The Corporate Observer will periodically host blog pieces from a series of guest writers. The first is by Jeffrey Goldberg.
The Intelligent Observer
Jeffrey Goldberg
SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT, FALLING CRIME RATES, GO FIGURE
Social issues—poverty, broken families, unemployment—all retain an important place in any consideration of crime and trending crime rates.
This month the FBI announced that crime rates in the United States fell nearly 5% in 2009, continuing an almost 20 year trend. According to FBI statistics the US murder/manslaughter rate in 2009 was 5 per 100,000 in population as compared with a rate of 9.8 per 100,000 in 1991. In twenty years the rate has been cut nearly in half. This positive trend continues despite soaring unemployment.
Why have US crime rates continued to fall? Politicians are quick to claim credit for themselves. While campaigning for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani told Chris Wallace of Fox News, “I reduced homicides by 67%. I reduced overall crime by 57%.”
Social issues—poverty, broken families, unemployment—all retain an important place in any consideration of crime and trending crime rates. Some theories credit high levels of incarceration for declining crime rates. The US prison population has exploded over the last twenty years – 2.3 million prisoners behind bars, 1 in 18 American men incarcerated or subject to probation or parole. This theory will face an interesting test in coming years as strained state and local budgets lead to reduced funds for prisons and lower levels of incarceration, especially for drug and other non-violent crimes.
Controversial for obvious reasons, legalized abortion is also proposed as a major factor in falling crime rates. A 1972 Rockefeller Commission study, which claimed that “unwanted” children commit more crimes than the population as a whole, is cited as the genesis of the abortion connection theory. A 2001 paper by John Donohue of Yale and Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago studied declining national crime rates in the period from 18 to 24 years following Roe v Wade (18 to 24 year olds being the prime crime committing demographic). Donohue and Levitt also noted the earlier decline in crime rates in Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington, states that had legalized abortion prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe.
An interesting and tragic theory for declining crime rates links lead poisoning to violent crime and credits laws eliminating lead in paint and, more importantly, gasoline to the twenty year fall in crime rates. Lead is a well-known neurotoxin that increases impulsivity and aggression. Economist Rick Nevin and others have studied the correlation between environmental lead levels, lead poisoning in children and violent crime rates. Nevin targeted two periods of notably high levels of lead poisoning in the US—the early years of the twentieth century when the use of lead-based paints was at its highest, and the early 1970’s when the federally mandated phase-out of lead-based gasoline began—and found a decline in violent crimes as lead levels dropped in both periods. Nevin replicated these results linking declining lead poisoning and falling violent crime rates in statistical analyses of nine other countries that acted to reduce environmental lead. These studies suggest that environmental regulators, not tough-talking politicians, may be our most effective crime fighters.
What you think has contributed most to the decline in crime rates in the United States? Is it:
O Incarceration has reached a tipping point where its effects are actually being seen;
O Legalized abortion has minimized “unwanted” children and caused a corresponding drop in crime rate;
O Reduced lead levels in paint and gasoline has lessened instances of lead poisoning, leading to a drop in crime rate; or
O A combination of the above factors (please elaborate as to which you feel were most contributory).
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