NCJ Number
126742
Date Published
1990
Length
95 pages
Annotation
This study of crime trends in England and Wales since the end of World War II explores the factors, particularly the economic ones, that are related to crime.
Abstract
The 12 categories of offenses were disaggregated from annual data on recorded crime and selected to cover most types of notifiable incidences. The primary finding of the study is that economic factors do impact on trends in both personal and property crimes; a consistent pattern over the period of the study. The relationship between consumption growth and property crime appears to be one of short-term effects; property crime increases less rapidly in years of high consumption growth while personal crime has the opposite relationship and increases with the growth in per capita consumption. Consumption growth has opportunity effect, motivation effect, and lifestyle effect on crime, although this report argues that property crime is most affected by the motivation factor. Various relationships between crime and economic factors are discussed including that between unemployment and crime; between personal violence, beer consumption, and unemployment; between crime and demographic factors; and between crimes of different types. The relationship of several criminal justice factors and crime was also examined. 10 tables, 9 figures, 2 appendixes, and 47 references