THE SOCIAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF CRIME AND UNEMPLOYMENT

A missing piece in the literature that crime and unemployment is an un derstanding of the proximate causes of joblessness in the lives of ind ividuals. Granovetter has demonstrated with his concept of social embe ddedness that early employment contacts can enhance the prospects of g etting a job and subsequent occupational mobility. The alternative imp lication is that youths who are embedded in criminal contexts can beco me isolated from the likelihood of legitimate adult employment. This h as important implications for an understanding of crime and unemployme nt, for while much of past macro-level research confirms that unemploy ment leads to crime in the aggregate, the reverse is likely true at th e individual level among adolescents and young adults, especially in c ommunity settings with serious crime and unemployment problems. The im plications of criminal embeddedness are explored in a well-known set o f London panel data. Understanding the process of embeddedness is impo rtant because it helps to identify points of intervention, such as pee r and justice system contacts.