Premium
Some Determinants of Property Crime: Economic Factors Influence Criminal Behavior But Cannot Completely Explain the Syndrome
Author(s) -
Howsen Roy M.,
Jarrell Stephen B.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.1987.tb01992.x
Subject(s) - property crime , apprehension , demographic economics , economics , poverty , empirical research , affect (linguistics) , unemployment , property (philosophy) , crime rate , urbanization , criminology , violent crime , sociology , economic growth , psychology , mathematics , philosophy , statistics , communication , epistemology , cognitive psychology
A bstract . An empirical analysis of the property crimes, robbery, burglary and larceny , is presented for all 120 counties in Kentucky. While this analysis is based on an economic model of crime, certain sociological and legal variables are included as well in the system of equations. Overall, the empirical results support prior studies’findings with the exception that a quadratic relationship is found to exist between urbanization and each of the property crimes. Furthermore, neither the economic nor the non economic influences measured appear more important for affecting crime rates. Specifically, results indicate that the level of poverty , the degree of tourism , the presence of police , the unemployment rate and the apprehension rate all affect property crimes. In contrast, the length of sentence , the degree of industrialization , the level of public assistance payments and the proportion of youth in the county have no affect on property crime rates in these areas.