Ethnic Diversity And Crime Essay

Diversity is a broad concept which covers an array of different ideologies including race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, religious beliefs, political beliefs and so on. These many differences have led to the pluralistic society we live in today. London for example id often referred to as a pluralistic society with over 40% of its population of 8.54 million (Office for National Statistics, 2014) belonging to a number of different ethnic minority groups in 2011 (Office for National Statistics, 2011). Although it has become popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength, there are debates on whether or not such high levels of ethnic diversity within society is sustainable.
A growing number of literature looking into the correlation between crime and levels of diversity, have shown direct links between the number of criminal acts that occur in areas with high levels of ethnic diversity. Saying this however, there are also a number of other and studies which have shown the opposite effect. Looking across a range of these studies this essays aims to answer the question of

Over the last few decades a growing amount of literature looking into levels of migration and crime have linked high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision (Alesina et al., 1999; Khwaja 2002, Miguel and Gugerty, 2005). A recent study looking into the relationship between trust within communities and their level of ethnic diversity showed that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people voted, volunteered or worked on community projects (Putnam, 2001). The findings also showed that in the most diverse communities, neighbours trusted one another just half as much as those who lived in less ethnically diverse communities (Putnam,