Crime

Lord Chief Justice Hales, who wrote in the time of Charles II., computes the necessary expence of a labourer's family, consisting of six persons, the father and mother, two children able to do something, and two not able, at ten shillings a week, or twenty-six pounds a year. If they cannot earn this by their labour, they must make it up, he supposes, either by begging or stealing. He appears to have enquired very carefully into this subject.
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book One, Chapter VIII



The results of these analyses support the proposition that the degree to which resources are unequally distributed is a stronger determinant of levels of lethal violence in modern nation states than is the average level of material welfare.
- Martin Daly, Margo Wilson and Shawn Vasdev, Income Inequality and Homicide Rates in Canada and the United States (Canadian Journal of Criminology April 2001, p.219-236)



Other socio-economic factors which are associated with higher levels of victimisation in the general population are low levels of economic activity (economically active means those who are employed or those who are unemployed but seeking and available for work) and living in socially rented accommodation.
- Heather Salisbury and Anna Upson, Ethnicity, victimisation and worry about crime: findings from the 2001/02 and 2002/03 British Crime Surveys



Agricola... understood the feelings of the province and had learned from the experience of others that arms can effect little if injustice follows in their train. He resolved to root out the causes of rebellion.
- Tacitus, The Agricola, c. 98AD