Social and Economic Inequality As Deviantogenic Factor

There is no only "reason" of deviance and crime. There are many factors - economic, political, cultural, demographic and others, influencing upon state and dynamics of different forms of deviance . It is important theoretically and practically to define the specific "weight", "power", value of each factor in genesis of deviance and its separate types.

K. Marx, R. Merton and many others wrote about a role of an economic inequality as "reasons" of crime  and others of negative (deviant) acts. 

The ever-growing economic polarization of the population in Russia – is a main source of continuing social conflict. The differentiation between the incomes of the 10% least prosperous and the 10% most prosperous increased   from 1:4.5 in 1991 up to 1:15 in 1999 and later up to 1:18.  

Empirical researches of multiple-factor model of the reasons of deviance and crime are conducted in Russia by criminologists S. Ol’kov, I. Skifsky, E. Yuzikhanova. From many factors influencing  crimes and suicide - extent of alcoholization, demographic structure of the population, consumption of drugs, an economic inequality, the last factor it appeared the most considerable. The Gini index (i.e., index of economic inequality) in Russia increased from 0.289 in 1992 to 0.422 in 2007. According to S. Ol’kov, during 1990-1999 the index was at its maximum in 1994 (0.409) and the number of homicides was at a maximum (32,300) and suicide too (61,900); the index was at its lowest in 1990 (0.218) and the number of homicides was also lowest (15,600) and suicide too (39,200).  According to research of I. Skifski (dynamics in 25 years, from 1980 to 2004), the correlation coefficient between homicides and Gini index was the highest 0.9253, between violence crime and Gini index 0.8433.

The catastrophic social and economic inequality serves in Russia as the main factor of  deviant manifestations.