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Violence and the Economy: A Modest Hypothesis on Inequality, Unemployment, and Crime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Dane Archer  and
Rosemary Gartner
Dane Archer
Affiliation:
Stevenson College, University of California, Santa-Cruz, CA 95064
Rosemary Gartner
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Abstract

Cross-national data are examined for possible relationships between violent crime and economic fluctuations. Sixteen cases are examined from a new archive of international data on homicide and four other offences for 110 nations and 44 major international cities for the period 1900-1972. A simple contextual hypothesis is proposed: that a nation's type of economic system determines whether or not changing economic system determines whether or not changing economic conditions will affect rates of violent crime. Preliminary analyses provide support for this hypothesis and suggest that the relationship between violence and the economy is not invariant but is instead contingent on qualitative features of a nation's economic system. Specifically, nations with more re distributive economic systems and policies designed to mitigate poverty and unemployment are less likely to experience increases in violence when unemployment increases.

Résumé

Résumé

Les statistiques de nations diverses sont étudiées ici pour permettre l'analyse des liens entre criminalité violente et variation économique. Nous avons étudiés, sur une période allant de 1900 à 1972, 16 cas de meurtres choisis dans les nouvelles archives internationales sur l'homicide et 4 autres types de délits à travers 110 pays et 44 grandes villes du monde.

Une hypothèse simplement contextuelle est proposée: c'est le type de système économique d'une nation qui détermine si les changements de condition économique affecteront où pas le taux de criminalité violente. Les premières analyses étayent cette hypothèse et suggèrent que la relation entre violence et économie n'est pas invariable mais dépend au contraire des caractéristiques qualitatives du système économique national considéré. Et en particulier ce sont les nations qui ont un système économique plus redistributif et des politiques axées sur la lutte contre le chômage et la pauvreté qui sont le moins susceptibles de connaître une augmentation de la violence lorsque leur taux de chômage croît.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Annals of Criminology , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , 1986 , pp. 255 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 International Society for Criminology

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Footnotes

1.

This paper is part of a cross-national study of homicide and other offences. The crime statistics used in this paper are from a just-published 110-nation archive of comparative crime data (D. Archer and R. Gartner, Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective, Yale University Press, 1984). This research was supported in part by a Guggenheim Fellowship and a German Marshall Fund Fellowship to the first author. The authors wish to thank Tom Phelan and Marc Lieberman for assistance and advice.

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