Crime and Work
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11348951 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeffrey Fagan (0000-0003-1483-5554, Columbia University, corresponding author), Richard B Freeman (0000-0001-9471-8117, National Bureau of Economic Research) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Pages | 225-290 |
| Publication date | 1999-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Crime and Justice (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0192-3234 • E-ISSN: 2153-0416 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/449290 |
| OpenAlex | W2151218328 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 70 |
| References cited | 76 |
Crime and legal work are not mutually exclusive choices but represent a continuum of legal and illegal income-generating activities. The links between crime and legal work involve trade-offs among crime returns, punishment costs, legal work opportunity costs, and tastes and preferences regarding both types of work. Rising crime rates in the 1980s in the face of rising incarceration rates suggest that the threat of punishment is not the dominant cost of crime. Crime rates are inversely related to expected legal wages, particularly among young males with limited job skills or prospects. Recent ethnographic research shows that involvement in illegal work often is motivated by low wages and harsh conditions in legal work. Many criminal offenders "double up" in both legal work and crime, either concurrently or sequentially. This overlap suggests a fluid and dynamic interaction between legal and illegal work. Market wages and job opportunities interact with social and legal pressures to influence decisions to abandon crime for legal work. Explanations of the patterns of legal and illegal work should be informed by econometric, social structural, and labeling theories. The continuity of legal and illegal work suggests the importance of illegal wages in research and theory on criminal decision making
Business · Criminology · Political science · Punishment (psychology · Sociology · Work (physics · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology
Explaining the Great American Crime Decline
The Impact of Gun Ownership Rates on Crime Rates
Barriers to Prisoners' Reentry into the Labor Market and the Social Costs of Recidivism
When Crime Pays
Where the Jobs Are
Work and Crime
The role of positive youth development practices in building resilience and enhancing wellbeing for at-risk youth
The Effect of Incarceration on Marriage and Work Over the Life Course
Rational Choice and Developmental Influences on Recidivism Among Adolescent Felony Offenders
Criminal Careers in Organized Crime and Social Opportunity Structure
An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances
Jails, prisons, and the health of urban populations
Escaping the Family Tradition
Effects of Unemployment, Conviction and Incarceration on Employment
The Relationship Between Universities and Black Urban Communities
The health effects of gendered and devalued work
The foraging perspective in criminology
Ekonomik Suçlar, Gelir ve İşsizliğin Mekânsal İlişkisi
Offending Frequency and Responses to Illegal Monetary Incentives
On the Margins
Does Stable Employment after Prison Reduce Recidivism Irrespective of Prior Employment and Offending
Not All Money Is the Same
Is Work Associated With More or Less Criminal Involvement in the Short-Term? New Evidence of the Former Among a Justice-Involved Sample
On the Job or in the Joint
Occupational Attainment and Criminal Justice Contact
Illegal Earnings, Opportunity Structures and the Timing of Life Transitions
Your Friends and Neighbors
Theory and Research on Desistance from Antisocial Activity among Serious Adolescent Offenders
Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings
The Impact of Incarceration on Employment during the Transition to Adulthood
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Changes in the social networks of prisoners
Lorsque le crime rapporte
Examining the Role of Meaningful Work for Desistance Among Justice-Involved Emerging Adults
Self-Control and Crime
Does Locked Up Mean Locked Out? The Effects of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 on Black Male Students’ College Enrollment
Parolefare
Explaining young British Muslim men’s involvement in heroin and crack
Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice
Abolish Lifetime Bans for Ex‐felons
Testing public policy at the frontier
Productive Addicts and Harm Reduction
The Predictive Value of Criminal Background Checks
Dealers, Thieves, and the Common Determinants of Drug and Nondrug Illegal Earnings
