Drop In Crime

Contrary to the common belief, crime has been on the decline for the past three decades. Yet, news and media have been covering crime more than ever, resulting in the public belief that crime is at an all time high. The sharp drop in crime since the early 1990s has left experts curious to discover the reasons for the decrease in crime. As I compare the article Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not by Steven D. Levitt and the article Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places by Eric P. Baumer and Kevin T. Wolff, I will briefly describe the articles, compare their agreements and disagreements, as well as discuss my personal preferences.

Criminals are people who choose to break the law, Gang violence is responsible for 48% of violent activity in the United States. ¨100% of cities with populations greater than 250,000 report gang activity¨ (Geer 1). 59% of homicides in LA and 53% of homicides in Chicago are caused by gang related violence. These two cities are known for their strict gun control.

Crime rates were decreased because of the simple reason that people were afraid to commit crimes because of the test. “The test itself scared many people from convicting crimes which helped the crime industry tremendously. Clearly, the crimes went down in all ways possible which was very beneficial to society. Crime industries clearly experienced a decrease which helped the society in keeping bad men off the

If you recollect about it, this really should be an anticipated effect of gun control, though most people don 't remember far enough past the words "gun" and "control" to see it. When you do give up and recollect about it though, the criminals who are committing crimes at present are the ones still making this a relevant issue of discussion in the foremost position. They are the aces who are either getting access to certain weapons that are already illegal and/or the ones who are using legal weapons illegally. If it weren 't for them disregarding laws and causing these crime rates to fail up, gun control would not still be in

There are many phenomena that could cause or correlate with crime. In addition to this, there are many characteristics to these phenomena that cause/correlate with criminal behavior. Furthermore, these characteristics can be individual, sociological, or both that could have an effect on criminal behavior. This paper will take the educational avenue on crime. Also, there are numerous ways that education can correlate with crime. The first way of correlation is through an economic scope. This way will take a look at how education can have an effect on an individual’s wages that may deter them from crime. The second way education has an affect on crime is the principles that a school would teach to kids that could keep them from crime. In addition, this section will focus on some key sociological aspects. The next way that crime is correlated with education is that crime could be a barrier to education. Finally, some statistics to present the education and crime correlation. There is a correlation between education and crime that shows the more education an individual obtains, the more opportunity costs, which would reduce the risk of the individual participating in criminal behavior.

In the article “The Crime Bust” by Gordon Witkin, it is introduced that in 1994, after a 9 year soar in crime rates, they began falling (1). According to preliminary figures released by the FBI, all across the board, the amount of crime committals were declining at a drastic rate. (Witkin 1). To determine the source of this sudden decline, several factors were examined, such as the economy, dismissed as “Robbery and burglary fluctuate with economic conditions--but murders generally do not…” (Witkin, 1-2) Prevention and domestic abuse were also discredited since “Studies show that prevention programs don’t work, and others may or may not be effective…” and “...in 1996, there were only 447 fewer ‘domestics’ than in 1993, accounting for just 9 percent of the murder reduction.”

Some examples of an unwanted child may be among teen moms, single moms, and rape cases which may increase crime rate if these women were forced to have children and failed to give them a superb upbringing. High incarceration rate is used by Levitt and Dubner as one of the background reasons why crime has dropped since the 90’s (the background with abortion being their main reason). According to Levitt and Dubner, “Harsh prison terms have been shown to act as both deterrent (for the would-be criminal on the street) and prophylactic (for the would-be criminal who is already locked up).” (123) They use several pieces of evidence for this showing definite crime drop when more people were put behind bars; however, a lot of evidence used with this theory is conceded by the complete opposite idea.

People living in urban areas had much higher rates of crime than people living in suburbs and rural areas. Those who live in single family homes have lower rates of crime than people living in apartments (National Crime Survey). To summarize, our chances for violent victimization are more controlled by what we do than by

The issue with implanting strict gun control regulations in our society is that people will become vulnerable targets for criminals. Criminals will continue to conduct harmful crimes, despite the laws, and law-abiding citizens won’t have the necessary weapons needed to successfully defend themselves. For instance, “59% of the burglaries in Britain, which has tough gun control laws, are ‘hot burglaries’ which are burglaries committed while the home is occupied by the owner/renter. By contrast, the U.S., with more lenient gun control laws, has a ‘hot burglary’ rate of only 13%” (“Crimes and Guns”). The implementation of gun control laws will thus increase crime rates as people will become vulnerable targets for criminals.

To expand my research to attain the goal of understanding specification of both explanations, The southern subculture of violence theory blames higher crime rates in the South on “cultural values that evolved from that region’s unique history” (Ousey, 2000:268). All cultural explanations are based on the social learning approach, which holds that criminality is learned through intimate interactions with others. Another example is that capital punishment is highest in the South. The economic deprivation explanation to differences of crime rates within regions of the country is synonymous with strain theories.

Ford, Jason A., & Ryan D. Schroeder. 2010. “Higher Education And Criminal Offending Over The Life Course.” Sociological Spectrum: 32-58. This article investigates the idea that crime rates are directly related to an individuals level of education.

Every day on the news there are all kinds of reports. Crime reports are a major part of today's events. Almost every day there are posts about crimes. The level of crime has risen immensely in every corner of the world. People have tried to understand the causes of crime, but if we look around the world we can see that many of the crimes are caused by people who abuse drugs and alcohol, people who think negatively towards others, and poverty.

There are many reasons where incarceration may lead to higher crime in a community. High incarceration rates damage a community’s stability, and these high rates weaken the power of informal social control in ways that cause an increase in crime. When people are released back into the community, but are then sent back to prison, this cycle keeps going, which causes residential insecurity, which is also associated with social disorganization theory. High imprisonment rates breaks down neighborhood dynamics, which also increases crime. Families become unstable, political and economic systems become weakened, and social networks are broken down. When a person is sent to prison, their entire family, including children, are affected. The family

Criminals do not usually acquire their guns through the proper channels as law-abiding citizens would. Those who would need stricter gun laws would not even be affected by the change. For instance, there are plenty of illegal drugs that are used by people every day. Just because something is outlawed does not mean that no one will take part in it. The theory that if gun laws were more strict this would cut down on crime.

Crime offers a way in which poor people can obtain material goods they cannot attain through legal means. Often, threat or force helps them acquire even more goods, encouraging them to commit more violent acts such as robbery and rape. Thus, poverty increases crime