How does social inequality contribute to crime?

Socially inequality contributes to crime in many ways, one way is the 'strain theory' talked about by Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton when talking about suicide as a crime, or spoken about by feminists when referring to crime. This is where the strain of every day life pushes the person towards crime. The strain theory is mostly based on the working class as they do not have the financial stability to cope, therefore feel the strain of not being able to support their families, although feminist argue it is not a case of class, but of gender, and that women are left to do everything, therefore to turn to crime as a rebellion against this, or too support the families, in the case of single mother families.

Another theory is 'self fulfilling prophecy' which is something, if you have done the education system in sociology, you will have heard of. Where someone is labelled something for most of their younger years, eg) failure, dumb etc, and instead of rebelling against there label they conform to this, as in the media etc it is mostly working class and ethnic minorities that are criminilised, these are the people who are more likely to live up to their labels as; criminals.

Hope this helps.