Unemployment and Crime Rate Fluctuations: A Comment on Greenberg

Several ways in which the specification of the Cantor and Land (1985) conceptual model of transient relationships between aggregate unemployment and crime rate fluctuations differs from that of Greenberg (2001) are noted. It follows that we do not accept Greenberg's Eq. (1) as a valid theoretical representation of the processes of interest. We briefly review the substantive context from which our investigation began in the mid-1980s. We also review the time series properties of our model and of the aggregate unemployment and crime rates used in its estimation. We note how the time series behavior of various crime rates determines which parts of the Cantor and Land model are and are not likely to be estimated as statistically significant for those series. We conclude with some comments on the limitations of aggregate time series research designs for testing the behavioral hypotheses used to generate expected relationships between aggregate unemployment and crime rates and suggest some alternative research designs.     

Theoretical and Empirical Work on the Relationship Between Unemployment and Crime

Part of the ongoing debate between Cantor and Land and Greenberg centers on differing opinions about the question of interest in Cantor and Land (1985). We begin this article with our opinion that Cantor and Land's theory relates changes in the business cycle to changes in the aggregate rate of crime. We then question whether year-to-year changes adequately reflect changes in the business cycle, which last on average 4 years, and we refer to an article by Cook and Zarkin (1985) which presents an alternative method of measuring business cycle changes. We also discuss how Greenberg's use of cointegration provides an alternative way of addressing the difficult statistical problem of nonstationarity without resorting to first differences. Our final contribution involves noticing that opportunity and motivational theories of crime can be structurally identified by focusing on different types of crime rather than temporal lags. We demonstrate this idea by splitting car theft into joyriding and theft for profit. We show that joyriding appears to be driven by opportunity, while the causal structure of theft for profit is less clear.     

Unemployment and Crime: Toward Resolving the Paradox

While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemployed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of unemployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and crime. In Australia there have been no individual-level or cross-sectional studies of unemployment and adult crime which have failed to find a positive relationship and no time-series which have supported a positive relationship. Consistent with this pattern, a time series of homicide from 1921 to 1987 in Australia reveals no significant unemployment effect. A theoretical resolution of this apparent paradox is advanced in terms of the effect of female employment on crime in a partriarchal society. Crime is posited as a function of both total unemployment and female employment. When female employment is added to the model, it has a strong positive effect on homicide, and unemployment also assumes a strong positive effect.     

Time Series Analysis of Crime Rates

A methodological critique of Cantor and Land's (1985) approach to the time series analysis of the crime–unemployment relationship is developed. Error correction models for U.S. homicide and robbery rates for the years 1946–1997 are presented to illustrate procedures for analyzing nonstationary time series data. The critique is followed by a discussion of methodological problems in work by Devine et al. (1988), Smith et al. (1992), and Britt (1994, 1997) that builds on Cantor and Land's approach.     

Unemployment, Economic Theory, and Property Crime: A Note on Measurement

Drawing on rational choice theory, this study considers how best to measureunemployment within the context of the unemployment–property crimerelationship. Specifically, we use ARIMA techniques to examine the relativeefficacy of using the conventional Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)unemployment rate and two alternative measures of the demand for labor aspredictors of monthly counts of U.S. property offenses for the years 1982through 1996. The bivariate time series analyses indicate that while theBLS unemployment rate exhibits null effects, the number of individualsunemployed for 15 weeks or more and the capacity utilization ratesignificantly affect the level of property crime. The implications ofthese results are discussed.     

Prison commitments,crime, and unemployment: A theoretical and empirical specification for the United States, 1933–1985

This paper examines sources for the changing commitment rates to U.S. state prisons (PCR) from 1933 to 1985 using a variety of time-series techniques. Theoretically, it resolves ambiguous interpretations of how crime, unemployment, and imprisonment are related. Hypotheses that crime and punishment are in equilibrium are rejected. Our final specification supports theories integrating institutionally endogenous and socially exogenous causes of prison use and includes feedback effects between crime and punishment. We reached several general conclusions. (1) Changes in PCR are due partly to changes in the levels of unemployment, age composition of the population, and military active-duty rates. (2) Effects of the criminal justice system, captured as autoregressive institutional drift, account for approximately half of the year-to-year fluctuations in the PCR. The contemporaneous prison discharge rate also influences the rate of prison commitments. (3) Neither the specified nor the unspecified institutional effects mediate the effects of other exogenous variables. (4) Under most simultaneous-equation specifications, the crime rate is moderately influenced by the contemporaneous unemployment rate and strongly influenced by prior levels of prison commitments. The preferred simultaneous causal model estimates a modest positive coefficient for the unemployment-crime causal path and a substantial positive coefficient for the unemployment-prison commitment causal path.     

Theory, Operationalization, Identification, and the Interpretation of Different Differences in Time Series Models

The principals in this exchange, David Cantor, David Greenberg, and Kenneth Land, have each contributed outstanding methodological and substantive scholarship to criminology and to the social sciences more generally. In exchanges such as this we are engaged in a collective process of refining and advancing our knowledge in the areas of both criminology and statistical methods. The issues raised by Greenberg provide an opportunity to reflect on time series modeling and to revisit some issues concerning operationalization and model specification. I do not expect any of us to agree fully on these issues, but we may be able to shed some light on these issues, and collectively this may help the larger community of criminologists and social scientists.     

