Highlights
A reader wants to know the percent of offenders employed and in housing before committing their crimes or after prison.
Is there a connection between lack of employment and housing and crime?
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A reader wants to know the percent of offenders employed and in housing before committing their crimes, or after prison. Note that per the Bureau of Justice Statistics the great majority of offenders convicted of a felony do not go to prison, thus the bulk of convicted felons or those convicted of misdemeanors are not fully addressed here.
Most of what’s below involve interviews with prison inmates.
Excessive criminality is well documented after prison with most being rearrested and incarcerated, thus questions as to employment and housing after prison are legitimate.
Per an endless number of advocates, lack of housing and employment before an arrest or after prison leads to crime. Those of us following federal sources for decades challenge those assumptions “somewhat” while acknowledging that there are endless variables to consider.
Per a variety of research from federal sources, most offenders worked and had housing before the arrest that landed them in prison.
The quality and pay and steadiness of their jobs remain issues. Most offenders have histories of mental health and substance abuse issues per the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Considering that most offenders come from single-parent families and most are not married and most are not high school graduates, job statistics are higher than I expected.
Most of the data on offender employment or housing from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is old (however, some have recent publication dates). I remind readers that we often use older federal data because it’s the best available and the data sets are large enough to stand the test of time. There is little variation (with some exceptions) in prisoner or offender statistics over the course of years.
The data from Brookings is for context and is representative of most non-federal literature on offenders and employment.
Brookings
About one-third of all 30-year-old men who aren’t working are either in prison, in jail, or are unemployed ex-prisoners. Almost half of the ex-prisoners have no reported earnings in the first several years after leaving prison; among those who do find work, half earn less than $10,090 a year or less than a full-time job at minimum wage.
Federal Prisoners and Employment After Release
More than two-thirds (67%) of the study population released from federal prison in 2010 obtained formal employment at any point during the 16 quarters following release.
However, the total study population’s employment did not exceed 40% in any of the individual 16 quarters after release.
The highest percentage of persons in the study population who were employed occurred in the first full quarter after prison release for whites (46%) and American Indians and Alaska Natives (37%), in quarter 2 for blacks (37%) and Hispanics (34%), and in quarter 5 for Asians and Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders (38%).
Males who obtained post-prison employment worked for an average of 9.1 quarters during the 16 quarters following release, while females worked an average of 10.2 quarters.
Housing Before Conviction
In 2016, prisoners in the United States most commonly reported living in a house or an apartment (94%) during the 30 days prior to the arrest for the offense for which they were incarcerated.
About 6% of all prisoners were living in a rooming house, hotel, or motel, and 6% were homeless at some point during those 30 days. About 14% of all prisoners reported that they were homeless at some point during the year before the arrest.
Employment Before Arrest
60% had been working full time. Among the 30% who had no job, or part-time, half were not looking for work. Among inmates admitted to prison, one-fifth had no income in the 12 months prior to arrest.
Education-Employment and Correctional Populations
Approximately 38% of inmates who completed 11 years or less of school were not working before entry to prison.
Unemployment was lower for those with a GED (32%), a high school diploma (25%), or education beyond high school (21%).
About 20% without a high school diploma, 19% with a GED, 14% with a high school diploma, and 13% with training beyond high school were not looking for work.
Official labor statistics exclude persons not looking for work. Using that definition, the unemployment rate for state prison inmates at admission was 22% for those with less than a high school diploma, 15% for those with a high school diploma/GED, and 9% with education beyond high school.
Of all inmates, 17% were unemployed at admission. From 1990 to 1997 when 9 in 10 inmates entered prison, national unemployment ranged from 7.5% in 1992 to 4.9% in 1997. In 1997 unemployment in the general population was 8.1% for those 25 or older without a high school diploma/GED, 4.3% for high school graduates, and 2.6% for those educated beyond high school.
Better educated inmates were more likely to receive wage income. While 57% of those with less than a high school education received wages, 76% with a postsecondary education had wage income. Those without a high school diploma/GED were more likely than those with training after high school to have income from family or friends (20% versus 12%), or from welfare (11% versus 8%).
A seventh of those with some postsecondary training and almost a third without a high school diploma had lived with persons who received government assistance.
Employment And Mental Health
Low rates of employment, high rates of illegal income among inmates who had mental problems. An estimated 70% of State prisoners who had a mental health problem, compared to 76% of those without, said they were employed in the month before their arrest.
Among Federal prisoners, 68% of those who had a mental health problem were employed, compared to 76% of those who did not have a mental problem. Among jail inmates, 69% of those who had a mental health problem reported that they were employed, while 76% of those without were employed in the month before their arrest.
Conclusions
I’m not sure there are reliable conclusions beyond the observation that most offenders find work and that most have housing. However, it’s obvious that the quality of those variables remain unanswered questions.
Considering that most prison inmates (and many offenders not in prison) have histories of mental health and substance abuse plus poor educations and come from financially disadvantaged backgrounds correlated with child abuse and neglect, problems with housing and employment are issues of concern but do not necessarily lead to criminality.
Correlations are not causations. There are millions of people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who do not commit an abundance of crimes. In Appalachia, economic disadvantages and substance abuse exist but problems with stranger to stranger violence and homicides and robberies are much lower than in urban areas.
The state of the economy will always be a factor. There are current reports that employers are having a hard time finding employees which should make it much easier for former offenders to find employment. But with the cost of rents and housing rising, even employed offenders will find it challenging to find legal residences.
If you are aware of non-advocacy sources on these topics, please send links.
See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.
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