The Myth that High Unemployment Means a High Crime Rate
Crime and unemployment: everyone knows that they go together. Right? Unemployed people, desperate for enough money to pay their bills, buy groceries, and get medical care (since those heartless Republicans think “don’t get sick” is a health care plan), must turn to crime. At the very least, disheartened men sitting at home are going to lose their tempers, get into fights, and shoot their spouses.
Like most conventional wisdom among the elites, it turns out not to be true. I grabbed the data from the FBI Crime in the United States, Table 1, which shows rates per 100,000 people from 1990 through 2009 for a variety of serious crimes. Then I grabbed the annual unemployment rate, civilian, non-institutional, for the same years. Here are the plots. (On all these plots, the unemployment rate is in orange, plotted against the numbers on the left.)
Well, violent crime fell all those years that unemployment was falling in the 1990s — but even as unemployment rose from 4% to 6% in the aftermath of 9/11, violent crime rates fell. When unemployment more than doubled from 2006 to 2009, violent crime rates continued falling.
Murder? Just about the same story. Murder rates held steady in the period 2001-2004 — and continued to fall in the period 2006-2009.
Rape rates are boringly similar.
Robbery? Okay, that has to be related to unemployment, doesn’t it? I mean, robbers aren’t sociopaths — they are people like you and me who just have had a run of bad luck, right?
Maybe robbers are not so different from murderers and rapists, after all. Robbery rates continued to decline while unemployment more than doubled these last three years. And ditto for aggravated assault.
Whenever there’s theft, or at least property crime, involved, the Left is always looking for Jean Valjean. You know, the virtuous thief from Les Miserables, sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family? That’s their ideal, and somehow reality never sets in much…
For reality, we need to look into Dickens. It is the visit from from Jacob Marley the left fears – the colleague who is damned for all eternity.
Wringing their hands like Uriah Heep, they weep for the victims of capitalism all the while lining their pockets with the salaries and perks of those jobs they created from after-tax dollars.
When the American people, like the Jarndyce heirs, seek justice to reclaim their inheritance and naively put their trust in a self-serving system, they discover that the lefty elites have consumed the entire fortune and left them destitute.
Please feel free to quote where the left is afraid of the unemployed becoming criminals. It’s the state of Indiana and it’s Republican gov. and legislature that is posting armed guards at unemployment offices and your Faux News friend Bo Deitl said that the unemployed will steal Christmas presents for their children and could get violent. Also, it’s the Tepublicans who could care less about the unemployed surviving since they have refused to extend unemployment benefits beyond the current maximum even though their only economic plan of lower taxes for the wealthy and no regulation is what caused this deep jobless recession. Facts are not options.
Lessee: “Faux News”, “Tepublicans”, “lower taxes for the wealthy”…
You’re new at this, aren’t you? Where is “repugs”? How about “Rethuglicans”? Or “Teabagger”?
Please, go back to Kos or DU. You need to take a refresher course.
I just thought Tepublicans was easier than spelling out Tea Party Republicans and Faux News is childish, so FOX it is, but adding News to FOX is a stretch.
It’s no fun duscussing issues with people that agree with you all the time, so my issue with the comment above was this “left” thing and the unemployed. Someone also questioned the facts I put out there so here goes the facts with links.
State on Indiana, run by Republicans, is putting armed guards at their unemployment offices: http://www.mlive.com/michigan-job-search/index.ssf/2010/11/indiana_to_deploy_armed_guards_at_unempl.html
bo Dietl of FOX put forward the notion: since 99ers may not be able to buy Christmas gifts for their children that they should be considered damgerous, since they could steal and get violent.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/follow-money/index.html#/v/4402292/americas-unemployed-getting-dangerous/?playlist_id=158277
Republicans have slammed the unemployed for most of this past year: http://www.examiner.com/unemployment-in-rochester/do-some-republicans-consider-the-unemployed-to-be-lazy-drug-addicted-hobos-you-bet-they-do
I’m not making this stuff up. It’s not the “left” that relate the unemployed to crime and corruption, it’s the “right”. I’d be happy to see facts that point the other way, so pass them along if you can find any.