Testing Theory and the Analysis of Time Series Data

Although the relationship between unemployment and crime has been a longstanding interest in criminology, there is little agreement about appropriate models for analyzing this relationship. David Greenberg's (this issue) discussion highlights two issues that raise questions about recent research on the unemployment–crime relationship. First, he extends the work of Hale and Sabbagh (1991) and argues that cointegration methods should be used instead of first-differenced regression models to analyze unemployment and crime time series data. Second, he argues that previous attempts to test his strain theory linking unemployment to the age distribution of crime rely on flawed hypotheses, inappropriate data, and faulty measurement. In this paper, I address both of Greenberg's claims. I begin with a discussion of the relative utility of cointegration analysis and of first-differenced regression models for the analysis of the unemployment–crime relationship, focusing on the link between theory and statistical model. I then discuss the possibility of ever testing and falsifying Greenberg's strain theory.     

The Relationship Between Crime Reporting and Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports

Empirical studies that use reported crime data to evaluate policies for reducing crime will understate the true effectiveness of these policies if crime reporting/recording behavior is also affected by the policies. For instance, when the size of the police force increases, changes in the perceived likelihood that a crime will be solved may lead a higher fraction of victimizations to be reported to the police. In this paper, three data sets are employed to measure the magnitude of this reporting bias. While each of these analyses is subject to individual criticisms, all of the approaches yield similar estimates. Reporting bias appears to be present but relatively small in magnitude: each additional officer is associated with an increase of roughly five Index crimes that previously would have gone unreported. Taking reporting bias into account makes the hiring of additional police substantially more attractive from a cost–benefit perspective but cannot explain the frequent inability of past studies to uncover a systematic negative relationship between the size of the police force and crime rates.     

罪刑均衡蕴意探究

罪刑均衡形式上的抽象框架是 :罪与刑的质的相称与量的相称的有机统一。其中 ,罪是指以已然之罪为主、未然之罪为辅的罪的统一体 ;刑是指以报应之刑为基础、预防之刑为引伸的刑的统一体。罪刑均衡抽象框架的基本要求 ,在我国现行刑法的规定中 ,有着一定的体现。     

罪刑均衡原则杂议

从罪刑均衡原则立法上看,我国刑法把更丰富的内容纳入了罪刑关系的视野;罪刑关系的内在意蕴深刻,但不应忽视在罪刑关系上的规定上尚存的一些立法瑕疵     

海盗行为和海上恐怖主义行为的比较研究

海盗行为和海上恐怖主义行为受国际政治经济因素的影响,近年来在国际上呈现愈演愈烈之势。本文通过对国际条约中有关两者的定义和主要管辖机制的对比分析,试图找出两者的共同之处,以期对打击两种犯罪提出建议。     

论行贿犯罪档案查询中虚假证件的识别

检察机关行贿犯罪档案查询系统的开通,对于强化检察机关法律监督职能作用,加强从源头上遏制和预防腐败,全面推进廉洁准入制度,促进社会信用体系建设,起到了积极的作用。但近来投标人使用虚假证件的问题比较严重,应引起各级检察机关的高度重视。在执行查询工作时,我们应建立起严密规范的工作程序,让虚假证件失去赖以生存的空间。     

不作为的诈骗罪与不当得利的界分

刑民分界是近年来我国法学研究中的一个热点问题。在实践中,多数案件都可以明确地界定为刑事案件或者民事案件。但是,对于那些处于刑事和民事边缘“模糊地带”的案件应当如何处理,是司法机关面临的一个难题。     

浅谈犯罪现场勘查课的分段教学法

犯罪现场勘查课是我国公安院校侦查学和刑事科学技术学等专业都开设的一门专业必修课程,为了适应当前犯罪形势 对侦查人才的需要,如何深化现场勘查课的教学改革,开展互动式教学,学以致用,是公安教育工作者值得思考的问题。     

Imprisonment and unemployment: A comment

The current state of research dealing with the relationship between the unemployment rate and the imprisonment rate is assessed, and directions for further research are suggested.     

单位实施自然人犯罪问题之探讨

单位如果实施了自然人犯罪,在司法实践中并不能以单位犯罪论处,是以个人犯罪论处还是司法机关不予处理而放纵犯罪?这一问题理论界存在有不同的看法,且在司法实践的处理过程中,也存在着争论,至今尚无定论。这样的现状,一方面难于体现我国的刑法保护功能,另一方面如予以处理,则可能冒违反罪刑法定原则的风险,的确是一个两难问题。单位实施自然人犯罪的刑事当罚性,罪刑法定原则下的犯罪的变异与司法实践,单位实施自然人犯罪的法律认识等问题的探讨,希望能为现实问题的解决开辟思路。     

重庆市毒品犯罪态势分析及对策研究

近年来,重庆市毒品犯罪案件总数有下降趋势,但大要案件突出,犯罪特点及犯罪人员出现一些新的变化。重庆特殊的地缘因素、庞大的毒品消费市场以及打击毒品犯罪的难度较大使禁毒的形势更加严峻。要通过构筑毒品流入流出防线,斩断毒品流通网络,迫使毒品消费市场萎缩,有效遏制重庆市毒品犯罪态势的恶化。     

Unemployment and the dynamics of offender populations

This paper models the increase in the participation rate of criminal behavior as either the initiation rate or the career length of criminals changes in response to increases in unemployment. Even with large instantaneous increases in unemployment, the models show a very slow increase in the criminal participation rate, giving a possible explanation of the failure of many studies to demonstrate a link between unemployment and crime levels.