Does the Time Cause the Crime? An Examination of the Relationship Between Time Served and Reoffending in the Netherlands
Unemployment and Crime in US Cities During the Coronavirus Pandemic
The Effects of High Imprisonment Rates on Communities
Understanding Desistance from Crime
The Effects of Parental Imprisonment on Children
American Prisons at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century
The Malign Effects of Drug and Crime Control Policies on Black Americans
Economists’ Contribution to the Study of Crime and the Criminal Justice System
Vulnerability in the transition to adulthood
Paternal Incarceration and Support for Children in Fragile Families
Revisiting the relationship between age, employment, and recidivism
Race, work history, and the employment recidivism relationship
Structural predictors of choice
Changes in Criminal Offending Around the Time of Job Entry
Does gang membership pay? Illegal and legal earnings through emerging adulthood
A New Look at the Employment and Recidivism Relationship Through the Lens of a Criminal Background Check
Gains–loss asymmetry of jobs, income, and risk‐taking behaviors
The Path and Promise of Fatherhood for Gang Members
Craft(y)ness
Space–Time Dynamics of Crime in Transport Nodes
The Meaning of Work
From prison to work? Job-crime patterns for women in a precarious labor market
Work as Foraging
New Economics of Sociological Criminology
We are not Kenyans
Contesting Childhood in the US Justice System
American apartheid
Measuring delinquency
Crime and the American dream
People and folks
Delinquency and opportunity
Great Pretenders
Money, Work, and Crime
Multiple Problem Youth
Delinquency and the age structure of society
Women and Drugs Revisited
Social Information-Processing Bases of Aggressive Behavior in Children
Social Structure and Anomie
Going down to the barrio
Reassessing the reliability and validity of self-report delinquency measures
Malign Neglect Race, Crime, And Punishment In America
Delinquency and Drift
General Strain Theory and Delinquency
A General Theory of Crime
The Truly Disadvantaged
Crime in the Making
The State of Working America
Delinquency and Opportunity
Understanding and Preventing Violence
The Effect of Arrests on the Employment and Earnings of Young Men
Crime Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States
Modeling Offenders' Decisions
The Social Ecology of Youth Violence
Criminal Deterrence Research at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century
Age and Crime
Population Growth in U. S. Prisons, 1980-1996
Research in Criminal Deterrence
Structural and Cultural Disinvestment and the New Ethnographies of Poverty and Crime
Behind Ghetto Walls
Social Osmosis and Patterns of Crime
Crime and Punishment
A Theory of Rational Addiction
Youth employment, crime, and schooling
The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City
Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass
Homeboys, Dope Fiends, Legits, and New Jacks
An Empirical Test of General Strain Theory
The Social Embeddedness of Crime and Unemployment
Attributions, Affect, and Crime
Disproportionate Black and Hispanic Unemployment in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Delinquency cessation and adolescent development
Unemployment, School Leaving, and Crime
Structural Covariates of Homicide Rates
Criminal Careers in the Short-Term
The Neighborhood Context of Police Behavior
Unemployment and Crime Rates in the Post-World War II United States
Crime, Deterrence, and Rational Choice
Studying Inner-City Social Dislocations
The Prestige of Criminal and Conventional Occupations
Crime and Poverty
Conscience, Significant Others, and Rational Choice
The Role of Human Capital in Earnings Differences Between Black and White Men
Unemployment and Criminal Involvement
When Work Disappears
The use of life-histories in testing theories of criminal behavior
The Jack-Roller
Streetwise. Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community
Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime
Work and Crime
Choosing Crime
Labor Stratification and Violent Crime
The Meaning of Race to Employers
Rates of Crime and Unemployment
The Social Organization of Armed Robbery
The Social Organization of Street Gang Activity in an Urban Ghetto
The Social Reproduction of a Criminal Class in Working-Class London, Circa 1950-1980
The Ecology of Inequality
Urban Black Violence
Age and the Explanation of Crime
The 'post' phase of deviant careers
| Unique citing works | 70 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,59 |
| Citation span | 1999 - 2026 (28) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 65 |