Hooray for Indiana!
Finally a war on poverty I can get behind–shooting the sofa surfers!
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There are also armed guards in Passport Offices.
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Obviously; you have no facts, and are so crammed with opinions that they’are running out of your anus as well your mouth.
Personally, I support lower taxes… for the wealthy as well as everyone else.
One does not give up the right to one’s own property when one reaches a certain level of wealth, despite what lefties believe.
Besides, I’ve never yet been given a job by a poor person. However, a number of wealthy people and companies have employed me. Therefore, by lowering their taxes, they have more money to pay employees like me… and therefore they can hire more.
But I am sure this has all flown right over your lefty head.
Please feel free to quote where the left is afraid of the unemployed becoming criminals.
I don’t know if these studies will satisfy you, but here they are.
HIGHER CRIME RATE LINKED TO LOW WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT, STUDY FINDS. Ohio State University, 2002.
What causes crime? [Independent, UK, 1995]
THE PAST fortnight has seen the publication of no fewer than three heavyweight academic studies of the causes of crime and social breakdown in Britain. They have met with very different receptions.
The first suggested that the rise in crime over the past 20 years is far more closely connected with the rise in mass unemployment than even left-wing commentators had previously believed.
Since Obama’s election gun and ammunition sales have gone up dramaticly. I think people contemplating violent crime would be aware of this, and this could explain in part the declining crime rate.
And the more Obama does the faster people are buying guns and ammo, I would think rational politicians would take a look at that and moderate their actions.
I think that’s a weak link, though the liberalization of concealed and open carry post-Katrina (and Heller) probably has some influence.
The average violent criminal has nothing to fear from rounds 6 through N I’ve got squirreled away in the locker. It’s those first five that are the most potentially problematic.
Unemployment has little to do with crime, especially with all of the social-welfare benefits now being showered on so many people. You can reduce the amount of crime more by reducing drug addiction in this country. A lot of this crime is being committed by drug addicts who need money to support their habit. If we had more rehab progrms for drug addicts, I think that would do more for the crime rate than anything else. Drug addicts need to be drug free first before they can get a job, too, so lets start there first and see what happens.
Legalising drugs will have exactly the same effect, just like it did when Prohibition was repealed.
Well, I sort of disagree, as a recent victim of a mjor theft in my home. In my area, where employment isn’t great right now, there have been almost 200 robberies (homes and businesses broken into)in the last 2 months alone. Unheard of in this area. This does not count the robberies that happened during the summer. Now this area of small rural towns, and although definitly not crime free, is not usually a high crime area. But that is sadly changing at this point of time.
Also, I had been trying to find people to fill some jobs where they could work part time from home. I got no takers, due to the fact that people were making more on unemployment (I’m just getting started so can’t pay $15 or $20 an hr.). So I hate to say, but I’m also seeing first hand that many on unemployment, at least here in NY (surprise…surprise..), really are not interested in working right now.
“Well, I sort of disagree, as a recent victim of a mjor theft in my home. In my area, where employment isn’t great right now, there have been almost 200 robberies (homes and businesses broken into)in the last 2 months alone. Unheard of in this area.”
Unless those break-ins involve threats against persons to give up valuables, those are burglaries, not robberies. Burglaries are still felonies–but it is often the case that a single burglar commits a very large number of such crimes. You might have one burglar who has moved into the area recently, doing all of this. If this has all happened in the last two months, it is hard to imagine that unemployment is the proximate cause–we have been suffering increased unemployment for several years now.
Kim: You may FEEL like disagreeing, but based upon your limited data, you only proved Clayton’s conclusions.
You want to pay people $15-20 per HOUR, but they “really are not interested in working right now.”
