"If the recession persists longer than we anticipate, it's not likely to trigger a major upturn in crime," said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. "But if it does persist, it is certainly a risky consequence."
Roger Lane, a Haverford College professor and author of Murder in America: A History, says the economic downturn will almost certainly contribute to increased crime rates in the near future.
Hundreds of thousands have already been thrown out of work — many who not too long ago moved from welfare to work under recent reforms. Those individuals may now face new lifetime limits on welfare and find themselves in a particularly porous safety net, Lane said.
"In a short period of time we may see levels of desperation that we have not seen in a long time," he said.
When people get desperate — particularly young, low-income people — they are more likely to turn to drugs, alcohol and crime, some experts say. "It may give rise to a growth and demand for drugs as self-medication for the stress of unemployment," Blumstein said. "All of the horrors that follow from illegal drug markets can follow."
Crime Rates Often Unpredictable
Of course, not everyone who gets laid off is likely to turn to crime, experts say. Safety nets such as unemployment payments are usually effective in reducing desperation in hard times, said Robert McCrie a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "People are busy painting their house when they're unemployed," McCrie said. "They don't say 'Hmmm, I've been laid off, I think I'll try robbery next week.'"
Indeed, crime experts are cautious about blaming the recent increase in homicides in some major cities on the economic downturn or any other specific factor.
They need only look to history to see that crime rates are often unpredictable. During the Great Depression, for example, crime went up for two years as poverty and desperation ran rampant among the American people, but then fell through the remainder of that era.
