The Economic Dimensions of Crime

The Economic Dimensions of Crime

Also by Nigel G. Fielding ACTIONS AND STRUCTURE COMMUNITY POLICING COMPUTER ANALYSIS AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH INVESTIGATING CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE JOINING FORCES LINKING DATA THE NATIONAL FRONT NEGOTIATING NOTHING THE POLICE AND SOCIAL CONFLICT PROBATION PRACTICE USING COMPUTERS IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Also by Alan Clarke EVALUATION RESEARCH: An Introduction to Principles, Methods and Practice

The Economic Dimensions of Crime Edited by Nigel G. Fielding Professor of Sociology and Co-Director, Institute of Social Research University of Surrey Alan Clarke Lecturer in Sociology University of Surrey Robert Witt Senior Lecturer in Economics University of Surrey

First published in Great Britain 2000 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-76038-3 First published in the United States of America 2000 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, LLC, Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-1-349-62855-1 DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-62853-7 ISBN 978-1-349-62853-7 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The economic dimensions of crime / edited by Nigel G. Fielding, Alan Clarke, Robert Witt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Crime-Economic aspects. 2. Criminal justice, Administration of-economic aspects. I. Fielding, Nigel. II. Clarke, Alan, 1951- III. Witt, Robert. HV6171.E28 2000 364-dc2l 99-088101 Selection, editorial matter, Introduction and Chapter 10 Nigel G. Fielding, Alan Clarke and Robert Witt 2000 Chapter 1 University of Chicago Press 1968 Chapter 4 Cambridge University Press 1995 Chapter 6 Crown Copyright 1990 Chapter 7 Institute of Contemporary Studies 1995 Chapter 8 Foundation Journal Public Finance/Finances Publiques 1993 Chapters 2, 3, 5, 9, 11 and 12 Macmillan Press Ltd 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-312-23161-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00

Contents List of Tables List of Figures Notes on the Contributors An Introduction to the Economic Dimensions of Crime and Punishment Nigel G. Fielding, Alan Clarke and Robert Witt vii viii X 1 PART I THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 1 Crime and Punishment: an Economic Approach 15 Gary S. Becker 2 The Economics of Crime 70 Antony W. Dnes 3 Economists, Crime and Punishment 83 David Pyle 4 Conspiracy among the Many: the Mafia in Legitimate Industries 100 Diego Gambetta and Peter Reuter S Towards an Economic Approach to Crime and Prevention 122 Graham Farrell, Sharon Chamard, Ken Clark and Ken Pease PART II CRIME AND THE LABOUR MARKET: ECONOMIC AND STRUCTURAL FACTORS 6 Crime and Consumption Simon Field 7 Crime and the Labour Market Richard B. Freeman 8 Work and Crime: an Exploration Using Panel Data Ann D. Witte and Helen Tauchen 142 150 177 v

vi Contents 9 'The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands to Do': the Relationship between Unemployment and Delinquency 193 Gerald Prein and Lydia Seus 10 Crime, Unemployment and Deprivation 210 Alan Clarke, Nigel G. Fielding and Robert Witt PART III MODELLING THE SYSTEM-WIDE COSTS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICIES AND PROGRAMMES 11 Modelling the Cost of Crime Allen K. Lynch, Todd Clear and David W. Rasmussen 12 Auditing Criminal Justice Joanna Shapland Annotated Further Readings Index 226 239 251 253

List of Tables 1.1 Economic costs of crimes 17 1.2 Probability of conviction and average prison term for several major felonies, 1960 31 2.1 Cost of reducing property crime by 1 per cent 75 3.1 Stealing as a dominant strategy 85 4.1 Conditions favouring the emergence of mafia-controlled cartels 112 5.1 Sixteen techniques of situational crime prevention 129 8.1 Results for the probability of offending 184 9.1 Ordinal models for violent delinquency 197 10.1 Regional crime and unemployment rates, United Kingdom, 1979-93 216 11.1 Definitions of variables used in housing market analysis 231 11.2 Hedonic estimates of the willingness to pay for public safety 233 vii

