KTLA News: "Congressional subcommittee hearing on correlation between unemployment and crime" (1977)

Chairman Conor says there's a positive correlation. The subcommittee use figures from the FBI's uniform crime reports over the last 10 years. They show, among other things, the number of murders, robberies, assaults, and car thefts are up according to the rate of unemployment. Figures in the Los Angeles, Long Beach area indicate the crime increase parallels the growth in unemployment. Police Chief Ed Davis, who was the first witness before the committee this morning, disagreed with the findings, charging the statistics being used were misleading and the attempt to connect crime and unemployment is unacceptable. He said the crime rate was increasing in the wealthier West San Frernando Valley area and decreasing in the Watts area. If the crime hypothesis were true, Davis said, it would mean that wealth causes goodness, which is far from the case. If I believe that hypothesis, I would stop doing all the things we do to catch crooks and to get them isolated from society, and I'd stop doing all the things to get neighbors together to protect one another. And I'd say we just have to get something done about unemployment, and we have to get a a redistribution of the wealth. In fact, because what employment does, it produces money. So really, you're talking about, you can't separate, >> think the families need the money. >> Absolutely. >> Congressman Augustus Hawkins of Watts said, "One of the main problems facing us today is unemployment and ways must be found to get people working again. >> They are still individuals. They are still human beings here in Watts who are looking for jobs and we have to deal with them. and to say that these individuals listening to the president talk about doing something about unemployment talking about uh full employment uh talking about what we're going to do for the young people and knowing that they can't get a job obviously it seems to me adds to a criminal aggression on the part of that individuals on the part of that individual I would react likewise if I heard people over uh TV every every week or so telling me about uh we have recovery or how fine things are, what we're going to do for them. Uh and yet we end up ignoring the problem. The reappearing underlying theme throughout the subcommittee hearings today, how to get more people more jobs, how to get them out of the unemployment lines into regular full-time jobs. Subcommittee hearings were held in Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. This is Stan Chambers, Channel 5 Newsatch, reporting. period. And what we found was something rather disturbing the extreme. Um, and I I would further like to ask uh Mr. Matthew Jerger, which we found the same thing. I I'd like to yield to Mr. Joerger for just a moment. >> Something out about the presentation of the data when I have a chance. We found out >> the top of the waves of the ocean and you have 3,400 here, 2,700 here. You have to go down to zero this sort. Okay. I was expecting for the city of Los [Music] Mr. chairman here over at TUA high correlations between everybody I'd like to point >> chairman that for the for the homicide against correlations zero is below the bottom of the floor the impression given is absolutely false the only way to present this kind of data is on a semi-logarithmic scale where you can deal with small numbers and numbers of tremendously higher volume because visually this kind of a thing has done in all of his charts uh give a an incredibly biased visual opinion and we can only ask you >> Chief Davis do you have a statistician or anyone else in the Los Angeles area >> no relationship see and I couldn't >> wait a minute is there there is there is not a correlation well then fault to the integrity of even the nuclear family not working >> could be in a much different circumstance from a person who may be selfemployed or temporarily employed maybe living in poverty but but somehow may be making it uh with with certain kinds of help from other government agencies. Uh let me ask you do you remember as far back as the late60s >> because we have heard these kinds of explanations and and you see for me to believe that see I've reduced crime uh appreciably in this area >> well but crime is going up 50% in the nation you see and as the employer of last resort. If we're going to maintain our status in the world and and we're the preservers of freedom in the whole world, we have to first do everything we can to try to make sure that and and maybe not with the method, but maybe with the spirit of the Japanese government that private employment takes up unemployment there. Now, I'm not advocating the Japanese system, but you're familiar with it, I'm sure. I think that's a healthier system than the government itself becoming the employer of last resort. >> Well, that's not what the bill starts off to do at all. As a matter of fact, it emphasis is on the private sector being utilized to create as many jobs as it possibly can. >> I I agree with that. >> All right. Well, maybe we ought to familiarize you with the bill and provide you with a copy because it it might contain much more uh that would lend you and uh the conclusions that they have reached through a great number of studies I think uh document much better than I could this morning that correlation the u I've had the opportunity just in the past week to talk to Dr. Brena, I think he was a witness before this committee and he assures me that since his publication and since his testimony before the subcommittee, he has uh found even more overwhelming documentation and he intends to proceed further into that subject matter and I think that's most helpful before the subcommittee in addition to attempting to do that is you you with your committee and attempting to misrepresent what I'm doing with my committee. and what Senator Humphrey is doing over on the Senate side, they I think are attempting to do something which is actually encouraging crime for which they want to blame the victims rather than their own short-sighted policies. And if you admit that there is a correlation, then you at once get down to who is responsible for these short-sighted policies and therefore the individuals who want to keep people unemployed and there are such individuals or who want to say that high wages the cause of inflation and therefore we should ignore all of these things are the individuals who don't want to bear the responsibility for Having promoted the very policies that lead to crime and the other social ills of our day and what they have done they have therefore understated the magnitude of the problem. Now the charts which you showed would be even more significant would show a much closer correlation if we really disclose the extent of unemployment. Now the rate of unemployment has been so undisclosed the magnitude of it that it is ignored in many instances and rather than dealing with an unemployment rate today of something slightly less than 7% or one which has persisted at the 7% level for almost a year. We would be dealing with an unemployment rate of about 15% if the true facts were disclosed. And these these charts would be much closer to showing a much closer correlation if we had that hidden data actually before us. Now, it so happens that the Department of Labor does disclose the data, but it discloses the data in a way that is not included in the official unemployment rate. They say that it is uh uh as a have half jobs then we would add that number. We would also add in the neighborhood of 5 million persons who are dis% unemployment rate uh and say that this has no social impact on crime or the other problems within our city I think is is a little discouraging but u as I say I think the documentation says otherwise. uh I would submit uh I don't know whether the committee is familiar with this publication work in America but uh the understating of the problem and the value of work uh to the individual is stated in such a clear-cut way that I think that it is it has presented tremendous support for what you're doing. Now I cite this document because it was made it was a study that was made under the previous administration that is under the Nixon administration and it was released on December 1972 but it was not publicized until after the campaign. It was a report to the then secretary of HEW uh uh Mr. Richardson and it was suppressed because it brought out the fact that uh the unemployment uh at that time was actually uh not disclosed. There were some 7 11 million persons who were not even counted. Now these individuals although they were not counted they were considered unemployed but because of political reasons they were not counted. But these individuals do exist. And the point is whether we count them or not, whether we count every youth in Watts as being unemployed or not, the official count now uh fortunately has been doctorred to the point that it's truer to the point it's now roughly stated to be the official rate 40%, but everybody knows that it's higher than 60. Been Don't get [Music] [Music] [Music] Are you kidding? [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Thank you.