You accurately describe the psychology of the criminal mind: They don’t want to bother with the delayed gratification of WORKING for their money. Instead, when they need some cash, they indulge in instant gratification and take wealth away from those who earned it.
As for your conclusion, 200 robberies in the last two months doesn’t mean anything without context. Historically, how many robberies does your city/county experience? Put in this context, is 200 higher or lower than historical rates?
You say robbery is “unheard of” in your area, but then you say your area is “not crime free”. Do you have some FBI crime data to explain this? You need to provide quantitative, not qualitative, measurements. Otherwise, you appear to contradict yourself.
Also, two months is not a trend. Even the FBI admits that anything under 3 years or so is no trend.
You live in a statistical anomaly.
Did your crime rate drop when unemployment was lower and then increase as unemployment increased? Two months’ time period doesn’t answer this question.
Even if your historical crime rates reflect a correlation with unemployment, one small area still is an anomaly when compared to the national rates, which is what this article covers. There are nearly always some local data points which do not fit a national trend. This is simply a statistical reality. It doesn’t give authority to apply your local trend as the rule and the national trend as an exception.
Did a gang take up residence in town recently? Perhaps because they know your county/city budgets are so tight they had to shrink the sheriff’s office/police departments? Has your state’s budget deficit caused them to early-release more convicts? (Remember, above you described your suspect group as having criminal mentality.) You may have some unaccounted-for factors impacting local crime.
I realize the national trend doesn’t give you any comfort. You can always buy a firearm and learn to use it properly. Read up on Castle Rock v. Gonzales and Deshaney v. Winnebago to understand that NO government agencies have any obligation to protect you, and learn to protect yourself. Many news stories exist where a homeowner shot and stopped a home invader or burglar who had a string of crimes.
Howard Nemerov, please contrast this, which Kimm said: I’m just getting started so can’t pay $15 or $20 an hr.
with this, which you said: You want to pay people $15-20 per HOUR, but they “really are not interested in working right now.”
You seem to be saying that people are not interested in taking Kimm’s jobs, even at $15 or $20/hour but she clearly isn’t offering that. She doesn’t state what she is offering but I can only assume it is considerably less than $15/hour because she is “just getting started”.
You’re correct and I misread that sentence. However, she did say that people don’t seem interested in working right now. So I stand by the rest.
Somewhat of a non-sequitur, but the comment about people not wanting to work reminded me of it.
Back in my younger years, in fact, in my first office job, I worked for a local ordering office of a nationwide restaurant supply company. We also had a quality assurance office downstairs. They’d routinely get #10 cans (that’s the size you see a lot at Costco, they’re approximately the size of a 3-lb coffee can) of some food we distributed through that office–frequently canned vegetables and fruits–take a few spoonfuls out for testing, put a plastic snap-on lid on them, and put them out in the break room for employees to take home.
One day someone noticed a guy up the road with a “Will Work For Food” sign. Since we had some of these cans ready to go (the cans had been opened that day), several of us grabbed some of these cans and took them out to him, offering them to him free of charge.
He turned us down, flat. Said he’d rather have money.
Ever since then, I’ve had a very skeptical view of those who sit by the side of the road with a sob-story on a sign. I’ll freely admit that it’s possible that some of them really are down on their luck, but with all the various social services, both public and private, in this great nation, I don’t see why anyone would do that unless they were making more than the charities will give ‘em… or just plain needed cash to support some habit that the charities won’t support.
I agree. I had an individual approach me in a supermarket and ask for money for food, and stated that they had just had surgery in their mouth (I saw the stitches). I stated that I didn’t carry money on me, but if he could meet me at the registers by the time I picked out some icecream, I would purchase something for him. He came up with a case of Gatorade, baby food, and a bunch of bananas. I think this guy needed it, maybe he didn’t, I don’t know, but I did feel good about this encounter. Often time, I’ve had people that just wanted money. This one time, someone just needed some food that they could eat.
