Unemployment and crime: the role of apprehension

An increase in the unemployment rate decreases the opportunity cost of crime and increases the crime rate according to standard microeconomics models. However, a large body of empirical research has shown that an increase in unemployment may increase or decrease crime. By incorporating the return to crime into standard economic models, this paper shows that an increase in unemployment, as in recessions, decreases the opportunity cost of crime and the return to crime as well. As a result, the effect of unemployment on crime is ambiguous and depends on the apprehension rate. An increase in the unemployment rate tends to decrease the crime rate at lower apprehension rates, but to increase it at higher apprehension rates. An increase in the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits does not necessarily reduce the crime rate, and the effect of more generous unemployment insurance on crime depends again on the apprehension rate.     

Women ‘s experiences ‐text or relation? Looking at research practices from a sociological and feminist perspective

As a paradoxical result of the very developments within women's research, the whole notion of “women's experiences” is now being questioned. In this article it is argued that this question should be dealt with not only on the metatheoretical or theoretical level, but also on the level of actual research practices. Starting with the level of research practices, we can find theoretical and methodological arguments for regarding experience as a proper object for study and politics. Arguments which in turn challenge the approaches on the metatheoretical level and which provide the missing links between these two levels. It is in the process of articulation of an experience (verbally, in writing, by gestures, and so forth) ‐ in contrast to the lived experience ‐ that we as social scientists enter the scene. Two different methods ‐ the interview and memory work ‐ are here discussed to illustrate how different relations of productions of knowledge (positivistic and non‐positivistic) will result in different ways of articulating and understanding the experience. It is argued that the extent to which an articulated experience is both “text and relation” varies with the method being used. It is, however, further argued that it is precisely the discursive dimension in the articulation of an experience that provides a constructive tension in relation to the lived experience. A tension that makes reflection and change possible. And pursuit of change, as a feminist enterprise within the production of knowledge is finally argued as a challenge to the pursuit of truth as the enterprise within the philosophy of science.