Research Reveals Link between High Pollen Counts and Low Crime Rates

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"A large literature points out that exposure to criminal victimization has far-reaching effects on public health. What remains surprisingly unexplored is [the] role that health shocks play in explaining aggregate fluctuations in offending. This research finds novel evidence that crime is sensitive to health shocks. We consider the responsiveness of crime to a pervasive and common health shock which we argue shifts costs and benefits for offenders and victims: seasonal allergies. Leveraging daily variation in city-specific pollen counts, we present evidence that violent crime declines in U.S. cities on days in which the local pollen count is unusually high and that these effects are driven by residential violence. While past literature suggests that property crimes have more instrumental motives, require planning, and hence are particularly sensitive to permanent changes in the cost and benefits of crime, we find that violence may be especially sensitive to health shocks."

The Relationship between Firearm Prevalence and Violent Crime
"In the past 12 years, several new studies found that increases in the prevalence of gun ownership are associated with increases in violent crime. Whether this association is attributable to gun prevalence causing more violent crime is unclear. If people are more likely to acquire guns when crime rates are rising or high, then the same pattern of evidence would be expected. An important limitation of all studies in this area is the lack of direct measures of the prevalence of gun ownership.

...In this essay, we examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between firearm prevalence and violent crime, including homicide, domestic violence, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery. Most of the studies we examined used the proportion of suicides that were firearm suicides (FS/S) as a proxy for gun prevalence."

Private Conflict, Not Broken Windows
Why community policing should focus on helping to resolve personal and domestic disputes, not signs of physical decay.

"More than three decades ago, The Atlantic published a path-breaking essay that introduced the theory of 'broken windows' to a broad audience. Its authors, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, advocated for a fundamental shift in law enforcement: away from simply apprehending criminals and toward mitigating the visual symbols of urban disorder like loitering, public drunkenness, panhandlers, 'squeegee men,' run-down buildings, and litter- and graffiti-strewn neighborhoods. Their basic metaphor was captured in a simple phrase: 'One broken window becomes many.'

The latest study by criminologists Daniel Tumminelli O’Brien and Robert J. Sampson, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, adds yet more nuance to the critical debate that continues to surround broken windows theory today. The study poses three key questions: To what degree does disorder contribute to the ongoing decline of a neighborhood? If so, what features of it matter? And what are the major pathways that connect disorder to neighborhood decline and, ultimately, to crime?"

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland?

 

 

Even though I grew up in New England, there was something novel about seeing an Icelandic blizzard. It was paralysing, with epic wind gusts that made snowflakes feel like razors.
As I dragged my bags along Reykjavik's snowy pavement, an older man in a Jeep pulled alongside me.

"You want to get in?" he asked.

It sounded crazy. Why would I ever get in a stranger's car?

Despite everything I was taught about riding in cars with strangers, I climbed in the backseat. And I knew nothing bad was going to happen to me.

Read on...
 

An Astonishing New Argument for Why Violent Crime Rates Have Dropped

Less lead. It’s ridiculous -– until you see the evidence. 

It seemed, at first, preposterous. The hypothesis was so exotic that I laughed. The rise and fall of violent crime during the second half of the 20th century and first years of the 21st were caused, it proposed, not by changes in policing or imprisonment, single parenthood, recession, crack cocaine or the legalisation of abortion, but mainly by … lead. 

I don’t mean bullets. The crime waves that afflicted many parts of the world and then, against all predictions, collapsed, were ascribed, in an article published by Mother Jones last week, to the rise and fall in the use of lead-based paint and leaded petrol(1). 

It’s ridiculous – until you see the evidence. Studies between cities, states and nations show that the rise and fall in crime follows, with a roughly 20-year lag, the rise and fall in the exposure of infants to trace quantities of lead(2,3,4). But all that gives us is correlation: an association that could be coincidental. The Mother Jones article, based on several scientific papers, claimed causation. 

Read on... 

This post is a response to the post that follows.  Tom

Supreme Court continues to define what constitutes a ‘violent felony’

For the fourth time in as many years, the Supreme Court on Thursday considered exactly what kind of violent crimes call for the mandatory prison terms Congress provided in the Armed Career Criminal Act.

Get used to it, Justice Antonin Scalia said in a sharp-edged dissent; the court will be trying to sort out the law’s meaning “until the cows come home.”

The justices said that fleeing police custody in a vehicle could be a “violent felony” under the law’s definitions. Scalia not only criticized that decision, but the Congress that approved a law that contains provisions he considers so vague as to be unconsititutional.

“Fuzzy, leave-the-details-to-be-sorted-out-by-the-courts legislation is attractive to the Congressman who wants credit for addressing a national problem but does not have the time (or perhaps the votes) to grapple with the nitty-gritty,” Scalia wrote. “In the field of criminal law, at least, it is time to call a halt.”

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Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts

The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession.

In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.

The news was not as positive in New York City, however. After leading a long decline in crime rates, the city saw increases in all four types of violent lawbreaking — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — including a nearly 14 percent rise in murders. But data from the past few months suggest the city’s upward trend may have slowed or stopped.

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Violent crime fell 1.9 percent in '08, FBI says

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Violent crime dropped for the second year in a row in 2008, according to an annual FBI crime report released Monday.

The FBI's annual crime report is based on statistics provided by almost 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

The total number of violent crimes nationwide dropped 1.9 percent compared with 2007, the FBI reported. Murders and non-negligent manslaughters declined 3.9 percent, aggravated assaults dropped 2.5 percent, and forcible rapes fell by 1.6 percent.

The 89,000 estimated forcible rapes in 2008 was the lowest reported total in 20 years.

Racial minorities suffered disproportionately as victims of some of the most violent crimes. Almost half of the country's 14,000 murder victims, for example, were African-American.

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