Social insecurity: a longitudinal analysis of welfare claimants’ involvement in crime in the 1980s.

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Formal and Informal Control

Abstract

Socio-economic policies of British neoliberal governments in the 1980s have been linked with upsurges in crime. In particular, Jennings et al, 2012 found that reductions in welfare spending were associated with a rise in the national rate of property crime. However, does this trend remain constant when we test the relationship at the level of the individual? Using one of the UK’s most detailed cohort studies (the British Cohort Study - a longitudinal investigation of 17,000 people born in 1970) we explore the extent to which reductions in welfare benefits paid to claimants in the 1980s were associated with their subsequent engagement in the criminal justice system (or not). This paper evaluates i) how neoliberal welfare policies can be held to have unintended consequences for those individuals who depended on social security in the 1980s and ii) the methodological interplay between micro and macro longitudinal analysis.

Authors

• Emily Gray, University of Sheffield

• Stephen Farrall, University of Sheffield (UK)