Los Angeles Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

When the economy goes down, crime rates go up. That's the general consensus, but reality is more complicated, according to law enforcement officers, economists and criminologists. A poor economy may cause Los Angeles crime rates to ratchet up a notch or two in some categories, but a wholesale crime surge is seen as unlikely.

"Everybody thinks it's just a law of nature, but that's just not true. There are a lot of things more powerful than the economy operating all the time," David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention at the John Jay College of Criminal Studies in New York, recently told Columbus Dispatch reporter Elizabeth Gibson.

National news reports of distraught, destitute workers killing themselves and the families they can not longer support may have skewed public perception. Crimes of such horrific magnitude, while tragic, are rare. Morals, ethics and social structure continue to provide most people with a strong incentive against crime. When crime rates go up in a down economy, University of Missouri-St. Louis sociologist Richard Rosenfeld said it doesn't mean that law-abiding citizens are turning to crime, rather it indicates that experienced criminals have found a lucrative market for cheap, stolen goods.

While a shrinking economy and a bone-dry job markert are eventually expected to have an impact on crime rates, it's petty crime -- small-time thefts, burglary and shoplifting -- that is expected to increase, not major felonies, experts say. In a study of crime data from 1979 to 1997, Ohio State University associate professior of economics Bruce Weinberg found that two situations most affect crime rates:

1. Crime goes up when the economy is good because more people have expensive items to steal.


2. Crime goes up when unemployment goes up among poorly educated men, those with no more than a high school education.

Weinberg found that the greatest increases in crime occur when those two factors exist in close proximity; that is, when there is wealth near unemployment. According to Weinberg, crime can be expected to increase in wealthy pockets of Los Angeles that are surrounded by lower-income areas that historically bear the initial brunt of unemployment when the economy turns sour.

A scan of community police logs already indicates a small increase in misdemeanor thefts of convenience: shoplighting and thefts from cars, open garages and unlocked homes. But while there are pockets of crime; overall, state-wide crime rates have remained about the same. "Criminals are criminals," said one burglary unit officer, noting that the unit's suspect pool remains the same in good and bad economic times.