UNEMPLOYMENT AND CRIME - TOWARD RESOLVING THE PARADOX

While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemploy ed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of une mployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and cr ime. In Australia there have been no individual-level or cross-section al studies of unemployment and adult crime which have failed to find a positive relationship and no time-series which have supported a posit ive relationship. Consistent with this pattern, a time series of homic ide 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 partriarcha l society. Crime is posited as a function of both total unemployment a nd female employment. When female employment is added to the model, it has a strong positive effect on homicide, and unemployment also assum es a strong positive effect.