America’s safer streets: why is elusive

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Carl
Maybe rather than looking at why crime dropped, it would be more fruitful to look at why crime increased in the 60s and 70s.

I suspect part of the answer is this is when we implemented a number of new drug laws, and I'm sure we created other laws that turned previously legal behavior into now illegal behavior. If there was no war on drugs it is unlikely we have seen abuse evolve into meth and crack and the current crime epidemic that fosters. We're not reducing drug abuse with the drug war, but we are filling up our prisons, and pushing real criminals (rapists, murders, etc.) back into the streets because the prisons are full and prosecuters are focused on lesser crimes.

[carl]

Bill:

I am thinking there is more a big cultural thing going on. The murder rate peaked at around 9.7 in 1933 then fell pretty steadily until it started to climb again in the 60s and stayed at high rate sort of near the 1933 rate from the 70s to the 90s.

The early part of the century saw the urbanization of the country. Mass immigration from Europe and mass migration from the South to the North and from other parts of the country to the West. We handled all that then comes the 60s and everything starts to go to hell again for about 20-30 years until we began to get a handle on it again.

Improved policing may be part of our culture getting a handle on the thing again.