Why did the crime rate in US drop in the early 90’s? Does it have anything to do with the aging of the US population?
Where’s the debate?
Probably. It could also have something to do with welfare reform. Cultural changes. Concealed carry laws. Reductions in poverty. Improved law enforcement.
There are tons of correlations between all these factors. How they come out in the wash will be forever disputed by partisans with agendas.
I had more in that first post. Here’s a brief rewrite of what got cut out:
The elderly are easy targets for crime. They usually won’t put up as much of a fight as a younger person if you attempt to, say, steal their purse. This, along with the growing elderly population, seems to imply that crime would increase due to the higher availability of easy targets.
Crime rates obviously depend on a lot of things, but I feel that one big influence in police presence. In 1993, federal funds were provided to hire 100,000 new police officers around the country. At the same time, police departments in inner-city areas started using new strategies to combat crime. It should be noted that crime has started creeping back up during the past two years, at the same time as states and cities facing budget shortfalls have cut funds for police. Also, police officers in some areas have been assigned to activities relating to the war on terrorism, which means they’re not policing the streets anymore.
And just to stop those who would accuse him of otherwise, Mr2001 isn’t trying to bait people. The author of that study, Steven Levitt, is considered one of the most brilliant minds in economics today. The New York Times Magazine ran an excellent profile on him a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that controversial study quite a bit. He also did a study proving the relatively obvious conclusion that more police officers = less crime.
Another theory, and this applies to more than just the early 90s, is that crime rates, particularly murder rates, have lowered simply because medical technology has allowed us to save more lives. Thanks to some new ambulance equipment, untold numbers of murders have simply become assaults.
That might affect murder rates, but not overall crime rates - it just converts one crime into another.
Another possible factor is the sheer numbers of people that we have in prison. I about 2 million people are in some form of ‘corrections’, that takes out a large number of offenders in the community.
Norah Vincent and David Mortimer argue that the link between reduced crime and legal abortion cannot be used as utilitarian justification for legalized abortion any more than ethnic cleansing can be justified by concerns about hunger, poverty, or a sluggish economy.
Good thing I didn’t try to do that, then. In fact, other than those two biased editorials, I’ve never heard of this link being used to “justify” legal abortion.