The Economist's Guide to Crime Busting
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The Economist’s Guide to Crime Busting by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig The old divide between hard and soft strategies is breaking down under a wave of new thinking about how to control crime. hat is the more cost- Now the debate has been reopened. effective way to control It is not so much that the public Wcrime? Is it to focus on views mass incarceration, with making crime unattractive by threat- its disproportionately high levels ening offenders with long prison of imprisonment for blacks and terms? Or to make the law-abiding Hispanics, as immoral or racist. life more attractive by providing bet- Rather, the dreary fact is that, in ter education and job opportunities? the face of gaping budget deficits, It’s an old debate. The federal crime the states can no longer afford to commissions of the 1960s empha- support huge prison populations. sized crime’s links with poverty and It seems like a good time for the racism, and President Lyndon B. economists to weigh in, in part Johnson’s Great Society programs because their perspective provides were central to his war on crime. a way to get past the stale debates But ultimately the “hawks” won the over whether to adopt “tough” or debate about how to wage that war, “soft” solutions. as they did later in helping to launch President Richard M. Nixon’s war on The economic theory of crime drugs. The result has been plain to starts with the premise that crime see, with the rate of imprisonment is a choice. It is not the result of surging to unprecedented heights. character or culture, or not only of 52 NIJ JOURNAL / ISSUE NO. 270 n JUNE 2012 those things, but is at bottom us are spared the temptation to rake seen big improvements in property a product of decisions individuals in millions from fraudulent dealings values and the quality of life. Harlem make in response to their avail- by the simple fact that we wouldn’t and many other urban communities able options. Most of us choose to even know how to begin. that were once hobbled by pervasive abstain from crime in part because crime are thriving. Washington, D.C., we have a lot to lose if we get The “crime as choice” perspective the murder capital of the country for caught. Even so, we may slip up expands the discussion of crime a time during the crack epidemic, has occasionally — say, at tax time or control from the question of how become far more livable and secure. when driving — but generally the many new prisons we need to a These gains are worth a great deal, temptations of crime are not strong wider-ranging consideration of how perhaps even as much as the vast enough to override our restraint. The to make illicit choices less attractive. human and financial costs of mass calculus for an unemployed dropout incarceration. But prisons are often with readily available criminal options given far too much credit for what and few licit prospects is likely to The economic theory has occurred. appear quite different. of crime starts with The general view that crime is sup- This economic perspective gener- pressed by putting more people ates a nicely symmetrical approach the premise that crime behind bars is supported by a com- to crime control. Crime policy should monsense argument: People who focus both on making criminal oppor- is a choice. are in prison can’t commit crimes tunities less tempting and on making against those who are not. It would the law-abiding life more rewarding. indeed be surprising if locking up We can debate how best to accom- Here we will focus on three pro- so many didn’t have some effect on plish each of those aims (and long posals: raising the minimum age crime. But even a casual look at the prison terms are by no means the at which youths can leave school, statistics challenges the view that only answer for reducing temptation), promoting business improvement prison trends deserve all or most but it’s important to realize that they districts and other forms of self- of the credit for the crime drop. A are closely linked: The threat of arrest protection, and increasing taxes on look at three recent periods (see and imprisonment is sharper for alcohol. To understand why these Table 1) makes it clear that the crime those who have something to lose, measures’ moment has arrived, decline of the 1990s did coincide so giving at-risk people a bigger stake it’s first necessary to take a brief with a large increase in the prison in the law-abiding life is a deterrent excursion into the recent history of population. But the large crime to crime. American crime control efforts. increase during the preceding period coincided with an even bigger jump Of course, this logic doesn’t always The most notable feature of that his- in imprisonment, and incarcera- work out. One reason so many tory is that the rate of incarceration tions rates continued to climb after people were shocked by the criminal has increased by a factor of seven 2000 even though crime rates were charges against NFL stars Michael in the last generation. America relatively static. (Robbery is a good Vick (for staging dog fights) and now locks up 1 percent of its adult indicator of violent crime generally, Plaxico Burress (for carrying a gun population — the highest rate of and follows the same pattern as illegally) is that both had so much to imprisonment in the world. While the murder rate during the period lose. But these cases help prove the many thoughtful people are uneasy 1991-2000.) If the incarceration rule precisely because they are so about our policy of mass incarcera- surge of the 1990s gets credit for rare. When high-income people com- tion, a good number believe that it the retreat of crime, then the surge mit serious crimes, it is much more is justified by the dramatic reduc- that occurred between 1984 and often in response to opportunities for tions in crime since the early 1990s. 1991 ought to get the blame for the great financial gain: Investment bilker Homicide and robbery rates have increase in robberies in that period. Bernard Madoff comes to mind, declined to levels not seen since the Clearly, that doesn’t make sense. along with Enron president Jeffrey early 1960s. Property crime rates The point is that we can’t learn much Skilling and publishing magnate have fallen even more dramatically. from such simplistic comparisons. Conrad Black. Thankfully, most of As a result, America’s cities have The Economist’s Guide to Crime Busting | 53 NIJ JOURNAL / ISSUE NO. 270 n JUNE 2012 of a particular policy, especially if it Table 1. Incarceration and Crime Rates, 1984-2008 has been tried in different times and places and a natural control group exists. That is the case with three Prisoners per Robbery rate crime control proposals that deserve 100,000 people serious attention now. 1984-1991 + 66% +33% In today’s labor market, people who 1991-2000 + 53 −47 don’t have high school diplomas 2000-2008 + 5 0 have terrible job prospects and very little to lose in economic terms, so it’s not surprising that two-thirds of the inmates in state prisons are high school dropouts. In about half the There are other reasons to ques- have been altered if, say, one of the states it’s legal to drop out of school tion the size of the impact of putting factors cited as a possible explana- at age 16, but between the 1960s more people behind bars. As Franklin tion had been removed from the mix. and ’80s some states increased their Zimring, a law professor at the In the case of the decline in crime in minimum age to 17 or 18. Those University of California, Berkeley, has the 1990s, there are several possible changes provide a natural experiment pointed out, Canada experienced a explanations. In addition to the big in the effects of extra schooling on drop in crime during the 1990s simi- increase in the incarceration rate, crime. Economists Lance Lochner lar to what the United States saw, there were significant expansions of the University of Western Ontario but without any notable expansion of police budgets and an easing of and Enrico Moretti of the University in its prison population. Of course, gang wars over the lucrative crack of California, Berkeley, found that Canadians do not make an ideal con- trade. Other pressures, such as a people in the birth cohorts that were trol group for Americans because too large increase in children born to forced to stay in school longer had many other variables are different to unmarried women and the growth of lower crime and incarceration rates the north, but the general similarity in income inequality, probably pushed as adults than their predecessors crime trends for the two countries is in the other direction, fostering an did. One extra year of high school nonetheless worth remarking upon. increase in crime. It’s nearly impos- reduced arrest rates for young men In fact, the crime drop remains an sible to sort out the impact of these by about 11 percent. It’s not clear enigma — and, seemingly, a miracle. different forces. what caused this improvement — It was completely unexpected. No everything from better economic expert (or anyone else we know of) Thinking up possible explanations prospects to the influence of a predicted it. And now, faced with the for the crime drop can be a sort of more salutary peer group could be fact that this new world of low crime parlor game for social scientists.