The government’s flagship Universal Credit benefits system has driven an increase in the crime rate across Britain, a new study has found.
Researchers at University College London studying the roll-out of the new system found there was “salient and plausible evidence linking UC to an increase in recorded crime”.
The peer-reviewed findings, published in the British Journal of Criminology, are the latest piece of evidence adding to a growing body of work suggesting less generous social security systems drive increases in lawbreaking.
The study’s base model suggested UC – which puts more restrictive conditions on claimants – “led to a 6.5 per cent increase in crime during the five-year period we look at, 2013-2018”.
Crime has soared up the political agenda in recent years, and in 2019 overtook health as the second most important issue for voters after Brexit, according to pollsters YouGov. While the situation has varied, especially during the pandemic, the issue has remained close to the top of priorities since.
The researchers were able to track UC’s relationship with increased reported crime because it was rolled out in different areas of the country at different times, effectively at random.
Their study controlled for other factors linked with increases in the crime rate, such as cuts in the number of police officers, cuts to local services, and improvements or deteriorations in the economic situation.
It concluded: “While it is impossible to comprehensively prove causation from a single, observational study, our results provide salient and plausible evidence linking UC to an increase in recorded crime.
“Not only does the crime rate increase as the number of claimants rises, but the introduction of UC to each area also coincides with a shift in the long run trend in crime.”
Dr Matteo Tiratelli, the lead author of the UCL study, told The Independent: “You can see it: when particular places institute Universal Credit, the change happens afterwards, and the length of time that different places have been under the Universal Credit system, those places have seen higher crime rates than others.”
He added that there was “a growing evidence base that says restrictive social security systems, in general, do lead to higher crime rates”.
The link between UC and crime was so pronounced, Dr Tiratelli said, that there were “clear” policy implications for how to address the crime rate.
“One of the things that I find interesting about it is if you look at the scale of the effects not just Universal Credit, but also other changes around the world to social security, the effects on crime are much bigger than the effects of policing initiatives that we tend to turn to when we want to reduce crime,” he said.
“So if we look at the impact of rolling out new ways of doing policing, or increasing stop and search or increasing funding to the police etc, the kinds of effects we’re seeing from social policy more generally are at least as big as those from crime-focused police initiatives. I think the policy implications of that are quite clear.”
He said that while types of crime driven were often property-related – suggesting people might be trying to supplement their incomes – that this was not always the case.
“The effects seem to be quite broad: it’s not just about survival crime where people are pushed to breaking point because of poverty and they resort to property crime to supplement their income, it doesn’t seem to be just that that’s happening: it also seems to be the strain, stress in general this big restriction on how generous the social security system is has led to people becoming stressed in all different areas of their life,” he said, adding that much increase was “to do with a much broader stress and strain, disruption in relationships and family units that are caused by a reduction in generosity of our social security system”. Previous research has suggested a link between UC and an increase in domestic violence.
The findings tally with other evidence from around the world, including in the US and Europe, that less generous social social security systems tend to push up the crime mate.
Another paper published by researchers at the University of Sussex in July 2020 also found a similar link.
Economist Rocco d’Este found UC “had caused around 45,000 burglaries” and said evidence suggested that “crimogenic effects” were “expected to grow considerably by the time UC is fully rolled out” to 6.5 million further people.
