They have it exactly backwards.
Poverty does not create crime.
Crime creates poverty.
I think the Leftists (These I describe as hard-core) know full well that crime has less to do with poverty, ignorance, and disease than it does with real and simple evil.
Granted, we will make the appropriate accommodations for people who are so poor they are starving and must break any laws to eat, but...these Leftists looting high end stores while shoe-horning their fat asses into the vehicles to escape are not those people.
The poverty, ignorance, and disease excuse (called “PID” for short by the Left) is simply an opiate for the “Liberals” (those useful idiots who vote for Leftists) to be used as a rational cover to rationalize their lust for power and control.
Those with their hands on the levers of power on the Left know full well it is more evil than want which compels people to crime, but...they need to use the poverty, ignorance, and disease as a shibboleth to provide emotional cover to the Useful Idiot Liberals so they can rationalize their support for tyrants and tyranny.