MARTIN VARSAVSKY:

To all of you who believe that criminality comes out of poverty how do you explain that in most of Asia it does not? And most of humanity lives in Asia.

Have you ever been to India, the country with the largest number of poor, destitute people in the world, have you seen how safe it is?  How do you explain that?

That's easy: it's not poverty that begets crime, as the usual belief goes. It's crime what makes a country poor. Insecurity, and the cost of law enforcement —in financial as well as social terms— prevents wealth creation.