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29 Aust. & N.Z. J. Criminology 1 (1996)

handle is hein.journals/anzjc29 and id is 1 raw text is: Unemployment, the Underclass and Crime in Australia: A Critique* Rob Wattst Introduction The relationship between criminality and economic conditions has preoccupied criminologists and public officials for at least the past century (Chappell cited in Weatherburn 1992a:1). The persistence of long-term unemployment into the 1990s has generated considerable scholarly research, media commentary and widespread expressions of popular anxiety about the links between crime and unemployment. Indeed as Weatherbum notes, 'The existence of such a link seems to many media commentators to be so obvious a fact as to be unworthy of scientific investigation' (Weatherburn 1992a: 1). It is not only among the media that this link has assumed a taken-for-granted status. Senior police officials have argued that 'continued high unemployment would create an underclass of young people who might turn against society' (Age, 19 June 1992, p 3). Even criminologists are not averse to the argument. Braithwaite and Chappell, prior to the release of the 1994 White Paper on Employment (Working Nation), warned that Australia's record levels of unemployment would inflate the cost of crime by leading to the establishment of an 'underclass', and called on the Keating government to prevent full-scale social disintegration by addressing the challenge of 'an emergent underclass' (Braithwaite and Chappell 1994, see also Wilson 1988:2, Lincoln and Wilson 1994). Government reports likewise casually refer to the link between unemployment and crime (EPAC 1992:180). This parallels claims about the vast array of evil consequences attendant on unemployment, including soaring rates of crime (Junankar and Kapuscinski 1992). The pain for most of unemployment is unjustifiable even by neo-classical economic arguments about the need for pain before the gain. Few should dispute the moral arguments in favour of restoring a sustainable version of full employment. Yet these arguments need to be distinguished from the (re)'discovery' of an 'underclass', and from claims about unemployment and rising crime rates that have become part of an arsenal of arguments used to advocate restoration of 'traditional' social-liberal policies to secure social integration, social participation and effective family life (Wilson 1987; Braithwaite 1989; Pixley 1993; Cappo and Cass 1994). For many on the left the assumption of a causal link between crime and unemployment has become some well-padded mental furniture into which they can sink without too much effort. Whether it advances a left project that can work in the changed social context of the late twentieth century is another question. * Received: August 28 1994; accepted in revised form: February 9 1995. t Principal Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, PO Box 179, Coburg, Victoria, 3058. 1

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