List of Figures 1.1 Marginal cost and marginal revenue by numbers of offences 27 1.2 Effect of marginal damages on marginal cost of changing offences 30 1.3 Marginal costs of apprehension and convictions 32 1.4 Effect of reduced elasticity of offences 33 3.1 The opportunity locus for legitimate and criminal activity 89 3.2 Optimum allocation of time between legitimate and criminal activity 90 3.3 Changes in the certainty of punishment and the indifference curve 91 3.4 Recorded offences of burglary, England and Wales, 1946-96 94 3.5 Long-run/short-run crime-economy relationships 95 3.6 Annual percentage changes in real GDP and recorded burglary, 1986/87 to 1995/96 95 5.1 (a) Allocating time to crime: the marginal utility curves of time spent offending and time spent not offending; (b) a preference for crime? Different marginal utility curves results in offenders and non-offenders 125 5.2 Risk and crime model 127 5.3 Increasing (time and effort and) risks of detection reduces criminal opportunities 130 5.4 Reducing rewards or removing excuses reduces the demand for offences by offenders 132 5.5 Repeat victimisation committed with reduced risk uncertainty 134 5.6 Offending under uncertainty of both risk and rewards 135 6.1 Property crime and consumption 143 7.1 Prison and jail populations in the United States, 1947-92 152 7.2 Uniform Crime Reporting index per 100 000, 1947-92 152 7.3 Victimisations per 100 000, 1973-92 153 7.4 Crimes and confined population per adult male, 1977-92 155 7.5 Victimisation and confined population per adult male, 1977-92 156 7.6 Crimes per adult male and unemployment, 1948-92 158 viii

List of Figures ix 7.7 Property crime versus income inequality in 127 metropolitan areas in the United States, 1979 162

Notes on the Contributors Gary S. Becker is Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Sharon Chamard (M.Sc., Rutgers, 1997) is a doctoral student at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Ken Clark (M.Sc., Manchester, 1990) is Lecturer in Econometrics at the School of Economic Studies at Manchester University, England, and a sometime Visiting Fellow at the Center for Crime Prevention Studies in the School of Criminal]ustice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Alan Clarke is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England. He was educated at the universities of Middlesex, Hull and Nottingham. Todd Clear received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York and serves as Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Florida, USA. Antony W. Dnes is Professor of Economics and Associate Dean for Research, University of Hertfordshire, England. Graham Farrell (Ph.D., Manchester, 1994) is Deputy Research Director of the Police Foundation, Washington, DC, USA, and Research Associate of the Applied Criminology Group of the University of Huddersfield, England. Simon Field is former Head of Economics of the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate, London, England. Nigel G. Fielding is Professor of Sociology and co-director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England. He was educated at the universities of Sussex and Kent, and at the London School of Economics. X

Notes on the Contributors xi Richard B. Freeman is Program Director (Labor Studies), National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Diego Gambetta is with the Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Oxford, England. Allen K. Lynch received his Ph.D. from Florida State University and is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of North Florida, Florida, USA. Ken Pease (Ph.D., Manchester, 1971) is acting Head of the Policing and Researching Crime Unit of the Home Office, London, England. Gerald Prein is a senior research scientist at the Special Research Centre and a lecturer in sociological methodology and statistics at the University of Bremen, Germany. David Pyle is Professor of Applied Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leicester, England. He was educated at the universities of York and Bristol. David W. Rasmussen, Ph.D. from Washington University, StLouis, is Professor of Economics and Director of the DeVoe L. Moore Center for the Study of Critical Issues in Economic Policy and Government at Florida State University, Florida, USA. Peter Reuter is with the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. Lydia Seus is a senior research scientist at the Special Research Centre and a lecturer in sociology and criminology at the University of Bremen, Germany. Joanna Shapland is Professor of Criminal Justice and Director of the Institute for the Study of the Legal Profession in the Department of Law at the University of Sheffield, England. Helen Tauchen is Professor of Economics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.

xii Notes on the Contributors Robert Witt is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England. He was educated at Kingston University, the University of Wales (Bangor) and the University of Essex. Ann D. Witte is Professor of Economics, Florida International University, Florida, USA.