Most pastors that I know, when a stranger shows up at their church asking for money to feed their family, offer to take them grocery shopping. It’s amazing how few take them up on the offer. There are people in real need out there. But my experience is that it is a fraction of those begging for money.
In the community just north of us, there is a recently arrived family from Arizona. They were renting a house–and it went up in flames because of an electrical fault. They were lucky to escape with their lives, but lost everything else (barefoot, no coats–and we’re starting to get snow). What do you know? In both of our communities, people showed up to make sure that they had a place to stay, clothes, coats, shoes, food, pots, dishes, utensils. They showed up at our church yesterday, overwhelmed with how everyone turned out to help them in a time of need.
Just to annoy you liberals that are reading: this is essentially an all-white community, and the burned out family is Hispanic.
Considering that most (Note: MOST DOES NOT MEAN ALL!!!) of those “work at home” jobs are questionable, you are going to face an uphill battle to get people to even look at the jobs you are offering.
Some are outright scams and people who respond are the victems. Others, well, where do you think comment spam comes from?
Something that’s not taken into account here is how the availability of easy revolving credit can effect these numbers. Is there a way to measure that at all?
Think about how when gas jumped up to over $4.00 a gallon a couple of summers ago and you had an increase in “drive-offs”. People who make less than $15 an hour, simply cannot afford the gas to drive back and forth from work. Well, they can’t pay *cash* for it.
So everything is getting charged with the expectation that making minimal payments allows you to afford your lifestyle and not turning to crime. As long as you have available credit, you’ll charge it and in a worst case scenario file bankruptcy on it.
As opposed to committing theft in person, you commit theft with a revolving credit facility you have no intention of paying back.
This is why they put in the change to the bankruptcy laws. People who had been paying their bills all along found out that they can live high on the hog for awhile, then declare bankruptcy and walk away, so they proceeded to do just that. Now bankruptcy is no longer a gimme.
Criminals aren’t necessarily stupid. When times are tough, there’s a lot less to steal. Ah, but when times are good, it’s party time!
More people are at home during the day as well. Burglers don’t like getting shot at.
If you want to anticipate the thinking on the Left all you have to do is put on your Evolutionary glasses. The only thing separating humans from animals is the desire for luxury. This means if a person loses their job and cannot afford luxury they invariably are closer to a beast of the field and more susceptible to committing crime. Simple. Valid.
Now, the Evolutionism on the Right, it is sloppy for want of consistency. Conservatives are always blabbing about liberty, accountability, and property, but if the theory of Evolution were true such things really do not represent reality. If Evolution were true then Statism makes total sense. If Evolution were true I should be very concerned about colonizing Mars.
Do a study of everything the theory of evolution has done to make life better for humans that isn’t constrained to self-fulfilling job titles. Evolution does zero for man: it doesn’t help us navigate in space, it doesn’t help us fight crime, it doesn’t help us to win wars, it doesn’t cure disease. Doesn’t science usually act as a tool for benefiting mankind? Evolution is taught as the intellectual breakthrough of our age, and yet all it seems to do is undermine the first few chapters of some ancient desert religion’s text. Weird.
How can I say that the Left is consistent, and at the same time that I disagree with them and am consistent as well? Because we are asserting as true different foundational assumptions (theirs, molecules-to-man Evolution: mine, Genesis). An argument’s validity is not dependent on the truth of it’s premises because the truth of an axiom must be assumed. There is no reason to accept the assumption of Evolution theory, and it completely usurps the loyalty of the precepts that brought us to the modern age, including science.
(Natural Selection does not mean Evolution.)
We are surety agents (BailBondsmen) and Bounty Hunters. I can attest that crime is down although our work is steady. In our area crime is down as much as 20%. B&E, Home Invasion, Larceny of Bldg, Resisting, Fleeing, Domestic Violence and the usuals DUI and Driving with Restricted License make up most of our monthly portfolio.
