U.S. reports steepest annual violent crime drop

June 13, 2001 7:00 AM

U.S. reports steepest annual violent crime drop Incidents of violent crime plummeted nearly 15 percent in 2000, the steepest one-year drop since the federal government began keeping track in 1973. Last year's data continue a trend that began early in the last decade. From 1993 through 2000, rapes dropped 60 percent, aggravated assaults fell 52.5 percent and motor vehicle theft dropped 52.4 percent.
posted by frednorman (30 comments total)

...the legalization of abortion in 1973 that resulted in fewer unwanted children.

Wow, that's harsh. I really wish it would have been written more like this...

...education has been introduced to teach kids that there's a cost to having sex, which in turn produced less unwanted children.

It's pretty bad when we have to kill our unborn children to have a better crime rate instead of teaching our kids that it's not good to have sex until you're ready and can handle the consequences.

In the whole, a very positive article though, even though it doesn't seem to be panning out this way where I live.
posted by the_0ne at 7:13 AM on June 13, 2001

"It's pretty bad when we have to kill our unborn children to have a better crime rate"
Of all the things you could have pulled out of that article, you got that?
posted by Doug at 7:24 AM on June 13, 2001

"It's pretty bad when we have to kill our unborn children to have a better crime rate"

Oh please.
posted by preguicoso at 7:38 AM on June 13, 2001

When the 2001 figures are published, you'll find that crime rates are back up. Crime rates are influenced by deliberate attempts to change them, but they're mainly driven by economic factors. When times are good, crime decreases. When the economy tanks, crime goes back up.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:41 AM on June 13, 2001

Oh please.

I didn't mean my first post to offend pro-abortion advocates, it meant exactly the way it was typed. I would have rather seen education being more of a factor than the abortion incline.
posted by the_0ne at 7:46 AM on June 13, 2001

Doug:

Did you read my post? I clearly stated that the article was all over good, but that disturbed me.

Maybe that part was left off your browser screen, hmmm....
posted by the_0ne at 7:47 AM on June 13, 2001

Aw c'mon kids, can't we have a day where we just don't go there?
posted by briank at 8:20 AM on June 13, 2001

...education has been introduced to teach kids that there's a cost to having sex, which in turn produced less unwanted children.

Yep. Cause that happened.
posted by billybunny at 8:21 AM on June 13, 2001

"Sociologists have offered a variety of possible explanations for the decrease in violent crimes ... "

Now that may be, but anyone with a lick of sense knows that all sociologists are commie liberals. I knows that crime went down because we're puttin' Christian prayer back in the schools, exemecutin' criminals (sometimes even the white ones), and puttin' the ownership of heavy artillery within the reach of every law-abidin' citizen.
posted by pracowity at 8:35 AM on June 13, 2001

"Maybe that part was left off your browser screen, hmmm...."
Yes, maybe it was left off my browser screen... ??

Anyway, what you don't seem to understand in your post (which I have read, reread, written on my wall and memorized) is that the article states abortion has led to less unwanted children, which may have contributed to the reduced crime rate (though I tend to agree with Steven). It does not say that we have to kill unborn children to "have a better crime rate." There may be a relationship between abortion and the crime rate. That's all. That fact is completely seperate from pro-choice or pro-life ideology. Unless, of course, you're a zealot.
posted by Doug at 8:37 AM on June 13, 2001

CrayDrygu:

You don't have to guess at where I am on the issue. Not sure if there's been any MeFi posts on abortion that I've responded to but I am pure anti-abortion. Or anti-choice as you would put it.

Sorry guys/gals, I didn't want this to get into a flame war on abortion. If any of you have seen any of my posts on MeFi at all, you'd notice I'm very conservative. I don't hide that. I was disturbed by the fact in the article, that is all. I did not mean to offend pro-choice (Did I say that correct CrayDrygu?) or anti-abortion people. That is your right, just like it is mine to be anti. So, please stop wasting the bandwidth on the abortion issue when I'm sure it's gone on many times on MeFi before.

I know I opened the door but now I'll close it, I'm getting a draft... :)
posted by the_0ne at 8:41 AM on June 13, 2001

the_One: You da man!
posted by prototype_octavius at 8:45 AM on June 13, 2001

i get a 404 error messge. can someone post an updated url?
posted by Qambient at 8:54 AM on June 13, 2001

The link is broken ... hmmm.

Conspiracy?
posted by Dillenger69 at 8:56 AM on June 13, 2001

Ok, I confess, I was distrubed enough about that abortion statistic that I hacked in and I'm changing it as I type this. It'll be back up in 10. ;-)
posted by the_0ne at 9:01 AM on June 13, 2001

Now that's weird. The article really is gone! How could this happen?
posted by frednorman at 9:07 AM on June 13, 2001

Maybe Steven Den Beste was right and the article was pure bullschmidt.
posted by the_0ne at 9:13 AM on June 13, 2001

Quite interesting, since this article seems to contradict one from two weeks ago. Instead of 15% drop, there's a 0.1% increase, the FBI said then. But those were 'preliminary' statistics.

(I have a sneaking suspicion that the aside mentioned above about abortion wasn't properly sourced. It is just a hypothesis, and while it's an intriguing approach, it's far from proven. This may be why the article was yanked, for further revisions.)
posted by dhartung at 9:21 AM on June 13, 2001

Causality is difficult to prove, and often social scientists are encouraged to mess with results when they don't match their hypothesis because people in social science generally don't get published for saying "There is NO correlation between x and y" even though they may have spent years researching the false link. When the goal is to get published, there is a lot of pressure to turn that research into SOME result SOMEWHERE. THen you have to prove that correllation is causality and that's even harder.

I would generally have to agree that the economy is the biggest factor in improving the crime rate. We've had RECORD employment rates, and when people have jobs they have less incentive and time to do dirty naughty things.

