3 Answers

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Based on the premise that the poor are lazy and refuse to work hard, it is not too far of a stretch to argue that they will "choose" crime because it is the easy way out. This is similar to the argument frequently made about welfare. Many believe that if offered handouts such as welfare the lower classes will never go to work. Contemporary conservative authors such as George Gilder and Charles Murray advocate the elimination of welfare as an "incentive" for the poor to return to work. Welfare, which has its origins in Elizabethan poor laws [England], was always based on the concept that subsidies to the able-bodied must be kept lower than the lowest paid wage earners, Otherwise, those at the bottom of society would never work since they had no incentive.

Of course, there are a number of other explanations for why poverty and criminal behavior might be related other than those based on the utilitarian rational calculus approach advocated by classical free will theorists. It is possible, for example, that poverty is related to other factors such as resentment, malnutrition, or low intelligence, and that it is these factors which ultimately produce crime. If severe malnutrition (or eating lead-based paint) produces lifelong brain damage, then the long-term effect may be increased rates of crime among these at-risk populations.>>>

>>>http://criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/poverty.htm

It isn't the only factor, but certainly can be a contributing one.  In your paper, I suggest you point out what you said, that not everyone who grows up in poverty becomes a criminal, and not everyone born to plenty refrains from becoming a criminal.