Crime, Work, and Reentry

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CRIME AS WORK

Analysts commonly think of crime as an alternative to work, sometimes making the comparison casually and sometimes with a great deal of formality. The most obvious points of connection are that crime (sometimes) yields financial returns and that it takes effort and time to do. If crime is "work," the two types of activities are substitutes, and improving legal sector employment opportunities through programs emphasizing job skills and job search will prevent crime. The pressure on prevention efforts, then, is to "make work pay" for participants, altering incentives somehow to make work relatively more attractive. Programs following this approach often subsidize work or aim to develop skills that will result in higher wages.

There clearly are limits to the usefulness of the analogy, as there are many types of illegal behavior that appear to have little resemblance to "work." Some of these are more closely related to our notions of leisure than to work, such as driving under the influence or vandalism, and some are hard to categorize as "like" other activities, such as sex offenses or drug use. Yet even if crime is something very different from work, it may be possible that employment conditions influence criminal activity. The availability of a good job could reduce illegal behavior by affecting the benefits or costs of crime, by occupying a potential offender for many hours per day, by providing essential social structure, or through another mechanism. Under these circumstances, increases in employment may have beneficial impacts on crimes that do not yield a financial payoff to the perpetrator.

In this essay, I consider the extent to which work appears to be a relevant factor in whether individuals commit criminal acts and, as corollary, the extent to which work can be expected to contribute to crime prevention. I consider a range of reasons that programs emphasizing work may be useful interventions for criminally involved populations, particularly when delivered in prison to prepare inmates for reentry into civil society. In thinking about the mechanisms by which work can affect crime, I bear in mind the prospects for delivering services to various segments of the offender population in order to trigger these mechanisms.¹

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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