Labor Markets and Crime

by

Robert D. Crutchfield

Introduction

There are few beliefs about the causes of crime more ubiquitous than that unemployment is an important cause; but the research is not so clear. This lack of clarity is a consequence of a literature that contains evidence both that unemployment rates lead to higher crime rates, and that it does not. At least one classic criminological theory, Merton’s conception of anomie, would lead us to expect that the unemployed would be more likely to innovate, sometimes by engaging in crime. Modern strain theories, as articulated by Messner and Rosenfeld and by Agnew, would explain why in the aggregate and for individuals, unemployment, underemployment, or unsteady employment could increase criminality. Researchers, though, have reported positive, negative, and no association between unemployment and violent and property offenses. And there is even more confusion when this topic focuses on youth. The general public and policy officials seem to remain convinced that jobs will protect young people from delinquent involvement, but the research literature supports considerable skepticism about this claim. At a minimum, the literature indicates reasons for caution in applying this approach as a juvenile delinquency strategy. Real progress has been made studying youth employment and crime as a result of the availability of a number of excellent data sources, notably the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY), the NLSY-97, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add-Health), the National Youth Survey, and the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS), which have helped to clarify the relationships among labor markets, employment, and juvenile delinquency. A number of the studies cited here have used these data. This lack of clarity in the criminological literature on these topics is due, in part, to varying specifications of what we mean by labor market effects on crime, whether research is reporting on relationships measured at the aggregate or individual level, the data that are used in research, and varying contexts in which the research is conducted. There are now research literatures on unemployment rates and crime rates, broader labor market characteristics and crime rates, and the labor market participation and crime for both adults and juveniles. There is also a growing literature that examines the effects of adult labor market participation on juvenile delinquency and abuse. Finally, substantial increases in the rate of imprisonment in the United States are leading scholars to examine the labor market consequences of criminal justice system policies.

General Overviews

Excellent overviews of this topic can be found in Box 1987, Freeman 1983, and Fagan and Freeman 1999. For an elaboration of the combination of criminology theory with labor market segmentation or dual labor market theory, which underlies some of the most recent publications on this topic, see Crutchfield 1989 (cited under Labor Markets).

• Box, Steven. 1987. Recession, crime and punishment. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble.

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  Box’s focus is on the links between economic cycles, notably recession, consequent unemployment, crime, and imprisonment. In the process of developing a theory of economics and crime, Box concludes that the relationship between unemployment and crime is mixed, but that the weight of the evidence favors a positive relationship. He also theoretically connects recession to patterns of criminal justice processes.

• Fagan, Jeffrey, and Richard B. Freeman. 1999. Crime and work. Crime and Justice 25:225–290.

  DOI: 10.1086/449290E-mail Citation »

  The authors expand the context in which labor markets and crime are considered by including work in the “off the books” economy. Some of this work is legal, but here they bring into focus the importance of illegal work. For a complete understanding of the employment and crime relationship, illegal work, which is on a continuum with legal work, must be included.

• Freeman, Richard B. 1983. Crime and unemployment. In Crime and public policy. Edited by James Q. Wilson, 89–106. San Francisco: ICS.

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  Freeman reviews empirical studies of the relationship between unemployment and crime and concludes that the association is weak but generally indicates a positive association. Employment appears to be less consequential for crime than are criminal justice sanctions. Jobs programs appear to have a limited effect on those already engaging in crime, but employment opportunities may have preventive effects on younger people.