Here in Michigan it may also be that the mass exodous of our population may also have some effect on the lower crime rates. Thanks
Kev -
How can I say that the Left is consistent, and at the same time that I disagree with them and am consistent as well?
For one, they are not consistent. The Left says they believe in Evolution and Darwinism, survival of the fittest. Except when it comes to Credit. Then you have to shoehorn the “less than fit” into an affordable Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage or be sued for discrimination.
Then, when they can’t pay that “affordable” home mortgage the Left sues them again for predatory lending.
This is survival of the fattest. Nay, underwriting it.
“Survival of the fittest” is not a scientific doctrine, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The survivors will always be called the fittest, but in the interim we can never know who or what will be the winners. Anyway, giving houses to people who can’t afford to pay IS “struggle for survival” in the sense that it is establishing a voting base that is more coherent, resilient, and influential than poorer folks in apartments. You have to understand that Evolutionism of today is not focused on the superman or super race, but the super society, and conformity of ideals. WWII was a fine lesson for the NWO and Evolutionism for what NOT to do, by the way.
You have to understand that with an Idea, namely the theory of Evolution, the followers of it will be weightier based on their self-ascribed infatuation. Since, it is imagination-based it will be wielded with more precision and zeal and force by those more dedicated to it’s belief. When Conservatives speak of Principle or Conviction, or Liberty and Freedom, Property and Equality what are these but contradictions or outright lies in the wisdom of Evolution?
That is not being as consistent as the Left, which is moving more mechanically toward a System that denounces the “lies” of the “freedom” of the past and embraces a world where man’s mortal heart is the ultimate compass, and where we all conform to a similar vectoring ideal. That ideal will be decided by a panel of really really smart people who love… er, society.
That is the final picture when you run-down the function of Evolutionary thinking, because it essentially says that if God, if there is such a thing, will not directly intervene then we are gods unto ourselves, and that what follows IS truth. That we are free to denounce or rephrase any institution and reformulate it accordingly. And what are men who are gods unto themselves? Magnificent beasts, as it were. This is tantalizing to many.
Those who are lucky and those fittest to survive under a given set of conditions will survive. Morality, law, your preferences, your sense of right and wrong, have nothing to do with someone else’s survival.
No “science”, just simple description of the process going on around us at all times.
Kevin: Who continues to survive (or continue holding the job), standing behind the pulpit in church? Why the person who is fittest to survive there, assuming there is any competition for the job. Or do you prefer sermons by incompetents?
Reality is if you know the demographic of a city you can predict the crime rate and vice versa. Go get the numbers from the census and the FBI and try it.
Mr. Cramer,
You are absolutely correct that unemployment does not affect crime rates. It never has. Demographics affects crime rates. The group most at risk for serious crime is 18-24 year old males and as birth rates have declined over the last few decades the proportion of 18-24 y/o males to the rest of the population has declined as well and viola! crimes committed per 100,000 have declined as well as expressed in the UCR reports you cite.
Another fascinating theory to throw into the argument is the abortion theory proposed by Levitt and Dubner in Freakonomics which states that crime rates began to decline in 1992 almost exactly 18 years after Roe v Wade and have continued to decline ever since. They postulate-convincingly- that those most at risk demographically for criminal activity- 18-24 y/o males, minority, born to single mothers, raised in poverty or on government assistance, are exactly the demographic that have the highest abortion rates in the country. To sum it up, they theorize that crime rates are going down because many of the potentially worst criminals are not being born. They say explicitly in the book that they are not making a statement on the morality of abortion, but that they are attempting to explain an otherwise inexplicable drop in crime rates.
Dang! Now I have a moral dilemma! I had not thought of that! I may have to become pro-abortion if it keeps the vile elements of society from being born.
No, wait, that would be eugenics; keeping those pickaninnies from breeding; keeping those undesirables from being born. I mean, that IS what the pro-abortion movement was all about in the first place. Just ask Justice Ginsberg.
