Crime and society

Abstract

Theories of crime and delinquency tend to be discipline‐specific and are dominated by psychological, sociological, and economic approaches. The focus of this article will be on an economic approach to understanding criminal behavior and the design of effective policies for dealing with the problem of criminal activity. From an economic perspective, crime is rational behavior, a choice that is made by people in deciding how best to spend their time. In making the choice, individuals consider the benefits and costs of using their time in different ways: working legally, working illegally, or not working at all. This article examines the correlations between economic variables and a broad measure of crime, the property crime rate. The results reveal that even a very parsimonious model, which includes the poverty rate, gross domestic product, and drug seizures, can explain nearly 75 percent of the variation in the crime rate over an 18‐year period.

Citation

Fadaei‐Tehrani, R. and Green, T.M. (2002), "Crime and society", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 29 No. 10, pp. 781-795. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068290210444412