Why? Politicians and law enforcement agencies like to cite better policing and community programs. Don’t buy it. While individual initiatives and targeted programs can reduce crime in certain neighborhoods or areas, they can’t explain across-the-board drops in crime in virtually every city in the nation.
The way I figure it, there are only two plausible explanations.
The one, often cited, is that the economy is good. When people are working and making money, they aren’t stealing and creating other mayhem. It might sound strange coming from a business journalist, but I have my doubts about that premise. I think crime is a matter of emotion, opportunity and immorality, operating independently of economic twists and turns. Besides, if a good economy creates more opportunity for gainful employment, it also creates more opportunity for illicit gains.
The other plausible explanation, seldom mentioned except by criminologists, is the one I subscribe to. It is that the drop in crime is mainly a byproduct of demographics: In recent years there have been fewer punk males in the population.
Most crimes are committed by males in their teens and early ’20s. When guys get older, something happens. A lot of the lawbreakers are locked away by then, or they’ve been knocked off. I suppose the fight goes out of others once they get saddled with a wife, kids, a house payment and income tax forms. Maybe the hormones subside. Whatever.
Perhaps because an executive editor has time on his hands (see column, next page), I decided to chart for the past 10 years the national crime rate, the national unemployment rate and the percentage of 18-to-24-year-old males in the population. I thank former reporter Alexandra Lin for doing much of the legwork (an executive editor shouldn’t run too hard).
Check out the results. Interesting, if inconclusive.
The crime rate rose a little in 1991, along with a steep rise in the unemployment rate, despite a drop in the percentage of young-adult males. Chalk one up for the economy argument. But crime started dropping in 1992 and 1993, along with a continued drop in the young-adult-male percentage, despite continued rising unemployment. So chalk up two for the young punk theory. Alas for my side, since 1996, both crime and unemployment have continued to fall, while the percentage of young-adult males has begun to creep upward.
So I guess I could be wrong. But I think I’ll wait for a few more years of data before conceding. That up-slope in young-adult males will steepen in the coming years. As it does, I’ll be real surprised if the crime rate doesn’t start “inexplicably” going up, too.
Maybe then we’ll hear more about young punks. You can bet that politicians and law enforcement agencies won’t blame an increase in crime on any failure of theirs.
