There are several government policies, seven on this list, many of which are controversial, and a couple that are based on court decisions which are disputed, that have been the possible causes for why the crime rates across the United States continued getting lower over the course of a two-and-a-half-decade period, which ended around 2020 for America collectively, but ended around 2014 for America’s big cities.
In that year, 2014, society witnessed the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement which helped to change the dynamic in the relationship between law enforcement and the black community, causing the already high crime rates in the black communities in America’s big cities to skyrocket upwards.
If we ever want to go back to reducing the crime rates, something that would benefit all of us, but the black community the most, then we should consider learning why crime rates dropped from the late 1990’s to 2014. Here are the seven arguments:
1. More Prisons:
One of these reasons for lowered crime rates was the fact that in the last few decades we have built more prisons, incarcerated more criminal offenders, and proceed to leave them in prison longer. All of this adds up to the fact that in times past, criminals were more likely to be on the street, especially repeat offenders, committing criminal acts and hurting people, but that today those same people are more likely to be kept behind bars. This means less people out there in our cities committing crimes because they are, for the most part, locked up. This reduces the chances of crimes occurring.
The number of people who were incarcerated reached an all-time high of 2.3 million by the end of 2007, when the numbers actually started to decline, possibly due to decreasing crime, so that by the end of 2010, the numbers were down to 1.6 million . The number of people in prisons has skyrocketed since the 1980’s, when many states greatly increased the length of prison sentences, helping to remove potential offenders, including repeat offenders, from the streets.
In fact, we have twice as many people, per capita, behind bars than the USSR did in their heyday, and 7 times as many people per capita as China does, which is something that many people in the US don’t like.
2. More Police:
We also find that there are now more police officers employed per capita than there were in the past, especially in the larger cities like Chicago and New York City, but also in medium-sized cities like Indianapolis and Kansas City. These days, there are over 800,000 people working within law enforcement, with 79% being employed by local governments, 11% by state governments, and 10% by the federal government.
In the past, it was always difficult to determine which came first – some people were claiming that cities with more police officers have more crime; others were claiming that more crime happens in places with more police officers.
It was especially important to understand this dynamic when the black community was pushing around the notion that increasing police presence actually increased the amount of crime – as if the police were making up reasons to arrest black people more, and that was resulting in higher crime rates.
Finally, someone noticed that as terror alert levels went from yellow (elevated) to orange (high) that the amount of police around the nation’s capital would increase, so they set out to measure the effects of the increased police patrolling on crime levels. Jonathan Klick and Alexander Tabarrok discovered that during the 15 ½ month testing period, the terror alert level rose and fell four times. What they discovered is that the increased police presence during the heightened alert levels actually saw a decrease in the crime rate on average about 6.6% a day, with a 15% daily drop in the Capitol district, a 15% drop in burglaries, and a whopping 40% drop in classic street crimes such as car theft.
When putting these in useful numbers it is estimated that when taken nationally, every extra $1 spent to hire police means a $4 drop in the costs of crime, and that a 10% increase in the number of police would mean a 4% decrease in the amount of crime.
It should also be noted that we have had a real-life experiment going on in our big cities as to what happens when the police back off and are less present. This real-life experiment began in 2014 with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. What have been the results? Violent crime and homicide rates have exploded as police presence has dropped. And yet BLM, the very impetus behind this change, is still pushing the notion that increased police presence causes increased crime, even though the real-life real-time experiment wrought by them is proving precisely the opposite.
3. Theft Deterrent Technologies and Services:
Another possible reason for lowered crime rates are that people who see themselves, and their property, as potential threats to thefts are more likely to protect themselves by home security systems, car theft deterrent systems, OnStar and equivalent services, and so forth. Increased amounts of police cameras can also be included in this category.
All these theft deterrent technologies and services help to ward off potential thieves, thereby helping to reduce the amount of robbery and theft that takes place. Since 65% of all home burglaries happen to houses without any security system, it could be argued that you are only half as likely to get burglarized without that service.
As for car alarms, there seems to be no proof of whether a car alarm system really works, or whether thieves just ignore them.
4. Improved Crime Analyzing Techniques:
We find that the crime rate in New York City in the early 2010’s was much lower than that found in Chicago, Illinois, with its homicide rate being about a third of Chicago’s. New York City, about two-and-a-half decades ago, started something that they call the CompStat system. This system calculates information from criminal data, does geographical-based data mapping and analysis, focuses more policing in areas that are hotspots, make police officers doing those beats go into extensive detail with the type of questioning they receive at their precinct, and use the suggestions offered by officers to improve their policing strategies in areas that are high-crime locations, which has helped to lower the amount of criminal activity that happens, while at the same time lowering the amount of incarcerations that have been happening.
