system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Relationship between level of welfare benefits and crime

My intuition is that reducing the level of welfare benefits for the poor in a society increases the crime rate because people will always find some ways to provide for themselves and in the absence of safety nets more poor people will turn to illegal ways of doing this.

There is probably research done on the topic. So: is there correlation between crime rate and amount of welfare benefits? If there is, how does it depend on type of benefits received?
gpt
There's probably a ton of research on this. Keep in mind that it's going to be dependent on shitloads of factors which will vary not least by country.

Here's one study from the US, examining the effects of the Clinton welfare reform.

Brown, V. L., Montoya, I. D., Dayton-Shotts, C. A., Carroll-Curtis, T. L., & Riley, M. A. (2004). Trends of Criminal Activity and Substance Use in a Sample of Welfare Recipients. Crime & Delinquency, 50(1), 6-23.

They found that over time, criminal activity people who were welfare recipients at first measurement declined, and stuff like income was not correlated with criminal activity (arguing against the potential objection that decreases in crime were related to the strong economic and employment growth going on then). While drug use predicted crime, drug use also declined over the course of the study (four annual measurements). The authors attribute this potentially to increases in employment and social support from welfare case management. The cannot rule out study attrition for the observed phenomena.