[banannaise]

Common sense is a poor argument.

"Crime" has multiple elements: the law, the act, the observation, and the prosecution.

We disproportionately outlaw things that poor people do. ("The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.") We disproportionately observe poor people, as shown by this article. We disproportionately convict poor people, who can't afford bail or good legal representation.

Yet people always want to jump to that other element. The disproportionate crime rates can't be due to all those other things, it must be due to them committing more crimes.

The only thing we can say for sure is that poor people commit different crimes. They use different drugs and in different settings; they are more likely to commit theft than embezzlement; they are more likely to cause property damage than violate building codes. The rest is made murky by an unfair legal system and a societal tendency to treat crimes of poverty as individual in nature and crimes of wealth as systemic failures.