Unemployment and Crime: Toward Resolving the Paradox

While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemployed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of unemployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and crime. In Australia th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kapuscinski, Cezary A. (Author)
Contributors: Braithwaite, John ; Chapman, Bruce
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 1998
In: Journal of quantitative criminology
Year: 1998, Volume: 14, Issue: 3, Pages: 215-243
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Keywords:
Crime
Homicide
Unemployment
cross-section data
time-series data
Description
Summary:While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemployed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of unemployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and crime. In Australia there have been no individual-level or cross-sectional studies of unemployment and adult crime which have failed to find a positive relationship and no time-series which have supported a positive relationship. Consistent with this pattern, a time series of homicide from 1921 to 1987 in Australia reveals no significant unemployment effect. A theoretical resolution of this apparent paradox is advanced in terms of the effect of female employment on crime in a partriarchal society. Crime is posited as a function of both total unemployment and female employment. When female employment is added to the model, it has a strong positive effect on homicide, and unemployment also assumes a strong positive effect.
ISSN:1573-7799
DOI:10.1023/A:1023033328731