Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts

I guess Netflix On-Demand, Facebook stalking, and FarmVille do their job in cheaply entertaining us!<p>Seriously though, murders are a distant leap from idle teenage mischief, but I have to believe people commit fewer crimes when they have more to lose. If someone is reasonably happy with his day-to-day life, why risk disrupting it?<p>Now for a really big leap-of-faith: maybe social media opens our eyes to how other people perceive their lives. As stated in Paul B's "open as in water" blog post, Facebook and Twitter have shown more people that they aren't alone in their miseries; and that there are lots of little joys in life!<p>Last wild theory: cyber bullying is on the rise, but at least that's less deadly than physical confrontation.

So the Freakonomics guys famously (and controversially) attributed the decline in crime in the 90's to four factors, abortion being the most controversial [1]:<p>– Increased reliance on prisons<p>– Increased number of police<p>– The bursting of the crack bubble<p>– The legalization of abortion<p>The NYT article says that incarceration rates have dropped, which would eliminate the first factor. I wonder how the other 3 correlate with the recent drop in crime. It's unlikely the number of police have increased, given the recession. Instead of, or in addition to, crack, I am assuming you may have to consider other drugs like Meth (?).<p>Levitt et al. also presented evidence that a strong economy does not cause a drop in crime, so the challenge to that thesis, mentioned in the NYT article, is not new.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/03/16/lets-do-the-crime-drop-again/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/03/16/lets-do-the-crime-dro...</a>

Demographics: most crime is committed by groups of young men. Fewer groups of young men, less crime.<p>Also, eventually your civilization collapses.<p>So it's a tradeoff.

Aren't we imprisoning more people than ever before? I know here in California, the three strikes law put many violent criminals off the streets and into prison for lengthy prison terms. Now that the Supreme court has ruled against the state in a prison lawsuit, California has to release 30k prisoners. Let's see what happens to the violent crime rate here in a few years.

I thought it has to do with police departments setting up bonus incentive programs tied to a reduction in certain crimes.<p>This then encourages the police department heads to not fully report serious crimes, this way they receive their year end bonus.<p>Example, rape? No that was just simple assault.

Perhaps because these crimes do not include non-prosecuted white collar finance crimes?

I blame video games.

I wonder if anyone attributes this to the continued domestication of the human race. Maybe it's just natural for humans living in modern society to become less violent.

"When crime rates go up, the police say it is because they are encouraging more victims to come forward, Mr. Silverman said, 'but when crime goes down, it’s the work of the police.'"<p>I find that sentence really confusing. Does Silverman believe that a decrease in crime is the work of the police, or is he still quoting the police?<p>Also, I'm curious: did I quote the quote correctly?

I wonder what the Freakonomics guys will say about this - curious to see if they can draw an unexpected correlation (like twenty year ago birth rate or the like).

How is this not politics?

It's the Dollar store. You can everything for a dollar now and we've accumulated such an enormous amount of cheap stuff that nobody needs to resort to crime anymore.