{"id":11289,"date":"2013-04-28T10:23:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-28T09:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11289"},"modified":"2013-04-28T10:23:47","modified_gmt":"2013-04-28T09:23:47","slug":"why-is-crime-falling-heres-15-possible-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11289","title":{"rendered":"Why is crime falling? Here’s 15 possible reasons."},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, I did a posting<\/a> about the dramatically falling levels of most crimes across many developed countries. I explained that nobody was sure of the explanation.<\/p>\n

In today’s “Observer” newspaper, political columnist Andrew Rawnsley devotes his weekly piece<\/a> to the subject and floats no less than 15 possible reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The reduction of lead in petrol. (Lead in the atmosphere deforms the brain.)<\/li>\n
  2. The proliferation of CCTV. (Criminals know they are much more likely to be watched.)<\/li>\n
  3. Car immobilisers and home alarms. (It has got harder to commit a crime.)<\/li>\n
  4. The steep decline in the cost of consumer goods such as televisions. (A lot of stuff that used to be stolen really isn’t worth nicking any more.)<\/li>\n
  5. The much bigger size of consumer goods such as televisions. (It ain’t easy to get a 40-inch plasma screen through a window.)<\/li>\n
  6. More liberal abortion laws. (The controversial theory advanced by the authors of “Freakonomics” who argued that making it easier to get an abortion has diminished the number of children born into the underclass.)<\/li>\n
  7. An ageing population. (Most crime is committed by young men and most of their victims are other young men. Fewer young men means less crime.)<\/li>\n
  8. Rising numbers of women. (They are much less likely to commit crime than men. The proportion of the population that is female is going up.)<\/li>\n
  9. A more feminised society. (Men are becoming less larcenous and dangerous under the moderating influence of the more law-abiding sex.)<\/li>\n
  10. A more middle-class society. (The middle classes do commit crime, but it is much more likely to be non-violent.)<\/li>\n
  11. More immigrants. (Immigrants are less likely to commit crime than the indigenous population.).<\/li>\n
  12. Home computer games. (Give young men an alternative to vandalising, robbing and fighting.)<\/li>\n
  13. Easy access to hardcore porn on the internet. (Gives young men another alternative to vandalising, robbing and fighting.)<\/li>\n
  14. Cheap gyms. (Give young men somewhere else to work off their surplus testosterone.)<\/li>\n
  15. Social media. (It has civilised people and made them more tolerant. If you are reading this online, you can test this proposition by going to the comments section and seeing how civilised that is.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Earlier this week, I did a posting about the dramatically falling levels of most crimes across many developed countries. I explained that nobody was sure of the explanation. In today’s “Observer” newspaper, political columnist Andrew Rawnsley devotes his weekly piece to the subject and floats no less than 15 possible reasons: The reduction of lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11292,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11289\/revisions\/11292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}