Americans, generally speaking, tend to go in for easy
explanations of why crime rates rise and fall. Chief among them is
the Poverty Theory of Crime. This explanation popped up again at a
dinner party the other night. We were discussing the large number
of burglaries in my neighborhood when someone commented that crime
was up because the economy was down.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
I don’t particularly relish setting the record straight,
especially on contentious issues. Here in the Midwest acting the
role of know-it-all is considered bad form. But I couldn’t let the
comment pass without pointing out that the U.S. crime rate has been
going down for years.
This caused more than a few raised eyebrows.
And why shouldn’t it? The conventional wisdom says crime,
especially property crime, should soar during tough economic times.
But last year property crime decreased 2.8 percent. In 2009, at the
peak of the recession, property crime decreased
4.6 percent. Even when the economy was in ruins during the
Great Depression crime remained relatively low. On the other hand,
in the boom times of the 1960s, crime skyrocketed. Like a good deal
of human behavior, the pattern seems counter-intuitive, if not a
complete enigma.
If Einstein had his dream of a unified theory of the
universe, criminologists also have their impossible dream: a
unified theory that explains crime. Thus far, it has proved equally
as elusive.
Conservative criminologists have long embraced the theory
that crime is a purely economic decision. Before crime began to
fall in 1992, a criminal’s odds of being apprehended were perhaps
ten to one. Even if he were arrested, he was unlikely to be
prosecuted or, still less likely, convicted. And if he were to
serve jail time, he would be at large soon enough, only this time
enjoying an extra dose of “street cred.” A life of crime was for
many well worth the risk and investment. Crime paid.
Yet, to buy into this theory, we must accept that
criminals are rational beings who judge the costs-benefits ratio
carefully, instead of irrational, impulsive actors incapable of
forethought or weighing long-term consequences. Some are, some are
not.
Or one might turn to demographic and social factors. Crime
often goes up with the number of young men in a population. The
high-crime Sixties and Seventies occurred during a baby boom. As
these young men “aged out” in the Eighties, homicide rates fell for
the first time in decades. One likely way to lower crime rates
would be to stop having children. Male children, in
particular.
Morality could also play a role. Beginning in the
mid-Sixties, politicians, community leaders, and intellectuals
began to blame society for crime, rather than criminals. Would-be
outlaws not only believed they could get away with their misdeeds,
but believed they had God on their side, since society had dealt
them a raw hand. Today, only politicians, community leaders, and
intellectuals still believe this.
AS FOR FALLING CRIME RATES, liberals like to attribute the
decline to better community policing and more social programs.
These factors cannot be completely ruled out. Cops have to some
degree succeeded in brokering truces between homicidal drug gangs.
Meanwhile the extension of unemployment benefits may have prevented
some crime (domestic abuse, for instance) in the short-term. But
increases in government handouts have, for much of the past fifty
years, mirrored steep rises in crime.
Ohio State University professor Douglas Berman attributes
the decrease in crime to an increase in technology. And he doesn’t
mean DNA testing, surveillance cameras, and crime mapping systems.
Berman says people today spend less time outside where they might
fall victim to violent crime, and more time inside at their
computers, big-screen TVs, and video games. This may explain why,
in my inner-city neighborhood at least, most crimes seem to be
property related (smash and grabs from cars and stolen copper pipes
from empty homes), instead of violent crimes.
There are, however, a few policies for lowering crime
whose effectiveness are beyond debate. The high incarceration rates
we’ve seen throughout the past two decades have undeniably reduced
crime. Simply put, criminals cannot be breaking the law if they are
locked up. Meanwhile New York City has shown that more cops and
better policing can be a lot more effective than a strong economy
at reducing crime.
The fact that some 2,300,000 Americans are presently
incarcerated is both a tragedy and a blessing. A George Orwell is
hardly necessary to imagine the dramatic consequences if that
population were suddenly turned loose on our cities. Community
policing and remaining indoors may or may not be effective at
curbing crime, but there is no denying that, to quote former
British Conservative Party Leader Michael Howard, “prison works.”
That’s not a theory. That’s a fact.
