Much of the sociological literature on crime and social control posits a positive relationship between social heterogeneity and crime. In this literature, status inequality is a particularly important form of heterogeneity. Theory suggests that levels of status inequality should be positively related to levels of crime. Although empirical tests are supportive of this theory in the case of violent crime, the findings are inconsistent for property crime.
This paper reexamines the relationship between status inequality and property crime in an effort to explain this inconsistency, Specifically, it explores whether the difference in findings across studies could be due to the analytical methods used in previous studies, the particular scope of those studies, or a misspecification of the empirical models. Analyses suggest that the inconsistent findings between status inequality and property crime are not a function of the analytical designs employed but that they are a function of scope and specification of the model. That is, the relationship between property crime and inequality differs by level of democracy and value of inequality.
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