COMMENT: Crime and Testosterone
Editorial by Rick Reiff
TWO YEARS AGO I SUGGESTED THAT GOVERNMENT AND LAW ENFORCEMENT officals didn’t deserve the credit they were taking for the falling crime rate, then in an eight-year decline. I acknowledged that good public policy and police methods could reduce crime in some situations. (And though I didn’t mention it then, I think California’s “Three Strikes” law has almost certainly deterred crime in this state.) But I said there was no way those factors could explain the virtual across-the-board drop in crime nationwide.
I suggested that a more likely reason for falling crime rates was the testosterone factor: Crime was dropping because the percentage of young adult males, the group that commits the most crimes, was also dropping. And I suggested that with the percentage of young adult males now increasing, that the crime rate would start going up, too.
Guess what? The crime rate is now on the rise.
Does this prove my argument? Not necessarily. There is also a plausible argument to be made that the economy impacts the crime rate,the fall in the jobless rate during most of the ’90s nicely tracked the fall in the crime rate, and the recent uptick in the crime rate coincides with the softening of the economy.
But I’ll stick with the testosterone argument. I don’t expect to get much of an argument from politicians or law men, none of whom have stepped forward to take credit for the new trend.
, Rick Reiff
