Explaining the Decline of Violent Crime in China Since 2001
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Introduction
Information on crime is mostly based on the number of arrest that are approved in each China’s provence.Therefore, indicators in 2011 showed a decline in the crime rate meaning that the number of arrests recorded in most province had gone down. The above perception can contribute to the explanation of a crime decline in china though it is not the whole issue.
China lies in Asia and this continent has shown great changes in crime rate where it is becoming a peaceful place in terms of armed violence. According to history Asia was one of the dangerous places on the earth in the case of violence and death risks, for example during the Chinese civil war.
In order to be able to explain the case of chine crime decline it is important to address the issue from a social origin perspective. Poverty and inequality are structural conditions that are perceived to promote crime. However, Asia is a comparative egalitarian district of the world, although there case of inequality increase. In this regard study shows that society structural variables such as poverty, residential stability among others and society procedures variables such as social ties and collective efficacy have great impact on individual view on crime (Liu, 2005).
Crime deviance can also be used to explain crime and deviance. According to scholars social ties, as well as, resources are important although they are not enough to help in the crime control process. According to study conducted in Tianjin China revealed that collective efficacy once rooted in social ties that are weak enough can aid in the reduction of neighborhood crime rate.
Preceding China’s economy reform urban and rural residents had no freedom to relocate. However, since the economy reform these rules have been loosened. Therefore, according to china’s scholars, this social residential stability has a negative association with lack of proper interaction .For reasons like this negative relationship is poise to residential stability and neighborhood crime.
According to a great number of scholars who are in line with the tradition social disorganization
Strongly accepts that informal social control aspect is an intervening procedure in the neighborhood making it a significant crime predictor (Bellair, 1997). Another thing to note is that due to the fact that social ties raise the residential ability to socialize, monitor, and keep track of strangers within the local community and union in solving social local problems, they are able to raise informal social control and decrease crime
Literature review
There is a large pool of diverse disciplines of literature that has been published. This literature is based in criminology, as well as economics. In this regard a number of theories are there in this area which is based on diversified perspectives. These theories mostly link crime to economic growth. According to Durkheim, social norms and values breakdown can affect the rate of crime that is the crime rate may go up or decline. There are several theories that tries to explain this phenomena .Some of these theories include classical, positivist, individual trait among others.
Classical and positivist theory
According to Beccaria, the researcher of this theory states that crime occurs when the cost outweighs the benefits. That is when people go out for self interest in absence for effective punishment. These theorists believe strongly on the free will concept in the explanation of crime. This implies that if the benefits of being a criminal are far much great compared to the retribution then the criminal behaviors will seem to be more likely (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). This theory has a likelihood of predicting that cases of extreme punishment have an ability to deter people from crime. On the contrary excessive punishment could be counter productive in one way or the other and would trigger the urge for criminals to commit even serious offences.
The positivist theories have face a lot of critics from the fact that they have no been able to discover causes of crime and also to come up with effective strategies for crime control. They discount the free will role and takes in account genetic factors learning, personality as well as moral development. In addition, the sociological aspect is also put into account.
Radical Criminology
This theory was proposed for the first time in 1973 by Taylor. This theorist based his views on Marxist position. In his views he states that there are no natural acts that are immoral or criminal. In this regard the implication in this is that crimes definitions are determined socially in reflection to the social values. Therefore, crime is seen as socially determined and that the criminal laws suit the powerful and wealthy people in the society (Sampson, Morenoff, & Earls, 1999). Thus people who do not have money involves in crime with an aim of enjoying the luxuries of wealth. In addition, the wealthy commits crime with an aim of increasing their wealth. However, the legal system is always in favor of the wealthy they are likely to be get arrested and punished. Therefore, if wealth was redistributed the cases of crime would be the individual result of psychopathology.
These theories try to show that the case of crime is likely to go down or up as a result of economic factors. When there many marginalized people in the society the crime rates are likely to go up. There has been a record of stable economic growth in China; this might have resulted to what led to decline in crime rate in the year 2011.
Research methodology
Researchers in this case have adapted several models, the most common model are the qualitative and quantitative research models. To be used in this study will comprise of the following. The data to be collected in this research might be borrowed from the 20th century therefore use of quantitative pardigrim is important. On the other hand qualitative research method is also important as it acts as an alternative for the other method.
Quantitative research –This research method is appropriate in this study because it relies on research that relies mainly on the quantitative data collection this pardigrim will follow all the quantitative research requirements. This method will facilitate in the use of numerical analysis. This method helps the researcher to know what he or she is expecting from the research aspects. The main objective is to come up with a mathematical model, hypothesis, and theories that pertains to a certain phenomena, for example in this case crime decline in China.
Qualitative research- This method depends on qualitative data. In addition the method will help the researcher to collected people’s perception on the issues of crime in china. Therefore the humans form the primary data collection instrument. People’s values will have impact on this research and needs to be understood and put into consideration especially at the time of research reporting section. This method will also facilitate in hypothesis and theories evaluation from the collected data.
Data collection
This study will depend mostly on the secondary data. This data from this study will be collected from the complied files of crime rate in the Law book of China. These books are published in the Chinese language where all the province crime rates are compiled in one section of the book. Again as indicated earlier the crime rates data is on the basis of the number of approved arrest that occurs in each province which are released annually. The other important thing to note is that data is not usually available for all the years making the data set to be a panel that is unbalanced.
In this case the source of information will be the government publications in China crime rates. These publications are indispensable in crime rates study and caution needs to be exercised in the results interpretation. Therefore, it is important to use the total number of persecutions in each crime as a variable. This is because it acts as another crime rate proxy and it is a variable that is usually applied in robustness especially in this study. This is what the research will apply in the data collection process for the study. After that data collected will be tabulated interpreted, analyzed appropriately recommendation and conclusion made.
References
Bellair, P. E. 1997. Social interaction and community crime: Examining the importance of neighbors networks. Criminology, 35, 677–704.
Liu, J. 2005. Crime patterns during the market transition in China. British Journal of Criminology, 45, 613–633.
Sampson, R. J., Morenoff, J., & Earls, F. 1999. Beyond social capital: spatial dynamics of collective efficacy for children. American Sociological Review, 64, 633–660.
Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. 1997. Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277, 918–924.
Zhang, & S. F. Messner (Eds.), Crime and social control in a changing China (pp. 89–103). Westport,CT: Greenwood.
