Freakanomics Chapter 4

This chapter talks about the sharp decline in both violent and nonviolent crimes during the 1990’s. In the years previous to 1990 crime had risen eighty percent leading most experts to believe that the United States would continue seeing an increase in crime. However this was not the case, crime levels had fallen back to where they were forty years ago during the 1960’s.This shocked almost everyone and led to question asked by the author in this chapter which was “where have all the criminal gone?”Most articles cited different reasons such as strong economy and tougher gun control laws as their reasons for the decline in crime. I would have thought the decline in the crime rate was due to the stronger economy since more people have jobs and money they would be less likely to rob and steal. However the date proved that the stronger economy did not have any impact on the decreasing crime rate. The author then credits a few changes in the 1990’s that greatly impacted the crime rate.

The first was the increased reliance on prison. More criminals began going to jail as well as serving longer sentences. It would only make sense that if more criminals were being locked up for their crimes, others would be more cautious and shy away from doing anything illegal. Another change was the increased number of police and new policing strategies. With more police on the streets the criminal’s chance at a successful crime dropped and with the new strategies, cops were in better shape, with better equipment and a new way of thinking. They stopped every single crime believing that if you stop small crimes then larger crimes would not occur.

The main reason the author cites as to why the crime rate dropped was abortion being legalized in the United States. Before when women could not have abortions they ignored their child and didn’t provide good homes, which would lead the child to having a higher chance of becoming a criminal. After the Roe vs. Wade case made abortion legal, the abortion number hit 1.6 million in 1980. So these kids that would have come from broken homes and were more likely to become criminals had suddenly disappeared, which meant the crime rate would drop. The author also compared U.S. states abortion rate to their criminal rate and discovered that the states with the highest abortion rates and had the sharpest declines in crime.