TY  - JOUR
AU  - Freeman,Richard B.
TI  - Crime and the Employment of Disadvantaged Youths
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3875
PY  - 1991
Y2  - October 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3875
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3875.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard B. Freeman
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/868-3900
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: freeman@nber.org
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1992-02-01
AB  - This paper examines the magnitude of criminal activity among disadvantaged youths in the 1980s. It shows that a large proportion of youths who dropped out of high school, particularly black school dropouts, developed criminal records in the decade; and that those who were incarcerated in 1980 or earlier were much less likely to hold jobs than other youths over the entire decade. The magnitudes of incarceration, probation, and parole among black dropouts, in particular, suggest that crime has become an intrinsic part of the youth unemployment and poverty problem, rather than deviant behavior on the margin. Limited evidence on the returns to crime suggest that with the decline in earnings and employment for less educated young men, crime offers an increasingly attractive alternative.
ER  -