Think about this for a moment – Black Lives Matter complains about a high incarceration rate in the black community, but if that incarceration rate drops with police presence, it should mean that less black people get incarcerated, which means the black community should be behind this strategy. But they’re not. They’re opposed to it, even though in the end they’re only hurting themselves.
There is also something called hot-spot policing, where if a police officer stays in a place for, say fifteen minutes before moving on to another location in his beat, there will be decreased crime on that corner for the next fifteen minutes, than if he didn’t stay there as long as he did.
5. Allowing Concealed Weapons:
Another interesting fact is that in the last few years court decisions have been made that now allow people in certain cities that had gun bans in effect to now allow for people to carry concealed weapons, allowing them more likelihood to protect themselves in bad situations.
For example, a court decision (the Heller decision) in 2008 which overturned a gun ban in Washington, D.C. allowed for the murder rate for 2009 to plummet 2.5 times faster than the rest of the country, and 3 times faster than other cities of comparable population size. Another court ruling required Chicago to overturn a gun ban, allowing people to own concealed weapons – the year after this court ruling, there was a 14% drop in murders, when nationally the murder rate only dropped by 6%. In fact, when comparing the first six months of 2011 to the first six months of 2008, before the Heller ruling went into effect, there was a 34% drop.
You also find that gun crimes fell more than non-gun crimes, 25% versus only 8%. The same is also true with gun-related assaults versus non-gun-related assaults, 37% drop versus only 12% drop. You will also find that there is some evidence to suggest that allowing trained law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms decreases the possibility of crime.
6. Shrinking Cocaine Use:
Reduced consumption of cocaine is another argument for the decrease in crime during this period. When one looks on a graph and sees the sharp increase in crime rates throughout the 1970’s, and then again in the late 1980’s, before the crime rates began to start falling in the 1990’s, one will notice that this trend, particularly the late 1980’s trend, paralleled the increased use, and then decreased use of crack cocaine, especially as a younger, newer generation of individuals saw the negative effects of that drug on older individuals, and wanted nothing to do with it.
This decrease in crack cocaine use, and other addictive drugs, starting in the 1990’s, has helped to trigger less crime by those people who do things like stealing and murder, as part of their efforts to get more money to buy their next hit. Of course, it wasn’t just the users that were committing violent crimes, but gangs and drug trafficking networks, and their use of violence to protect their turf started to decrease as demand for their drugs started to decrease.
7. Reduced Birth Rates Among Population Groups Most Likely to Commit Crime
Another argument is that by reducing the birth rate in population groups that were most likely to commit crime, that it led to a decrease in crime a couple decades later.
Those making this argument are basing it on the increased availability of abortion in those high-crime communities, leading to lower birth rates in those communities, which has caused for a future decrease in crime because of the associated decrease in the amount of people who grew up unwanted and being raised by single mothers in crime-prone circumstances.
This theory was argued by Steve Levitt, who is one of the co-authors of the best-selling book, Freakonomics. He presents several points that sound valid. He claims in his paper, written with John Donohue, that crime started to fall roughly 18 years after the national legalization of abortion, at about the same time that unwanted children would have come of age and reached the time in their lives when they are most likely to commit crimes; that the crime rates started falling sooner in the five states that legalized abortion before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision; that the arrest rate in states with higher rates of abortion fell faster than states with lower levels of abortion; and that abortion legalization seems to account for at least 50% of the decrease in crime between 1991 and 1999, when the paper was written, as there was a theoretical 50% drop in the amount of unwanted children.
As a conservative, I would argue that, even if this argument is true, it is not proof that legalized abortion is the way to go, but proof that the correct path is to reduce the birth rate among single mothers who tend to live in poverty in the inner-city. And that, to me, is just another proof that children do better being raised in intact two-adult nuclear families than they do being raised by single mothers.
There’s also the possibility that this argument is really invalid, and that the other six reasons totally account for the drop in crime during this period. Further analysis might reveal that the first six things accounts for the entire drop without needing to use decreased birth rates in high-crime areas because of the availability of abortion to explain the rest away.
As a conservative, we also need to keep in mind that, even if this argument is true, determining whether abortion is morally acceptable is an entirely different matter. I’m convinced that it’s not. If you haven’t done so already, please read my article on this subject: You Don’t Have to Support Abortion to Support Women’s Rights. Here’s Why.
Conclusion
So, the previous seven things helped to account for why crime rates dropped between the mid-1990’s and 2014, when it started to rapidly spike upward in the big cities, and 2020, when America collectively started to see an increase. If we even want to see it start to go back down again, we may want to revisit these things.
