| sc94597 said: This wouldn't explain why murder rates have declined, considerably as well. The U.S is down to pre-boomer levels. Much of it can be explained by an aging population + reduced lead poisoning rates, is my guess. Although the youth culture is also a lot less "bad." Teen pregnancies are down considerably, drug and alcohol usage is down, etc.
Of course on the other-hand there is a lot more depression, social alienation, and anomie. |
Lead-poisoning is also a good reason that I wasn't considering, leaded gasoline is something we no longer use and that had an effect on some, particularly violent, crime.
However, the portion of the population that you're looking at with regard to drug use is not the population I'm discussing when talking about large cities in American culture. It's persons over 50 that are the cause for a substantial portion of drug use today. In addition, on average it's people over 50 that are also homeless (which homelessness is no longer a crime, but it used to be until the early 70's).
For the shoplifting rates, the reported revenue lost from stores for shoplifting is at a historic high, almost twice as much as it was just six years ago. However, shoplifting crime has gone DOWN, which doesn't make sense as a function of what the stores are reporting.
So while you've done a great job showing that some crime has legitimately gone down (underage substance use, murder), there is still a large portion of crime unexplained by this. Particularly given the fact that murder has never been the most prevalent crime per capita, yet our total crime levels are at lows not seen since the 1960's.
