Developing an Original Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Criminalisation of Poverty in Nigerian Urban Contexts

The criminalisation of poverty, through which poverty-driven survival behaviours are systematically converted into criminal offences and the poor are disproportionately policed and prosecuted, is a well-theorised concept in Western critical criminology but has not been rigorously theorised for the specific institutional, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts of Nigerian urban settings. This study developed an original theoretical framework for understanding the criminalisation of poverty in Nigerian urban contexts, drawing on evidence from Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. A critical theoretical methodology employing grounded theory qualitative research was adopted, with 18 months of fieldwork including participant observation in urban low-income neighbourhoods, in-depth interviews with 60 residents, 20 police officers, 15 magistrates, and 12 public defenders, and documentary analysis of magistrate court records. Grounded theory analysis generated a theoretical framework articulating four mechanisms of poverty criminalisation specific to Nigerian urban settings: vagrancy-adjacent policing (use of public order offences to remove visible poverty from commercial areas), informal settlement demolition criminality (criminalisation of habitation in areas of eviction interest), survival trade offences (prosecution of informal sector activity as environmental crime), and pretrial detention poverty trap (inability to make bail converting poverty into prolonged detention). The original Nigerian Urban Poverty Criminalisation Framework integrates these mechanisms with Wacquant's hyperincarceration theory, adapted for Nigerian political economy. Expert review by 20 critical criminology and urban poverty scholars confirmed the framework's original theoretical contribution to both African critical criminology and global poverty criminalisation discourse.

Keywords: criminalisation of poverty, critical criminology, Nigerian urban contexts, theoretical framework, original contribution