scarcer, we owe much more human kindness to those less fortunate.

Whether the environment, the genes, or the lack of resources produces poverty, we must help those who suffer break their hell of deprivation. We must be willing to give, not just to judge. At the core of that assistance is helping to instill feelings in all people that they have equal justice and equal worth. The poor in Scioto County see themselves as voiceless victims of strong political cronyism and deep inequality. The writing is on the wall for all to see.  

It is extremely difficult to live up to the command of being "your brother's keeper" since we judge others based on our own behaviors and beliefs, not theirs; however, how many of us had gracious, extraordinary help from family and friends that prevented us from becoming a part of the spiral of vicious poverty? I would guess, like me, the vast majority. Yet, many of us more fortunate people constantly degrade the poor and offer them one solution: "Get off your ass and make something of yourself."

That suggestions seems simple enough until you consider how others absolutely helped you become what you are today. Perhaps it is us who have become lazy and indifferent. Are our own stereotypes feeding the beast of poverty?