I hear a lot about how crime is caused partly by systemic poverty. There was a lot of systemic poverty in the past, so in ancient times or the middle ages was there more crime?

by meme_teen
Searocksandtrees

This question may be worth also x-posting to our sister sub /r/AskAnthropology and perhaps even moreso to /r/AskSocialScience

Borkton

Basically, yes. According to The New York Times, researchers in the 1990s discovered that the homicide rate of Medieval England was higher than that of New York during the crack epidemic. This post on Steven Pinker's work goes into more recent detail.

Another good source is Peter Ackroyd's book London: the Biography, which although it focuses on London is representative of urban conditions in Europe.

It's important to note, however, that crime in those days was driven by considerably more than just poverty. Broadly speaking, there were no police and the quality of justice depended on the court and one's ability to pay -- or a family feud.

And it wasn't just poverty. At times there was a lot of civil disorder. During the Hundred Year's War, gangs of mercenaries would prey upon whoever they could between jobs.

In Italian city-states, according to Lauro Martines in Power and Imagination, rival families and their supporters frequently attacked one another and their neighborhoods could become fortified armed camps.