This paper will examine the relationship that unemployment benefit expenditure and unemployment rates have on crime rates. The study will focus on Spain, but will include analysis of five other European Union member states in the years 1993 to 2012. In times of unemployment and poor economic health, more individuals choose to perform criminal acts to make ends meet. We will use data from the European Commission and OECD databanks to create a reduced-form OLS model that is controlled for time. We found that this reduced-form is insufficient for analyzing the complex behavioral economics that go into the financial motivations for committing a crime. Our research did present opportunities and guidelines for further research to be done focusing on Spain's metropolitan districts.