Abstract
Precarious housing and criminal behaviour are both important elements in processes of marginalization and cumulative disadvantage. It is well known that housing eviction primarily affects the weakest groups in society. In this article we ask if housing eviction has an independent effect on subsequent criminality and if the effect varies across different types of crime (utilitarian, violent and drug crime). Using propensity score matching on administrative register data covering all housing evictions in Sweden 2009, linked with crime registers and registers containing other relevant background information, we find that eviction increases the conviction rates for all analysed crime types, utilitarian crime in particular.
Highlights
Precarious housing and criminal behaviour are both important elements in processes of marginalization and cumulative disadvantage
Does the relationship between eviction and convictions tend to be general across different types of crimes or is it specific only to particular types of crime? The study distinguished between utilitarian crimes, violent crimes and drug offences
The results from the propensity score matching (PSM) analyses suggested that the event of eviction tends to further increase the risk of criminal conviction with respect to all three of the offence types examined in this study, that is, utilitarian crimes, drug offences and violent crimes
Summary
Precarious housing and criminal behaviour are both important elements in processes of marginalization and cumulative disadvantage. We know from studies in these areas of research that resource deficiencies in one social arena increase the risk of resource deficiencies in other arenas, and that prior experiences of disadvantage tend to foster new ones This phenomenon has been described using formulations such as ‘one period of failure breeds another’ or ‘vicious circles’, and the ‘cumulative disadvantage’ concept is intended to capture the very nature of such processes. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the 2010 Eurozone crisis, both the US and Europe experienced a boom in evictions and foreclosures, which in this instance affected poor households and the ‘middle class’ This development has led housing exclusion researchers to, in addition to homelessness, start paying attention to the causes and consequences of housing evictions. This issue can help us to further scrutinize the nature of the relationship between housing precariousness and criminality
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