Examining the Relationship Between Employment and Crime

• In Event: Examining the Relationship Between Employment and Criminal Offending: Four Approaches

Abstract

Drawing from relevant crime theory, we examine month-to-month relationships between employment and crime using hierarchical, group based, and event history modeling. Data are drawn from life event calendar interviews with 250 minimum and medium security prisoners. The analytic focus is the employment-crime relationship in the 18 month period preceding imprisonment, and the relationship between pre-prison and post-prison outcomes. Employment is conceptualized broadly to include employed vs. not-employed, hours worked, wages, job commitment, and occupation and is examined in relation to self-reported drug selling, violent, and property offenses. We are also interested in how pre-prison employment experience shapes recidivism risk after release from prison. To that end we incorporate group-based trajectory models and examine posterior probabilities of pre-prison employment and crime as regressors in survival models capturing recidivism post-release.

Authors

• Paul E. Bellair, Ohio State University

• Robert Apel, Rutgers University