Chapter 2: Crime and Poverty: A Long-standing Link

Criminal life stories often concentrate on particular groups of offenders and, even then, the most exciting moments of their deviant careers. As Peter King (2006) noted, this is because of the difficulty of accessing their social, familial, and economic lives. While multiple records have been linked,¹ because of the use of criminal and pauper records, there is inevitably an emphasis on crime and struggles with poverty. Indeed, the intent of this book is to explore the link between poverty and criminalization. However, the wider lives of pauper-emancipists will also be thoroughly explored for a holistic understanding of the issues. This research study has deliberately looked at pauper-emancipists whether that offending was repeated, serious, and notorious or not. As you will see in this book, the crimes which initiated the offending of this population were far from extraordinary, and it is similarly not the aim to romanticize the biographical narratives of pauper-emancipists. Their interactions with both convict and charitable institutions will be explored while accounting for the individual agency of pauper-emancipists within the confines of prevailing structural barriers. First, this chapter will explore the link between poverty and crime and the relevance today to set the scene.