Yep, gotta stay with pro-life, or we all become undesirables. The legal crime rates may be down, but the callousness towards our fellow man is way, way up. I think I’ll go with moral.
So what’s the murder rate if I count abortion as murder?
Rough estimate- take the birth rate and divide it by three.
it’s curious how the left constantly cries “math and science, math and science”
yet it is in literary works where we can find what these lefties have been up to since the beginning of civilization
no wonder the libs dont want anyone to learn how to read
There is another possible explanation for why crime rates are going down which no one has mentioned: the Broken Windows theory. (See Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Windows for the full details.)
This theory was first published by social scientists in 1982 and, in a nutshell, says that if you clean up problems like broken windows or littering when they are still minor, they won’t grow to become bigger problems. This has been a fashionable theory but I’m not sure how widely it has been applied. Perhaps it offers some insight into why crime rates continue to fall?
The “Broken Window” theory is not about making the area more respectable, although that too has a positive effect on folks’ outlook. No, it is about having the police start looking into the little things and then they find the big things. It’s like using traffic stops to catch criminals you otherwise wouldn’t.
Police cannot investigate until there is evidence of some crime or something out of kilter. Decent, law-abiding people take care of property. A broken window is a sign of absence of law-abiding citizens.
This is being used in border States to catch illegal aliens to great effect, especially in New Mexico. The results say that it works.
“This theory was first published by social scientists in 1982 and, in a nutshell, says that if you clean up problems like broken windows or littering when they are still minor, they won’t grow to become bigger problems.”
Yes, Mayor Giuliani applied it in New York City, and it was a dramatic success, although perhaps not for the reason originally posited. It turned out the people that commit a lot of the lesser crimes–subway turnstile jumping, minor forms of extortion, such as the squeegee men of NYC–also commit a lot of the felonies, too. The more time they spend in jail on the misdemeanors, the less chance that they have to commit more serious crimes.
Actually, Clayton, I don’t think Mr. Giuliani had much to do with the decreasing crime rate in NYC, although he has, of course, tried hard to take credit for it. Levitt & Dubner cover this particular myth in a chapter in their book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289825452&sr=8-1"Freakonomics. They show that the crime rate began falling a couple of years before Giuliani took office and, yes, they do conclude that Roe v. Wade was related to the falling crime rate, though I’m not completely convinced by their arguments.
A previous commenter pointed out that demographics explains much of the falling crime rate. That’s very plausible to me: older people commit relatively few crimes. Another possible factor is availability of unemployment benefits for an extended time period.
Paying attention to “broken windows” only goes so far. In New York it included an increase of some 6,000 law enforcement to kick off the Safe Streets program. But it wasn’t just the number of officers but also the way in which statistics were used, and from anecdotal evidence from people I knew in bad neighborhoods, taking officers out of patrol cars and putting them on foot.
Oh, and don’t overlook the end of the crack epidemic. That epidemic and the Rockefeller laws left a lot of people incarcerated (at taxpayer expense) or dead, so at least in New York it’s not surprising to see a dramatic decrease in crime.
Anyway, the FBI stats here don’t really go back far enough to make a clear case that crime and unemployment are unrelated. I don’t have the time, but I’d be curious to see what they looked like going back to another historically low period, say the early 60′s and looking at it trough to trough.
Immorality is the cause of crime. Show me a working poor man, and I’ll show you an honest citizen. A person has the heart of a thief, or he does not.
People who turn to crime are not seeking a poor man’s existence. They seek luxury, not sustenance. Even beggars do not steal. They beg. When they do steal, it is because they seek the luxury of a bottle of booze or the like. One needs very little really to continue to live. That little bit can be gotten easily from the good will of other men.
Stealing is the province of thieves.
- Would you sleep with me for a hundred dollars?
- No!
- Would you sleep with me for a thousand dollars?
- No!
- Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?
- Mm, okay.
