NCJ Number
196620
Journal
Criminology Volume: 40 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2002 Pages: 649-680
Date Published
August 2002
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This article explores how the potentially mediating effects of motivation and opportunity affect unemployment-crime.
Abstract
In this article, the often-held assumption that unemployment both increases the motivation for crime and decreases criminal opportunities is tested. Following an introduction to the literature involving the potentially mediating effects of motivation and opportunity in regards to unemployment crime, the authors describe the 1982 county-level data from Florida used in this study. The authors developed a series of cross-sectional regressions to test for 11, target-specific property crimes related to unemployment. Focusing on various store robberies, vehicular and motor vehicle part thefts, shoplifting, and residential burglary rates and rates of poverty, this article linked the crime data with the availability of criminal opportunities. Testing whether opportunity and motivation mediated the relationship between unemployment and criminal activity, the authors found that opportunity levels were unrelated to property crime rates and did not appear to mediate the unemployment-crime relationship. After presenting a series of tables illustrating various bivariate correlations between unemployment rate and criminal opportunity measures, this article concludes that using poverty as a variable may not be an effective measure of criminal motivation because many individuals classified as impoverished are, in fact, working. Tables, references