The crime rate is falling. Why?
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Gary Jacobsen
Published: March 4, 2008
In November, CNN examined this in detail. They discovered — among other things — that the murder rate in New York may be the lowest in 40 years. In 1990, murders peaked at 2,245. In 2007, however, the number had fallen to 579 — a 74 percent decline. Data on violent crimes in California indicated a similar trend. Assaults and robberies there peaked in 1992, but data for later years show a steady downward slope.
Wherever the researchers looked, the results were the same: fewer violent crimes, fewer arrests, fewer incarcerations. What was happening?
There is an old saying that success has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan. Thus many individuals and groups stepped forward to take credit for the reduction in violent crime. Clinton Democrats, for example, boasted that the favorable economic conditions that existed from 1993 - 2001 drew people away from crime and into the mainstream.
Republicans countered that “zero tolerance” policies of various police departments caused violent crime to go down. They stated, for example, that the get-tough policies of New York’s Republican mayor Rudy Giuliani from 1994 - 2001 had a direct and immediate effect on the crime rate. Politicians in Richmond, Virginia, made similar claims for their police-based anti-crime measures.
Gun control groups also stepped forward seeking credit for reduced crime. They argued that restrictions on concealed weapons and on assault rifles were reducing crime, particularly drive-by shootings that are common in drug wars.
But none of these explanations tells the whole story. They are, at best, anecdotal. They may have had some effect on the crime rate in particular locations and at particular times, but they cannot provide the basis for generalizations about the country as a whole.
By the fall of 2001, an increasing number of criminologists and other academic researchers were publishing monographs and books about the nation’s falling crime rate. One of the most provocative theories was one advanced by University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, who looked carefully at all the variables associated with crime rate statistics, a process known as multivariate analysis. He determined, in essence, that the “pool” of potential criminals — particularly those in their twenties — was becoming smaller.
But now another question arises: Why are there fewer “potential” criminals? Levitt has an answer for that also — the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. Levitt explains it this way: “As far as crime is concerned, it turns out that not all children are born equal. Not even close. Decades of studies have shown that a child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal.” He continues: “Poor, unmarried and teenage mothers for whom illegal abortions had been too expensive or too hard to get were often models of adversity. They were the very women whose children, if born, would have been much more likely than average to become criminals. But because of Roe v. Wade, these children weren’t being born.”
Politicians and other public officials have been quick to distance themselves from Levitt’s theory, perhaps because they are afraid of alienating voters who call themselves pro-lifers. But the perplexing question about the crime rate persists.
What do you think?
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levitt
Gary Jacobsen lives in Woodbridge. Contact him at .
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Posted by ( seb21 ) on March 04, 2008 at 8:18 am
I believe the drastic decline in criminal activity is based on a variety of factors, with the primary reason being the media. The news outlets of this country have mastered the scare tactic, making it a point to popularize stories about heinous crimes in which the criminal has been or soon will be apprehended. They avoid the unsolved cases for the simple fact that if everyone believes they will be inevitably caught for any crime, large or small, then these persons will be less likely to commit it in the first place.
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