- Would you sleep with me for five thousand dollars?
- Hey, what happened to the million dollars?
- Madam, we have determined WHAT you are. Now we are just negotiating price!
You are a whore, or you are not. You are a thief, or you are not.
I have only one time in my life seen an adult steal food in America. The vast majority of burglaries are committed to pay for drug habits.
No need for all those present-day charts. All one really needs to do is go back to the Great Depression, with its soup lines, “Hoovervilles” and 25% unemployment. No increase in crime then either. In fact, the real crime wave was earlier in the “Roaring 20s”, courtesy of the 18th Amendment and the inevitable black market in liquor.
Here are some interesting statistical correlations:
Poverty and violent crime: 36%
Unemployment and violent crime: 35%
High school dropouts and violent crime: 37%
Black & Hispanic population percentage and violent crime: 81%
Black & Hispanic population percentage and violent crime (after controlling for poverty, unemployment & education): 78%
The relevant graphs and text are on pages 11-12 of this report.
I was going to reply to Voltaic, but you seem in better control of your senses. The New York Times just ran an article about a report that the achievement gap between young males of the white and black persuasion can not be explained solely by poverty. Having poverty and unemployment as excuses for crime and poor school achievement is convenient: it frees the individuals involved from personal responsibility. Men fathering children and not raising them, women having children with no intention of involving the father, those are cultural problems. We support that culture through our taxes and entitlement programs. I have no argument with feeding the poor, and caring for widows and orphans.
High crime rates go hand in hand with a long lasting bad economy, but the high unemployment is just one part of the picture. The economy has to be bad enough where municipalities start cutting police, counties start letting people out of jail because they don’t have the resources to house them all, and yes, the unemployment rate stays a high level for an extended period of time, resulting in many people running through there benefits and all the extensions, and still can’t get a job.
So you are saying that three years isn’t a long enough time for people to run through their benefits and become criminals?
Lots of people, many with “Ph.D” after their name, do seem to believe that economic circumstances affect crime rates. For example, from the first page of a google search:
HIGHER CRIME RATE LINKED TO LOW WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT, STUDY FINDS – from OSU. They looked at 1979 through 1997.
Crime and unemployment among youths in the United States, 1958-1990: a time series analysis, from The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Jan 1994
An examination of the link between employment volatility and the spatial distribution of property crime rates. from The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, July 2004.
Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime, from the Journal of Law & Economics, April 2001.
“The relationship between unemployment and crime: A cross-sectional analysis employing the British Crime Survey 1992″, International Journal of Manpower, 1996
These articles differ on whether there is a relationship between unemployment and crime, but it’s clear that the authors all believe that there *should* be a relationship, and treat failure to find one as a problem to be solved, either by being more specific about the details (youth unemployment vs youth crime instead of whole-population rates) or redefining “unemployment” (measuring “employment volatility” instead), or otherwise trying to identify confounding factors.
It is entirely possible that there is a connection, and I would even be prepared to believe that there is a connection in societies where unemployed people are in danger of starving. The connection, however, appears to be pretty darn subtle in the U.S.
Yes, there is a correlation in other countries. In times past, when farmers were ruined (usually by taxation), they turned bandit. Kings spent much time hunting bandits. In modern times, just look at any 3rd-world country and violence is rampant. A good example is Argentina’s recent past. When there is no cushion of wealth, (always when the middle-class has been destroyed) when great numbers of people face death by starvation, violence ensues.
This country has no such correlation, because we are just so danged wealthy! Even bums are fat. Not only are we wealthy, we are tremendously generous with that wealth. No one else gives like we do. Look at any natural disaster around the world and our generosity dwarfs others’. China gave bupkus to help Haiti, for example.
This country is so rich, you have to work at starving. So, here, there is no correlation of poverty to crime, because poverty is strictly relative in this country.
