The Crime Shortage
For
the last 20 years, rates of violent crimes of all sorts have been falling
throughout the United States and elsewhere. Nobody is sure why; some credit
increased enforcement, but this is not supported by the data. (Rates fell both
in cities that got tough, and those that did not.) My favorite theory is that
banning tetraethyl lead from gasoline causes violent crime to fall twenty years
later, when the boys thus unpoisoned enter their prime criminality years
without lowered IQ and inhibitions, which lead is known to cause. The 20-year
lag has been confirmed in many studies.
This
implies an institutional emergency; a crime shortage. With crime rates falling
nationwide, there is not enough crime to justify the crime-control measures in
place. In a democracy, a crime shortage will inspire reduction in police,
courts and prisons; but in an oligarchy, a crime shortage will inspire
doubling-down in enforcement and expenditure. To justify the prisons, criminals
must be found, even amongst the innocent. Therefore mass surveillance and moral
panic.
By
the way, there’s also a war shortage, and a terrorism shortage.
Comment
by BJ:
Two
other more widely accepted theories are that as the Baby Boom matured, a lot of
the crime went away, and that when abortion was legalized, the worst sorts of
people who would have taken over from the Baby Boom never got created.
I
agree with you, however, that WHATEVER the cause, the "crime and
punishment industry" has an incentive to lobby so as to still be fed.
No comments:
Post a Comment