Links between Employment and Crime: A Qualitative Study of Rikers Island Releasees

Abstract

This paper examines relationships between employment and crime experiences of sixty-one adult, male misdemeanants interviewed shortly before and after their release from New York City's Rikers Island correctional facility. For many misdemeanants, low-level employment and crime were not mutually exclusive. Some alternated between periods of employment and periods of crime. Others used income from crime as a supplement to income from employment. Still others used income from employment as an economic stake for drug sales or other illegitimate econormc activity. The overwhelming majority of respondents were not employed at the time of the arrest that led to their current incarceration. Various reported combinations of employment and crime involvement, however, were far more complex than the simple correspondence between unemployment and crime that had initially been anticipated.