I probably should have posted as a response to voltaic, but I don’t like responding to trolls, even when they have a point. I’m not entirely sure that the left “fears the unemployed becoming criminals”, but they do bash Republican presidents for increasing crime when unemployment goes up. (I remember *lots* of that in 1982.)
For people that believe that inequality reduces social cohesion or causes psychological distress to the people with less, the idea that unemployment causes crime is well-nigh irresistible. Since the fact of the matter is that increases in unemployment do not consistently lead to increases in crime, the left’s theories about inequality are weakened. Hence the attempts to either redefine the issue, or pick the right windows of time to reinforce the correlation.
I just set fire to a corner of my house. Two minutes later, it’s only halfway up one wall and my house is still standing — ergo, setting fire to houses doesn’t burn them down.
/sarcasm
This fails to account for a number of factors: for one thing, there is likely still much subsistence on savings going on, and the welfare state is still there notwithstanding Clinton’s welfare reform (which I understand has been eroded some under Obama). The Left would likely argue that the current welfare state is what’s keeping the thugs off the street.
The Depression era was a radically and arguably healthier culture. I seriously don’t expect that factor to apply in today’s angry entitlement culture (thank you so much, Left). That’s notwithstanding the common (non-sensical) refrain from New Deal liberals during the 30′s that if we didn’t go part way to fascism with FDR, that we’d have gone all the way due to revolution.
There’s also the fact that this analysis doesn’t examine the ’60′s through ’80′s either; I’d like to see what that correspondence looks like.
Note: all that being said, I’d not be unhappy if this pattern held up.
How much savings do you think most Americans have? It generally measured in weeks of living, or at most, a few months. A year of unemployment for most people has well exhausted the savings and sellable assets of nearly every American.
The reason that you see those trends for crime going down down down is, I believe, mainly due to “3 strikes” laws in multiple states. This is where when a criminal has been convicted of enough crimes they go to prison for the rest of their lives. The reason it works is that most crimes are committed by a small number of criminals, and most violent crimes are committed by a small number of that small number. Lock those guys up forever and the crime rate slides.
Fact.
What about the thefts on Wall Street? Oh, I forgot.
“Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.” Bob Dylan
Are you suggesting that what happened on Wall Street was because of high unemployment?
The one fact that is clear is that unemployment, as dramatic and damaging as it is to our national economy — and the economy and mental well-being of individuals looking for work — does not turn Americans into criminals.
Depends on who’s unemployed. This downturn is unique in that this time the middle class has been slammed pretty hard. Your average 42 year old college educated type whose job got sent to China probably is bright enough to realize that knocking over a convenience store for *maybe* $500 isn’t enough to cover the mortgage. Not only that, the middle class is saturated with law and order on TV, the very demographic that’s been taught if you fart in the store you’re robbing the CSI forensics people *will* find those molecules and prove what you had for dinner.
Who steals the $12 t-shirts at the mall where they have those anti-shoplifting devices latched onto each shirt? It ain’t the standard middle class worker bee with kids. On the other hand, extend this recession/depression for a few years causing class upheaval.
Regarding lowering crime rates, these are negatively correlated with the rise of cell phones and cameras, increased video surveillance, and theft detection systems. It’s harder to rob and get away with things when you can’t be anonymous.
This is by no means the first time the middle class has been slammed pretty hard by a recession. I’ve lived through several of these since the 1970s. The fact is that the vast majority of Americans aren’t criminals–even when they have been screwed over good. Somehow, bad times aren’t showing up in increased serious crime rates. It is because serious crime is fundamentally a moral problem.
In my experience, repeat criminals are unemployable because they commit crimes, both on and off the job. They are therefore a subclass of “unemployed”. The leftoid twits want people to think that the unemployed are a subclass of criminals (thus the comments that amount to “other people do it to so it’s unfair to pick on the criminals who get caught”).
Had a relative that worked in the NYC prison system. He said most of the inmates came from fatherless homes.
Nuff said.
just a word of advice…label your graphs more clearly those are shameful