ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relation between unemployment and crime, and school leaving and crime, using data collected in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a prospective longitudinal survey. There is no shortage of theories which predict that unemployment leads to crime. Classic delinquency theories predict that unemployment tends to cause crime. The chapter deals with the effect of unemployment on males just after leaving school. The correspondence between the peak age of offending and the last year at school suggests that one effect of school leaving may be to reduce delinquency. After children leave school, peer influence gradually declines in the face of the conventional institutions of employment and marriage. Classic delinquency theories suggest that school failure causes crime. Numerous empirical projects show that school failure is an important predictor of offending. The chapter presents the rates of officially recorded offending during periods of unemployment and periods of full-time employment.
