One thing people can agree on is that the crime rate in America has fallen annually for the past three years. Last year the U.S. had a murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000, a huge drop since the 1991 rate of 9.8. Questions are being raised as to what prompted the drop in murder, thefts and property crimes. Proponents of diverse theories are eager to put forth their reasoning for the decrease, and to take credit for the result. The Week suggested several theories that were posted by Reclaiming Futures on July 16, 2010.
One theory, proposed by historian Randolph Roth ,after studying three hundred years of homicides in the U.S., is that people commit crimes when they have lost faith in the government and feel that their efforts to change their lives for the better are ineffectual. This theory promotes the idea that during the last few years people have more trust in the government and believe that they have the power to make positive changes.
Another theory concludes that the drop in crime rates is due to other cities and states adopting New York City Police Department’s 1990’s prototype for crime reduction. The NYPD is first to claim credit for creating policing strategies that would take criminals, or potential criminals, off the street. The NYPD started arresting people for minor crimes, such as vandalism or defacing property with graffiti. The NYPD also went after the homeless, charging them with loitering or panhandling, a policy that drew much criticism from advocates for the poor.. The reasoning behind arresting petty criminals was that communities would realize that no criminal act would be tolerated, and the arrests for seemingly petty crimes would lead to arrests for more serious crimes.
The NYPD also used mapping to track crimes and criminals. Discovering that many serious crimes were perpetrated by a relatively small amount of serial criminals, the NYPD focused on these robbers, rapists and other violent repeat offenders and brought them to justice. An intense effort to remove illegal guns off the street was also implemented by the NYPD.
Publicity on New York’s successful methods of crime reduction reached across the U.S. and other police departments adopted the NYPD approach, resulting in wide spread crime reduction. Although NY can justifiably take credit for creating a successful crime reduction technique, other cities that did not follow NY’s model have also succeeded in reducing crime, so the NYPD’s method is only one theory of why the crime rate dropped.
Tough on crime legislation is a theory that was discredited. Locking up vast amounts of people was supposed to reduce the crime rate, but last year the incarceration rate in the U.S. dropped, as did the crime rate. The states that increased their prison populations actually saw an increase in crime, according to The Week.
Other theories were developed in areas outside of law enforcement. The idea that children exposed to lead in the 70’s grew up to commit crimes is one such theory. Exposure to lead can cause aggressiveness and lack of impulse control and The Week referred to an unnamed study that followed the exposure of children to lead for 20 years, during which time two of the worst spikes in crimes occurred.
A more controversial theory was published in 2005 in the book Freakonomics. Co-author Steven Levitt asserts that legalized abortion is the reason crime rates have been lowered. Levitt professes that since 1973 women were given the opportunity to undergo an abortion rather than give birth to an unwanted baby who would be the product of an unstable childhood. By having an abortion, Levitt implied, a potential criminal would be eliminated. Levitt’s theory raises howls of protest to this day.
An intriguing new theory is that less crimes are committed because of the poor economic climate the US is experiencing. While some theorists believe that an economic downfall might raise the crime level, others believe the opposite. The reasoning behind the bad economy-low crime rate theory is that with the employment rate so high, many people are now at home during the day, so burglars are leery about breaking into houses. The theory further suggests that muggers can no longer expect to relieve a person of a large amount of money, so they are mugging less often. This theory will be put to the test if and when the U.S. economy takes an upturn.
Even with the drop in the crime rate, the U.S. still has the highest rate of violence of all the developed countries in the world. With a prison population of 2.3 million, which is four times the world average, the U.S. continues to look for ways to reduce its prison population, and to keep lowering the crime rate.
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