I didn't get to read the article because the link is gone, so those are all the comments that I can really say.
posted by indigo at 9:29 AM on June 13, 2001

What part of "unwanted children" didn't you understand? I don't know whether I buy the theory but I can imagine a big difference in the quality of life of a child born to a 17 year old compared to a 17 year old aborting and having a child at a more mature age.

Obviously if this said 17 year old is not mature enough to live with the consequences of unprotected sex, then this said 17 year old is definitely not mature enough to be having sex. Notice I said "unprotected". I don't want to be hit with the ... (So you mean no teenager should be having sex flames.) Which I'm sure is another topic that's been hashed out over and over on MeFi. This in turn supports my education theory full-on.

With life comes consequences, I have to pay for mine, just like that 17 year old has to pay for hers. So, if she would know better and had been more responsible, then there would be no pregnancy and no discussion.
posted by the_0ne at 9:38 AM on June 13, 2001

Wow -- lower crime rates are good, unproductive abortion debates are bad. However, the more abortions = fewer criminals theory has been getting a lot of news everywhere, based as it is on a paper by two economists arguing that legalization of abortion in the 1970s accounts for up to 50% of today's drop in violent crime. There is a surprisingly lucid give-and-take with one of the authors on MSN.

I'm guessing this has been on MeFi before, but it's interesting how it's turning up as an accepted idea all over (certainly CNN is willing to bite) even though the paper is 'preliminary' and hotly contested.
posted by josh at 10:15 AM on June 13, 2001

Causality is difficult to prove, and often social scientists are encouraged to mess with results when they don't match their hypothesis because people in social science generally don't get published for saying "There is NO correlation between x and y" even though they may have spent years researching the false link. When the goal is to get published, there is a lot of pressure to turn that research into SOME result SOMEWHERE. THen you have to prove that correllation is causality and that's even harder.

BS all the way. Often? That's outrageous and a slander on an entire professional group. You could have your tenure revoked, your reputation ruined, grants revoked, etc. That is complete and utter crap.
posted by raysmj at 10:30 AM on June 13, 2001

BS all the way. Often? That's outrageous and a slander on an entire professional group. You could have your tenure revoked, your reputation ruined, grants revoked, etc. That is complete and utter crap.

I think you missed his key phrase, "When the goal is to get published...". I found his comment to be insightful and accurate to my experience with the social sciences.
posted by skyline at 10:39 AM on June 13, 2001

skyline: But the key word for me was "encouraged" to do so. By whom or what? Pressure? Themselves? The little devil sitting on people's shoulders, like you see in sitcoms? And often? All that I've heard and read tells me that people in sociology, political science, psychology or economics (I'm in PoliSci, with an emphasis on policy/admin.) who do such things run a very high risk of being exposed. (Look at the PS journal at the Amer. PoliSci Assoc. site for a entire issue of political scientists beating themselves up over nothing in re to presidential predictions -- which is a pointless thing to do in the first place, but that's another story. Gore did win the popular vote, and they act like they screwed up so bad and should have their fingernails pulled out slowly by a WWF star.) And these cats being discussed only released a preliminary report, not a final one. Sounds like they're being careful enough to me. It's the media here that's going crazy, not them.
posted by raysmj at 11:05 AM on June 13, 2001

The article is back online now, but with a new URL
posted by frednorman at 11:12 AM on June 13, 2001

Don't know if this was in the earlier story. The abortion thing is certainly played down, suggesting a reporter boo-boo. It happens. Journalism's a daily thing. What's striking is the latter paragraph. No one is manipulating data all that well, obviously (and manipulating can be OK, if questionable -- say, getting a higher population sample; printing fraudulent results is another story).

The statement at the end here is accurate anyway. You don't know -- probably can't ever know -- if it's higher incarceration or lower hem lines or a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in East Asia a minute before the NY Stock Exchange opens and a voodoo-practicing crack dealer wakes up in New Orleans, say, that causes a drop in crime. You can only show a strong correlation.

"Sociologists have offered a variety of possible explanations for the decrease in violent crimes: higher incarceration rates, more police officers, higher educational standards and better educational opportunities, less drinking of hard liquor, less drunken driving, lower rates of divorce, a good economy and the legalization of abortion in 1973 that resulted in fewer unwanted children.

"But no one has been able to quantify the impact on crime that any of those variables may have had. "
posted by raysmj at 12:07 PM on June 13, 2001

did anyone notice that more crimes are going unreported and i heard scuttlebutt about some the the stats being reskewed or what ever. basically, crime has fallen in some areas but has remained the same, if not increased in some areas. I would like to know the latest stats on missing person reports in the last year. I wonder if it has risen.
posted by clavdivs at 12:58 PM on June 13, 2001

With over a million elective abortions a year, the murder rate in the U.S. is still a disgrace, and let's dont fool ourselves into thinking abortion doesnt end a life. A successful abortion depends on the killing of the unborn baby which is done with saline introduced into the uterus.
posted by FreeSpeech at 1:29 PM on June 13, 2001

if in definition abortion is murder(in this case 1st degree, pre-meditated) then we murder billions of times a day, in fact why dont.... I am tired of the argument. It is mote, yes. What price a life, what price 100 million lives and we talk in death when life slips away from ignorance and disfunction.
When confronted with ethical biggies, think of the lifeboat. Each one of us lies, betrays etc. each day (whether aware or unaware) In principle, im against abortion. dead wrong solution to birth control. But a woman has the right to choice. and am i wrong but did not this issue become inflamed 20 or so years ago because the state of Michigan refused to provide abortions to mothers on welfare? (at least in the public policy arena)
posted by clavdivs at 6:46 PM on June 13, 2001