Freakonomics

[Additionally, an enormous change to the system is the increase in crime. Evidence shows that between 1982 and 1992 the number of people behind bars in America doubled to one million, and arrest rates continue to soar (Moyers, 1992). There are several schools of thought on the increase of crime, some attribute the influx of “crack” cocaine, and other

In order to test the truth of our hypothesis, we compiled a cross-sectional data set using public resources provided by the United States Census Bureau, and converted them into Stata format (as we have been doing in class). After rigorously checking the data set we had gathered for issues that would impact the significance of a regression analysis such as multicollinearity, we concluded that the data set showed no serious issues and proceeded to test different transformations of the dependent and independent variable, before settling on the most significant and logical options. We then carried out the process of economic analysis, checking to see if our results for their logical consistency as well as economic validity, fine-tuning our regression in order to garner the most rigorous interpretation of the data. After extensive work our analysis reached not only highly significant, but also highly satisfying results, yielding a confirmation of both our hypothesis of the relationship between the frequency of crime and household income, but also our auxiliary expectations for the coefficients of the other independent variables.

The fourth chapter of the book discusses the possible causes of the decline of criminal activities during the 1990’s. A quote that I believe can summarize the whole chapter is, “We have evolved with a tendency to link causality to things we can touch or feel not some distant or difficult phenomena”(Levitt). In this chapter, the author goes over the possible causes of the sporadic decline of crimes in the U.S. What Levitt tried to stress in this chapter is that changes today have possible severe effects in the distant future. He was successful with delivering this message with his examples of the changes in the US and Romania’s abortion laws and its effect on the crime rate. However, since correlation does not really prove causation he went

In Chapter 4, Dubner and Levitt talked about how crime rate decreased rapidly in the early 1990s. The top 8 mentioned explanations given on why exactly crime rates decreased by a large amount were; Innovative policing strategies, increased reliance on prisons, changes in crack and other drug markets, age of the population, tougher gun control laws, strong economy, increased number of police, and all other explanations. He starts off by explaining whether or not a strong economy was the cause of a drop in crime rate. He ridicules the explanation that a stronger economy means lower crime rates by explaining that a stronger economy only affects crimes with a direct financial motivation as opposed to violent crimes. The second explanation that

The rate of violent crime jumped from five instances for every one-hundred thousandth person in 1980 to fifty instances for every one-hundred thousandth person in 2000, in other words the rate increased by 1,000% in twenty years. The rate of property crime jumped from one hundred instances for every one-hundred thousandth person in 1980 to four hundred instances for every one-hundred thousandth person in 2000, in other words the rate increased by 4,000% in twenty years. A criminological theory that could explain why the violent crime rate went up is general strain theory,

attention to this topic, quantifying the factors most responsible for the observed crime drop has

Another factor that might have led to the increase in crime is the increase in the population of the poor. Generally, the poor tend to be susceptible to crime more than the well-established considering their low levels of income and lack of employment. Their increase in the county will definitely lead to an increase in the crime rate (Braga, 2006).

The Public Policy and the Causes of Crime is about the recent increase of crime trends from the 1980s to the 1990s. There is an increase of cases and the overcrowding of prison due to harsher sentencing. The tougher laws in the 1990s such as the “get tough” laws and “Truth in Sentencing” laws were part of the new requirements. In addition, offenders are getting younger and more violent. In the 1990s, the war on drugs commenced but it was believed that it will fail.

The authors, in order to distinguish the reason the significant drop in crime, conducted experiments and concluded that three out of all the reason, were erroneously interpreted as causation. As a citizen and as a student in this country, I thought that the increase in the number of police is what caused the crime rate to go down. However, from this chapter, Levitt and Dubner thought me that the three cases - increased reliance on prisons, increased number of police, and changes in illegal drug markets – correlation was interrupted incorrectly. Furthermore, the fact that the effect of legalized abortion, is the explanation of the crime drop left me astonished. In fact learning that the legalization of abortion had a large, statistically significant effect on crime is quiet disturbing. All in all however, it’s nice that legalizing abortion not only reduces the crime rate, but also gives women the right to do what they want. What I did like in this chapter was how the authors gave us two scenarios and they decided to pick one and to expand on it. The way the authors chose to present the information was very helpful because after introducing the three cases, they explained the real cause for the crime rate to drop. As readers and as citizens we would expect the three cases to the solution to crime rate but it was unanticipated to find out at last that abortion and crime rate

Since the 1990s and the crime drop, there has been many questions to the reason why. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner thoroughly looked through the different theories but came to a conclusion that the main reason crime had fallen is abortion (117-145). One of the reasons they discuss is whether or not the increase of incarceration affects the fluctuations in crime rates. Levitt and Dubner suggest that the crime system became relaxed due avoid racism; however, the crime rates then began to rise (122). “Between 1980 and 2000, there was a fifteenfold increase in the number of people sent to prison on drug charges” (Levitt, Dubner 123). The purpose of this review is to evaluate the validity of the incarceration effects on crime rates.

The crime rates here in the United States have been on the ascent for a

In “Where have all of the criminals gone?,” Levitt and Dubner discuss the theorized causes of the unexpected crime drop in the 1990s. Before introducing all of the possibilities, the authors provide a brief history of abortion in Romania. When Nicolae Ceausescu became dictator of Romania he made abortion illegal, banned contraception, and discontinued sex education in hopes of growing the population (p. 116). The children born following this were “worse in every measurable way: they would test lower in school, they would have less success in the labor market, and they would also prove much more likely to become criminals” (p. 116). In 1989, thousands of people took to the streets to protest Ceausescu’s regime and ultimately capturing him and killing him. “It should not

According to the FBI data on violent crime in 2013 shows that there has been a decrease of 4.4 percent in the level of crime over the years ("FBI — Violent Crime," 2010). Since the public has based their assumption that the socioeconomic can determine the level of crime one can commit at a given time. Basically, there is close gap between the socioeconomic and the level of crime one commit, and again, crime varies across geographical

3.   Donald Trump has been claiming that the crime rates in the United States have been skyrocketing, while reading the “Crime ‘Carnage’” section in the article he never really discusses the crime rates overall, during his inauguration speech he only discusses the crime rates that have happened in the past year. According to the article, the “FBI data shows that the violent crime rate has been on a “decline” since 1991 when it increased up to 758.2 but it was only half of that in 2015 with a rate of 372.6”. The murder rates also increased, increased by 14% according to the analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice but only

According to Siegel and Worrall (2014), there are various factors that criminologists believe affect the crime trend in the United States. Most of these factors are socioeconomic and demographic. One’s age, mental health and the ability to seek and receive treatment for mental health issues, the ability and ease of getting a gun, or even drug use are all possible factors that influence the crime rate in the United States. One must also though consider that when the economy is on the brink of collapse, crime can go up; however, when the economy is succeeding, crime rate will go down. What is crime like in the United States?