Crime and the Job Market: Do Rising Wages and Full Employment Reduce Crime?

• NCJ Number: 180806
• Author(s): Richard Freeman
• Date Published: February 2000
• Length: 0 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
• Sale Source: US Dept of Justice
• Publication Series: NIJ Perspectives on Crime and Justice Seminars
• Publication Format: Film
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: VHS color video, 56 minutes.

Annotation

This video lecture by Richard Freeman, a Harvard economics professor, reports on research pertinent to the question regarding whether or not rising wages and full employment reduce crime.

Abstract

The economic model used in interpreting the relevant data is based on the assumption that in deciding whether or not to engage in crime, individuals will assess the potential rewards and adverse consequences of engaging or not engaging in acquisitive crime. The sanctions involved should a person be arrested and sentenced for a crime enter into the decisionmaking process as do the estimates of money gained for labor expended. Rising wages and increased employment opportunities, concludes Freeman, weight the economic model toward increased rewards for engaging in legitimate work, particularly when the risk of harsher sanctions increases the adverse consequences of engaging in crime. Freeman concludes that between one-fourth and one-third of the current crime reduction in America (2000) can be attributed to rising wages and full employment. Persons who do commit property crimes, notes Freeman, are generally those individuals whose educational achievement and vocational skills are so lacking that legitimate ways of earning a living are either nonexistent or unattractive in terms of money earned for the amount and nature of the labor expended. Freeman also frames the arguments of social scientists who challenge the view that the crime rate has any direct relationship to the quality of the job market. Social scientists argue that social conditions of families and peer groups are more influential in molding behaviors and decisionmaking than the economic conditions of the larger society. Although not discounting this argument, Freeman maintains that economic factors do have a role in determining the decisions that bear upon compliance or noncompliance with the law. Audience questions pertain to the influence of the job market on white collar crime and whether the economic model of crime holds true in cross-country analyses of crime rates.