Impact of Foreclosures on Crime

[jmm99]

Since the OP's article has a couple of articles from NC, here is a NC view.

Crime & Punishment

Incarceration alone will not solve North Carolina's crime crisis. We must also focus on preventing crime by addressing the conditions that give rise to it. That does not mean increasing government spending on jobs programs or social programs. There is no historical relationship between crime rates and either poverty, joblessness, or government social spending. Crime rates during the Great Depression were much lower than they are today.

http://www.johnlocke.org/agenda2004/crimepunisment.html

The article adds (in bold): "The real cause of crime is not a poverty of resources but a poverty of values." That statement is arguable (IMO), since I believe there is an interplay between the two:

poverty of resources <> poverty of values

As an example, take a trip through 25th and Locust in Milwaukee (as it existed about 15 years ago, when I last drove through it) - basic ghetto environment and one of Milwaukee's high crime areas, with over-crowded housing owned by slumlords living in Tosa or further west.

Anyway, the article does have a good graph (attached) which shows that general prosperity does not mean lower crime rates. Of course, correlation does not necessarily prove causation.

As to prosperity and crime, we have this from the inventor of the broken windows policing theory:

JAMES Q. WILSON: Between 1963 and the early 1970s, the rate of violent crime more or less tripled in the United States. By violent crime, I mean murder, manslaughter and robbery. So we had a tripling of the crime rate at a time when the country was, by and large, prosperous, in which the unemployment rates even among African-American adolescents was quite low.

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/segments/progseg13.htm

On the other hand, we have this (from a more "progressive" website):

The Second Great Experiment

Reliable statistics on incarceration in federal and state prisons in the United States date back to 1925—at the time Debs was writing Walls and Bars. These statistics show that the incarceration rate (persons imprisoned in federal and state prisons per 100,000 in total population) has been higher in periods of economic stagnation (when the unemployment rate, and hence the reserve army of labor, is much higher). In the Great Depression the incarceration rate for federal and state prisons peaked at 137 per 100,000 in 1939, after which it rapidly dropped with the coming of the Second World War. (See Figure 1, which shows the trends at five year intervals. Note: the peak year of 1939 does not appear in the chart.) The decline in the rate of incarceration in the war years was not simply the result of millions entering the military. Jobs were plentiful—jobs where one learned skills along with the opportunity to use the skills in better paying positions. Lots of overtime and weekend work boosted incomes despite the low wage rates.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0701editr.htm

The chart (prisoners from 1925 to 2000 - contrary to quote above there is a peak just before 1940) is here.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/docs/0701fig1.pdf

Perhaps, the most honest statement is this:

Published: Sunday, January 23, 2000
Crime rate falls in U.S., and no one is sure why
MICHAEL FLETCHER WASHINGTON POST
Why is crime down in America?
.....
Much of the evidence offered to support these theories is, in the end, contradicted by history or otherwise unraveled. Yes, the economy is better. But it also boomed during the 1960s, when crime began its steep upward march. And in the past, crime has waned during economic downturns, most notably during the Great Depression.
.....
It may well be that there is no way to know what will happen with America's crime rates because the factors that influence them are too complex.

In his new book, ``Butterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior,'' British economist Paul Ormerod argues that human behavior is essentially unpredictable, in large part because individuals are as likely to be influenced by one another as by objective factors such as poverty or the police.

Will crime rise or fall in the next generation? You can ask the same thing about hemlines with as much chance of accurately predicting the answer, he maintains.

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bmork/2306/New...erates.J00.htm

My conclusion is that working from very generalized data sets is not helpful. Here (this thread) we have a specific problem (deserted houses and buildings)which do lead to an increase in crime - regardless of why any individual turns to crime. Thus, that problem is finite and can be solved. The larger, general problem is "messy", "wicked".