[oldandtired]

I don't know if you can say "welfare dependence causes crime". What you could say is that there are those who commit crime that take advantage of welfare, that is, they abuse its availability.

I know of those who abuse welfare payments because they are incapable of doing honest work - they would rather rort a system than put in an honest days work. Yet there are many other who cannot get such help when they truly need it. These are the one that fall through the cracks and I have seen some of those turn to criminal activity because they don't see any other way.

Many years ago, I had the "pleasure" of dealing with someone on welfare. They wanted to see our pastor and were wanting to obtain some monies. Ostensibly for putting fuel into their vehicle.

I offered to help and took them back to my place and got a twenty litre jerry can of fuel that I had. I took them and the fuel back to their place and emptied it into their car fuel tank. My observations of them lead me to the conclusion that their financial help request was bogus. They were not enthused that they had received practical help (fuel) instead of currency.

I went to this effort to test them and the veracity of their story. Never saw them again. I shared this with the then pastor and he laughed that I had had the nowse to test the person's story. He had seen that person previously on a number of occasions.

Since then, it has been policy to help people practically by giving the actual things like food, etc, rather than monies. This always results in one of two things, grateful acceptance or ungratefulness.