Crime Down?
When unemployment goes up, crime goes up, right? That's the common understanding. But it's not happening this time around. “As the national unemployment rate doubled from around 5 percent to nearly 10 percent, the property-crime rate, far from spiking, fell significantly. For 2009, the FBI reported an 8 percent drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17 percent reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year. Big-city reports show the same thing. Between 2008 and 2010, New York City experienced a 4 percent decline in the robbery rate and a 10 percent fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines. The FBI's latest numbers, for 2010, show that the national crime rate fell again.
This could be occurring for a couple of reasons. For starters, the common understanding might be wrong. "The notion that unemployment causes crime runs into some obvious difficulties. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. Further, during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25 percent, the crime rate in many cities went down.”
But even if the common understanding is correct, there might be a common sense reason that crime isn't going up: We're keeping a helluva lot of violent criminals incarcerated. "One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the effect, but I think that William Spelman and Steven Levitt have it right in believing that greater incarceration can explain one-quarter or more of the crime decline."
And then there's this fascinating potential explanation:
There may also be a medical reason for the crime decline. For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent, and delinquent. In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency required oil companies to stop putting lead in gasoline. At the same time, lead in paint was banned for any new home (though old buildings still have lead paint, which children can absorb). Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans' blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2000 study by economist Rick Nevin suggested that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the nineties.
Link.
It's a fascinating topic. Unfortunately, I suspect it'll all become moot if people run out of food. It's one thing to lose your summer vacation. It's another to lose basic necessities.
Did that article say crime is down? In one of the bloodiest weekends in recent city history, 31 people were brutally shot in roughly 48 hours this weekend -- including three kids at a house party-turned-shooting gallery in The Bronx. Link. * * * * * * * Just another day in the Big City: A decomposed body was found stuffed inside a suitcase on a Bronx street Sunday, sources said. Link. * * * * * * * Anarchists, Anarcho-capitalists, libertarians. Defenders of freedom outside today's mainstream take many different forms. This weekend, I learned of a new one: Anarcho-syndicalism. It sounds pretty scary. * * * * * * * Big first days today: Alex starts at the University of Michigan, Jack starts high school, Abbie begins her senior year at high school, and Michael starts his teenage years (happy birthday, Michael).
