Youth Unemployment and Crime in Australia :: essays research papers fc

The causes and consequences of young unemployment in Australia has been of particular concern within both government and private sectors for many years. According to the Australian vanity of Statistics (ABS), 10.9% of the total 15-24 age population was unemployed in September, 1995. This figure climbed to 15.3% in September, 2003. This evidence gives cause to the growing concern surrounding the increase in youth unemployment. For sizeable numbers of youth, its not going to get any easier to find work as they move into their twenties or complete education. Opinions such as those found in the Smith Family Youth Unemployment Report (2003) hypothesise that juvenile crime is directly connected to the high rates of youth unemployment in Australia. In this essay, I would firstly like to ask exactly what is known about both the rates of juvenile crime and youth unemployment in Australia, and is there a direct link between the two? The suggested connection between a soaring crime rate and youth unemployment influences the way in which our society is governed and developed, devising it imperative that we endeavor to try and understand and/or eliminate some of these suggestions. I depart begin my essay by defining what I conceive by youth unemployment and juvenile crime, and explore the possible challenges upon measuring both of these things. Comparing statistics gathered from both the ABS and other government recognized reports on unemployment, and breeding from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), I will attempt to weigh up the claim that the crime rate has risen in unison with the unemployment rate. I will also assess claims made by Weatherburn (2001) that youth unemployment causes crime, sifting through the truths and fallacies.Opinions such as those found in the Smith Family Youth Unemployment Report (2003) which think over that juvenile crime is directly connected to the high rates of youth unemployment in Australia cannot be neither accepted nor c ritiqued until there is a clear reason of what the terms Youth Unemployment and Juvenile Crime mean in the context of this essay. In this essay youth unemployment is generally taken to include the entire 15-24 age cohort not just 15-19 year old teenagers who are no longer at school or university and who are without a job. I open chosen to include 20-24 year olds under the banner of Youth, as it gives a fairer picture of the performance of all young people in the prod market and takes into account the pattern of employment both during and after leaving school or university.