Correlation between poverty and crimeWhile driving downtown, a driver notices a thin, dirty, bearded man holding up a cardboard sign that reads: "Go to work to feed themselves.” This is one of the many examples of poverty in our country. What the driver does next in this situation is purely unconscious; the driver reaches out, rolls up all the windows of his car and locks all four doors, this way he is one hundred percent safe from any danger this homeless man might resort to. This is a correlation that many American citizens have come to; When a person who is homeless or appears to be below the poverty line is nearby, thoughts of drugs, violence, gangs and crime flood the mind, and every precaution is taken to stay safe from any harm these people could potentially cause. However, these precautions were not always the case. Many years ago, a person could walk down the highway with a thumbs up and hitch a ride from a stranger to the nearest gas station, no matter how they looked. this person, no questions asked. But as time passed, violent and criminal acts by these hitchhikers increased, as it is now a general rule not to pick up strangers on the road. There is a huge difference between what poverty looked like then and what it looks like today, both in what individuals below the poverty line look like, but also in the numbers that correspond to people below the poverty line. Regardless, poverty has always played a key role in crime, then as now. In the United States, there are two very different versions of the word "poverty" used daily, with two completely different definitions. The first version of poverty, a better known version, is federal poverty... middle of paper... the Great Depression, and was used to determine how much agencies should budget to feed each family. (useconomy.about.com). In 2009, the government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included vast investments to alleviate poverty worsened by economic crises. To combat hunger, the law provided $20 billion to expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and to help maintain struggling neighborhoods, $2 billion was provided in new Neighborhood Stabilization Funds (Whitehouse. gov). Despite increasing funds for those below the poverty line, it seemed that the more the government spent on eliminating poverty, the more crime would increase in America. There have been many federal attempts at crime control recently, but with each attempt to reduce crime, crime only gets worse.