Introduction: Urban Crime and Poverty Nexus

Abstract

A key issue that has attracted the attention of criminologists and others in the field of crime studies is the extent to which crime influence poverty and vis-à-vis. While this debate has extensively engaged the attention of criminologists and other social scientists in the developed world, little academic attention has been given to this debate in Africa in general and Ghana in particular. Indeed the limited academic attention to crime in Africa has led to a situation whereby models and theories on the subject are largely founded on the experiences of the developed world. This introductory section to this special issue of Ghana Journal of Geography on ‘Crime and poverty nexus in urban Ghana, highlights in brief the key issues and competing theories at the heart of the relationship between crime and poverty. This and the other papers in the volume seek to make a contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the poverty-crime nexus by adding a Third World or Sub-Saharan Africa perspective to this area of criminological research.

Key words: crime; urbanization; poverty; Ghana; Sub-Saharan Africa