Socioeconomic Differences in Crime and Victimization : A Register-Based Study
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The association between socioeconomic status (SES) and crime is one of the central themes in criminology. While empirical studies on this issue have given mixed results, strong belief in an inverse association between SES and crime underlies Finnish criminal policy, where social policy is seen as an integral part of crime prevention. However, no proper population-based analysis of socioeconomic differences in crime in Finland is available. Using a register-based sample of the general population, the current study focused on socioeconomic differences in crime and violent victimization among young adults aged 19-30. The main result of Substudy I was that the bivariate associations between the four measures of SES education, income, occupation-based social class, and unemployment history and violent crime, property crime and driving while intoxicated (DWI) are strong, education being the strongest predictor. Using a more advanced within-individual longitudinal design to account for selection processes, Substudy II focused on the temporal association between unemployment and crime. In this design, violent crime and DWI were no longer associated with unemployment, meaning that the crime rates of the same individuals did no vary by current unemployment status. Property crime rate, however, was higher during periods of unemployment. Substudies III and IV focused on violent offending and victimization. Examining police-reported male violence, Substudy III showed that low SES and prior criminality were stronger predictors of violence in private places, against both men and women, than violence in public places. Men with low SES were also more likely to be suspected of intimate partner violence. Substudy IV compared socioeconomic differences in violent victimization in register-based data and survey data, finding that socioeconomic differences in both datasets were highly sensitive to the seriousness of the violence measured: the more serious the measured violence, the greater the differences were. In sum, the results show that crime committed by young adults in Finland is heavily concentrated in the lower social strata, with victims of serious violence often in similarly poor positions. While the existence of an inverse SES-crime association is not surprising, the scale of these differences is: the most obvious methodological reason to this is the high-quality register data that actually captures people from all strata. However, it is yet unclear how much different selection mechanisms contribute to these associations. In order to find ways to reduce social exclusion and crime, earlier processes related to both individual traits and difficult environments that push individuals to paths of cumulative disadvantage need to be better understood. The effects of different social policy reforms on crime should also be analyzed.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Mikko Aaltonen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W593886318