Labor Markets, Employment, and Crime

• NCJ Number: 161259
• Author(s): R Crutchfield
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 0 pages
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)

Annotation

This video of a lecture by Dr. Robert Crutchfield focuses on his research in progress that is examining how the nature of labor markets and employment in a community impacts crime.

Abstract

The broader concern of his research is how economic forces affect criminality. Dr. Crutchfield notes that his review of the relevant research indicates some relationship between a community's income and crime, but the exact nature of the connection is not clear. The model for Crutchfield's research in three cities -- Seattle, Wash.; Cleveland, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. -- theorizes that not only unemployment, but the type of employment impacts a person's lifestyle. "Primary-sector" employment, for example, involves jobs that promise an escalating income, supplementary benefits, and opportunities for advancement into ever more satisfying and challenging tasks. Persons who have such jobs have a stake in complying with the behavior required to maintain and improve job performance so as to enhance the benefits of a career. "Secondary-sector" jobs, on the other hand, are low-paying, with few supplemental benefits, and virtually no opportunities for advancement and significant income increase. Persons who hold such jobs have little incentive to discipline their behavior in accordance with job demands and opportunities. If they are fired for poor performance, they can easily find another "secondary-sector" job. Persons in these marginal jobs also tend to seek income increases through illegal sources of income (crime). Crutchfield's study has thus far shown that there is a relationship between dominant "unstable" employment (secondary-sector employment and unemployment) and crime. Crutchfield theorizes that when individuals who are unemployed or marginally employed in a community where a majority of the people have this same employment status, there is little reason for residents to believe that lifestyle and incomes will improve, which in turn undermines the commitment of youth to education. Poverty in turn produces stress which leads to violence and desperate efforts to survive though income-generating crime. Crutchfield is in the process of identifying and developing measures of all the variables that stem from the dominant labor market in a community and how these variable in turn relate to the crime rate in that community. He notes the difficulty of improving the economic status of a given community, since those whose incomes improve tend to move out of the community. Questions from the audience are included in the video.