1. Understanding Criminology Friday, 21 April 2017
Crime and Economics
Understanding Criminology
Friday, 21 April 2017

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

3. Absolute Deprivation
Acquisitive Crime to
fund material needs
Relative
Deprivation
Strain
and Anomie
Cultural
Adaptations
Variety
of Crime
Structural
Unemployment
Welfare
Cultural
and Personal
Adaptations
Variety of
Crime
Social Class
Need for
Social Control
Criminal Justice
System
Crimes
Economic Need
Drug
Production
Global Dealing
and Addiction
Drug-related
Crime

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Theoretical Links between Crime, Unemployment and Poverty (1)
Strain Theory
Anomie: thwarted ambition
“Am I worse off than I expected to be?”
Inequalities -> 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Fordism -> Post-Fordism
Up until 1960s
1970s
1980s ->
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
40:30:30 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

11. 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

12. So What? liberal commentators
Material circumstances do have an influence on behaviour
Poverty > Crime > 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

13. 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

14. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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”

19. 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

20. What type of criminal behaviour results in 1500 deaths a year, where
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