CAIRO - The correlation between unemployment and violence has been substantiated in a study recently prepared by the National Centre for Social and criminal Research,, where jobless young people accounted for 29.6 per cent of the total number of youth accused of criminal violence. According to the study, a 2.1 per cent of unemployment rate was traced back to the l960s, from where it rose until it has reached more than l0 per cent among young people of whom 98.8 per cent fall within the age groups of l5 to 35. Economic policies applied since the l970s, starting with what was termed at the time as the ‘open-door' policy up to free market mechanism of the 21 century, have been blamed by experts for the increased unemployment rate. Unemployment today is one of the challenges facing not only the Ganzouri government but also future ones, especially with the economic slowdown in the wake of the January revolution. Thousands of laid-off workers in addition to others returning from Libya have joined a long queue of university and school graduates trying to find a place in the local job market. The study showed that youth criminal tendencies are products of stress and anxiety over the future's uncertainties of the future augmented by frustrated professional ambitions. According to the study's findings, coming from a high social background does not make this sector of young people immune against deviation although the kind of crimes committed by members of different social classes tend to differ in nature. Statistical analysis has revealed that unemployed members of middle and high classes often resort to drug and alcohol addiction, gambling and prostitution rather than crimes of murder and assault. The criminology study defined four categories of crimes as representative of violence committed by the unemployed: murder, brutal beating leading to death, beating causing any kind of disability and finally robbery in which force is used. The study pinpointed an alarming fact related to stealing and lack of employment, as 35 per cent of young people involved in crimes proved to be unemployed, establishing a direct relation between poverty and deprivation on one hand and stealing under the threat of violence on the other. While, unmarried criminals tended to be relatively high in number compared to married ones, crimes in urban communities register a higher curve than in rural areas where the nature of the prevailing social relationships creates a cohesive fabric, as the study indicated.
