How and Why Does Work Matter? Employment Conditions, Routine Activities, and Crime Among Adult Male Offenders*

Abstract

An inverse relationship between employment and crime is well established, although the mechanisms that account for the correlation remain poorly understood. In the current study, we investigate the role of work quality, measured objectively (hours, income) as well as subjectively (commitment). A routine activities perspective is proposed for the work–crime relationship, and it inspires hypotheses about the way that work reduces crime indirectly, in part, through unstructured leisure and substance‐using behaviors that tend to carry situational inducements to offend. The results derive from within‐person analyses of monthly data provided by adult male offenders recently admitted to state prison in the Second Nebraska Inmate Study (N = 717; NT = 21,965). The findings indicate that employment significantly reduces self‐report crime but only when employed men report strong commitment to their jobs, whereas other work characteristics are unrelated to crime. This indicates that, among serious criminally involved men, the subjective experience of work takes priority over its objective characteristics. The results also indicate that routine activities only partly mediate the relationship among work, job commitment, and crime, whereas the majority of the work–crime relationship remains unmediated.

Post-prison Employment Quality and Future Criminal Justice Contact

“…For example, Jeff Grogger (1998) finds that wages are negatively associated with criminal activity among young adults, whereas Tim Wadsworth (2006) finds that subjective measures of job quality are more important than objective measures in predicting self-reported crime. Other work examines a population of those who have just been admitted to prison and considers how job quality covaries with self-reported criminal activity in the time before prison admittance (Apel and Horney 2017).…”

From Prison to Work: Job Patterns for Women in Chile

“…Moreover, the relationship between offending and employment might differ by the type of job (Crutchfield and Pitchford 1997). As Crutchfield and Pitchford argue, less stable and poorly paid jobs do not offer the commitment and bonds to society associated with better long-term outcomes, such as desistance from crime (Laub and Sampson 2003;Apel and Horney 2017). Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Crutchfield and Pitchford (1997) explore the relationship between job and offending.…”

“…Employment is considered a key turning point in the process of desistance from crime. Employment decreases the chances of re-offending by providing access to legal income (Visher and Travis 2003;Uggen 2000;Sampson and Laub 1993), reducing the time available for unstructured activities related to crime (Apel and Horney 2017), and exposing individuals to conventional others (Warr 2002). These crime-reduction benefits are especially salient when people access quality jobs that generates a higher level of commitment and stability over time (Sampson and Laub 1993;Crutchfield and Pitchford 1997;Loughran, Nagin, and Nguyen 2017).…”

Providing After Prison: Nonresident Fathers’ Formal and Informal Contributions to Children

“…Because many men who have been incarcerated are fathers (Glaze and Maruschak 2010), criminal justice contact also has serious consequences for their ability to contribute to their children's household economy by hindering accumulation of economic, human, and social capital. Policies that make it more difficult for employers to screen out individuals with criminal records may mitigate these problems and make it easier for former ofenders to access stable employment which, in turn, is associated with greater financial support of children and desistance from crime (Apel and Horney 2017;Denver, Siwach, and Buschway 2017). It is less clear, however, whether these policies operate as expected for fathers with histories of incarceration.…”