| Abstract [eng] |
Unemployment as Property Crime Determining Factor The link between unemployment and crime for many years has been the subject of the study of criminology. The researchers sought to understand the correlation between unemployment and crime, investigating individual personality and development of unemployed individuals, analysed factors influencing crime, which have the greatest influence on criminal behaviour, actions and motives. The objective of this thesis is to determine factors influencing property crime and investigate relationship between unemployment and property crime. To achieve this objective the following steps were taken: review the level of unemployment and its structure and the property crime changes in 2006 - 2010, analyse the scientific literature to find out the unemployment effect on human behaviour, review the criminological theories explaining the causes of crime, during empirical study find out what factors have the greatest impact on property crime and assess the relationship between property crime and unemployment. For the empirical part of this study a questionnaire survey of convicts was used (quantitative analysis), also semi-structured interviews with experts (qualitative analysis) and statistical analysis unemployment and property crime in Lithuania. Findings of this study suggest that unemployment and property crime are related, but the link between these two variables is not very strong. It was also found that propensity to commit property crime is as well affected by other variables such as living environment of individuals, family, friends and personal values. |
