CRIME AND FAMINES. EUROPE, AFRICA, ASIA, 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES

This literature review focuses on the effect of famine on crime and aims to demonstrate that absolute poverty is criminogenic. Historical research in different countries and eras (Europe, Africa, Asia, 19th-20th centuries) suggests an increase in thefts and the development of a delinquency of necessity during times of famine, with greater participation of women. Econometric approaches identify a causal effect of the increase in food prices on property crime by analyzing the effect of climatic variations or that of agricultural parasites. The two approaches, historical and econometric, tend to note that hunger does not result in an increase in criminal violence. The increase in thefts during famines is thus probably not linked to an increase in the activity of the criminal justice system.