Crime and Unemployment

Sociological criminology is undergoing a theoretical transformation that is energized in part by the new ethnographies of poverty and crime. This transformation involves a new appreciation of connections between cultural and structural sources of crime, studied through the life course and across communities. It frees criminology from a restrictive dependence on an aging group of classical theories and ties the study of crime more closely to broader currents in contemporary sociology (327).

In this opening paragraph, Hagan marks the emergence of a new way of investigating the relationships which exist between education, poverty, unemployment, and crime . . . particularly by employing ethnographies to study "crime comparatively in community settings across the time and space of recent American history. [Such ethnographies] reveal the c

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ly now beginning to recognize and comprehend (328). Consequently, the "illegal economic strategies that include the muggings, robberies, and other forms of theft and drug-related crimes common to American city life" are not the kind of intergenerational and cultural preferences previously transmitted, but are, instead, "cultural adaptations to restricted opportunities for the redistribution of wealth" (328). To put it differently, youthful offenders have substituted an investment in crime and delinquency for the required structural and cultural investment necessary for success in normative society. Thus, the short-term economic gains result in a temporary "penetration of their condition" in the lives of these youths: [Unfortunately,] over time, this penetration becomes a limitation, binding them back into [the social] structure as they age out of youth crime and accept . . . low-wage, unstable jobs. . . . Alternately, some will die; others will spend much of their lives in prisons or mental hospitals (Hagan, 328, citing Sullivan, Getting Paid, 250). And compounding this is the pressure on black and Hispanic professionals "not to live in neighborhoods they otherwise wish to assist" (Hagan, 328). The desire is not to c
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Approximate Word count = 4010
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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