- Mar 11, 2015
- 77,500
- 35,549
- 2,330
ALL RISE! CLASS IS IN SESSION!
The honorable IM2 presiding.
"Ye shall learn the truth....."
Is There an “Obama Effect” on Crime?
A surprising new theory for the continuing crime decline among black Americans.
By James Verini
Ever since crime started declining in American cities in the 1990s, researchers have been hunting for the reasons why. After more than a decade of research, many argued that smarter policing, more incarceration, the waning of the crack epidemic, improved home security, and legislation such as the Brady Bill had a role in cutting crime. More speculatively, some posit that an aging population, legal abortion (an argument first advanced in the Quarterly Journal of Economics Steven Levitt and later popularized in his book Freakonomics), the rise of mood-improving drugs, and, a theory that’s attracted much attention lately, laws banning lead in paint, may have contributed to the decline.
Until recently, almost all criminologists could agree on one factor: the good economy. Nothing is as taken for granted (at least by liberals) as this connection between crime and economics. The higher are employment and wages, the thinking goes, the less crime people commit—and vice versa.
But then, unexpectedly, the crime decline of the last two decades did not end with the economic collapse of 2008. On the contrary, decreases in violent crime have not just continued in many places since, according to the latest numbers from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, but they appear to have accelerated in some cities. In the first half of 2009, homicides plummeted an astounding 67 percent over 2008 in Minneapolis, 47 percent in Seattle, 39 percent in Charlotte, 31 percent in New York, and 17 percent in Los Angeles. As surprisingly, these declines occurred in black communities, which suffer disproportionately from unemployment and stagnating wages and from crime (about half of all violent crimes in the United States involve blacks)—even as the growth in the prison population, also disproportionately black, has halted.
<p>The Obama Effect: A surprising new theory for the continuing crime decline among black Americans.</p>
The honorable IM2 presiding.
"Ye shall learn the truth....."
Is There an “Obama Effect” on Crime?
A surprising new theory for the continuing crime decline among black Americans.
By James Verini
Ever since crime started declining in American cities in the 1990s, researchers have been hunting for the reasons why. After more than a decade of research, many argued that smarter policing, more incarceration, the waning of the crack epidemic, improved home security, and legislation such as the Brady Bill had a role in cutting crime. More speculatively, some posit that an aging population, legal abortion (an argument first advanced in the Quarterly Journal of Economics Steven Levitt and later popularized in his book Freakonomics), the rise of mood-improving drugs, and, a theory that’s attracted much attention lately, laws banning lead in paint, may have contributed to the decline.
Until recently, almost all criminologists could agree on one factor: the good economy. Nothing is as taken for granted (at least by liberals) as this connection between crime and economics. The higher are employment and wages, the thinking goes, the less crime people commit—and vice versa.
But then, unexpectedly, the crime decline of the last two decades did not end with the economic collapse of 2008. On the contrary, decreases in violent crime have not just continued in many places since, according to the latest numbers from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, but they appear to have accelerated in some cities. In the first half of 2009, homicides plummeted an astounding 67 percent over 2008 in Minneapolis, 47 percent in Seattle, 39 percent in Charlotte, 31 percent in New York, and 17 percent in Los Angeles. As surprisingly, these declines occurred in black communities, which suffer disproportionately from unemployment and stagnating wages and from crime (about half of all violent crimes in the United States involve blacks)—even as the growth in the prison population, also disproportionately black, has halted.
<p>The Obama Effect: A surprising new theory for the continuing crime decline among black Americans.</p>
