Unemployment, Workfare and Crime
Civitas, 11 January 2011
In recent weeks, we have concentrated on the efficacy of criminal justice interventions, such as policing and robust sentencing, in reducing crime. There are, however, broader social interventions that can also play an important role. For example, a recent discussion paper suggests that workfare programmes have been a significant contributor to tackling crime in Denmark. These are programmes that introduce a requirement to work, or at least participate in occupational training, in order to receive welfare benefits.
Unemployment has long been considered a root cause of crime. This has some empirical backing. It is certainly true that areas of high unemployment tend to be associated with higher levels of property crime. On the other hand, some recent studies have somewhat downplayed the role of unemployment in determining crime rates compared with, for example, the efficacy of local police.
Researchers have suggested that this might be down to increases in unemployment having a number of contrasting effects that act partly to cancel each other out. For example, if there are fewer jobs available in a particular district, then some individuals might be more tempted to pursue criminal activities rather than gainful employment. At the same time, if more individuals are unemployed, that also means that more homes and neighbourhoods are occupied for more hours of the day, making crimes such as burglary and car theft more risky to commit.
Another factor is that nominal unemployment figures combine many different sorts of individual situations, from those made redundant during a recession or a downturn in one sector, to the long-term unemployed, or even generationally unemployed in the case of families with a history of worklessness. It is relatively unlikely that someone will move immediately from redundancy to crime. By contrast, those with limited past participation in the labour market and few prospects for future employment, might be more easily tempted into starting or continuing a criminal career.
As a result, it is likely that the effect of increases in unemployment on the crime rate is going to depend significantly on the kind of unemployment being created. It also means that programmes that find jobs for people who already have a history of work might turn out to be the most successful at increasing employment, but may miss out on some of the wider benefits of tackling more entrenched worklessness.
This is where the Danish experience, particularly in the town of Farum is quite indicative. Although Denmark has since introduced workfare programmes nationally, Farum’s was established earlier and more radically, introducing a 100% work requirement for all unemployed individuals as soon as they applied for welfare benefits. Unemployed individuals were either assigned a reduced wage position at a private company or were directly employed by the municipality. The results of this experiment are promising, at least according to Peter Fallesen, et al.:
By comparing the changes in crime rates among the welfare recipients in Farum before and after 1987 with that of the rest of Denmark, we identify the effect of workfare on the crime rate. We find the crime reduction effect to be both statistically and economically significant. We also find that the effect comes both from the increased employment and from a decrease in criminal activities by individuals that still remain unemployed and on welfare.
In other words, it was not just those that went into full employment that became less likely to be commit crime subsequently. Even those who remained on the workfare programme (potentially indefinitely) became less likely to engage in criminal activity.
Strangely enough, despite the positive evidence, suggesting workfare policies is almost guaranteed to provoke paroxysms of disgust amongst sections of the left who denounce it as if it represented a return to indentured servitude. This is somewhat ironic since Denmark, in most respects, represents a bastion of successful social democracy. Fortunately, this knee-jerk response to requiring some contribution from welfare recipients is not the only reaction. Stuart White, for example, sees some workfare requirements as consistent with the obligations that a welfare state may require of those citizens that benefit from it. What the study of Denmark’s programmes suggests is that workfare policies need not be judged purely on the basis of their ability to move individuals into gainful employment, nor should they necessary concentrate on those that can be easily employed. They should be evaluated in terms of the wider social benefits which might be better realised by concentrating on the long-term unemployed. Considering the immense costs of crime, both in terms of the damage it does to communities and the expense of administering justice, workfare might turn out to be as valuable at preventing crime as reducing unemployment.
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I’ve been forced to participate in workfare programmes and consider it to be a form slavery – you are treated worse than criminals undertaking community service orders.