Crime and Economics

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Crime and Economics

• Understanding Criminology
• Sunday, 20 December 2020

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Question

• Can economic factors be used to explain crime?
  How?
• Are you thinking about crime in general, or more
  specific types?

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Lecture Outline

• Key concepts in relating crime and economics, and
  how has criminology used these
• Economic change
• Social Exclusion and The Underclass
• Social Class in the operation of the criminal
  justice system

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Economics

• Concerned with the production and distribution of
  income, wealth, and resources
• How does this impact on crime?
• Propensity to Offend
• Vulnerability to Victimisation
• Formal and informal social control

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Key Related Concepts

• Consumption level of spending on consumer goods
  in any one year
• Recession a downturn in a national economy
• Unemployment and Welfare
• Deprivation
• Absolute deprivation
• Relative Deprivation
• Social Class
• Social Exclusion

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Theoretical Links between Crime, Unemployment and
Poverty (1)

• Strain Theory
• Anomie thwarted ambition
• Am I worse off than I expected to be?
• Inequalities -gt relative deprivation
• Am I worse off than others like me?
• Status Frustration (Albert Cohen)
• Social class is a clear example of constrained
  opportunities
• Crime represents an alternative means of gaining
  status and prestige
• Not (necessarily) property crime

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Theoretical Links between Crime, Unemployment and
Poverty (2)

• Control Theory Travis Hirschi
• Offending is more likely when a person has
• Low attachment to others
• No strong commitment to the future
• No strong beliefs in conventionality
• Recession and poverty can undermine
• Family and community attachments
• Commitment to the future (education)
• Morality

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Theoretical Links between Crime, Unemployment and
Poverty (3)

• Labelling Theory
• Those who fit the criminal stereotypes pose
  least trouble for the CJS to process
• Higher rates of criminalisation for police
  property
• Growing mutual distrust a growing sense of
  injustice may push potential deviants into actual
  crime

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Fordism -gt Post-Fordism
Up until 1960s 1970s 1980s -gt
Low Unemployment rates 1.4 of workforce Quick Re-employment UK Industrial Production key High Unemployment 15 of workforce Income Inequalities grew UK Industrial Production in decline Restructured Economy UK Service-based employment 403030 society (Will Hutton) Structural Unemployment for some Core and periphery workforce
1960 around 1,000,000 crimes per year
around 20,000 people in prison
1990 around 5,000,000 crimes per year
around 60,000 people in prison
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So What?

• Right wing / conservative commentators
• The growth in unemployment, and the growth in
  imprisonment are coincidences
• Unemployment caused by wage increases, resulting
  in uncompetitive industry
• Imprisonment caused by rise in crime rates,
  caused in turn by problems of moral regulation
• Unemployment is neither an excuse, nor a
  justification for crime

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So What?

• liberal commentators
• Material circumstances do have an influence on
  behaviour
• Poverty gt Crime gt Prison
• Poverty can trigger both property and violent
  crime
• Dorie Klein sexual warfare a stand-in for
  class and racial conflict
• Coser status frustration leading to aggression
  against self or others

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Longitudinal Studies

• Do people who are unemployed go on to commit
  crime in the future?
• Thornberry and Christenson Philadelphia cohort
  study of boys born in 1945
• Strongest links in the more socially
  disadvantaged groups the effect of unemployment
  in triggering a criminal response is much greater
  amongst the poor

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How do levels of consumption affect crime?

• Simon Field macro level analysis
• Reduced personal consumption / spending (i.e.
  recession) is associated with a growth in
  property crime
• Increased personal consumption esp. on alcohol is
  associated with a growth in personal crime

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What is Social Exclusion?

• Social Exclusion is
• Diverse people excluded from political, social
  and economic resources
• A social problem, not an individual problem
• The Underclass not simply poor

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Competing Explanations for Social Exclusion

• Motive, capacity and opportunity
• Individualistic Lack of individual motivation
  driven by welfare dependency self-exclusion from
  society (Charles Murray)
• Structural A failure of the economy to provide
  enough jobs for everyone lack of positive role
  models social isolation from job opportunities
• Deliberate The active exclusion of the
  underclass by the powerful in society
  stigmatizing stereotypes the criminal poor

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Social Exclusion in the Official Construction of
Crime

• Processes by which social groups are identified
  as problems
• Policing discretion
• Policing strategies
• Judicial decisions
• The social construction of social problems
• Political focus on dangerous classes

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Jeffrey Reiman The Rich Get Richer The Poor Get
prison

• Social class processes can be observed in
• How the laws are written
• Who is arrested/charged
• Who is tried/convicted
• What sentences are given out
• The most harmful crimes fail to receive
  appropriate criminal justice responses

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A Riddle

• What type of criminal behaviour results in 1500
  deaths a year, where
• Policing is carried out by under-funded,
  separate organisation, outside of the Home Office
• Less than 1 in 8 cases result in prosecution
• Of those, the response is a fine (around 60,000)
• Offenders are consulted about changes to
  legislation

ANSWER
Corporate Health and Safety Violations