Where have all the criminals gone? – Levitt and Dubner
Possible crime-drop explanations:
1. Innovative policing strategies: analysis of the facts shows that the innovative policing
strategies probably had little effect on the decline because crime dropped before
certain innovative policing strategies, the new police strategies were accompanied by
a hiring binge (increase in the number of police has been proven to reduce crime),
and crime rates went down everywhere, not only in the places with innovative
policing strategies
2. Increased reliance on prisons: harsh prison terms have been shown to act as
deterrent (for the would-be criminal on the street) and prophylactic (for the would-be
criminal who is already locked up)
3. Changes in crack and other drug markets: typical crack murder involved one crack
dealer shooting another (not a crackhead shooting someone else) when the huge
profits for selling crack went away, dealers began to underprice each other, so that
profits vanished dealers decided that the smaller profits didn’t justify the risk; it
was no longer worth killing someone to steal their crack turf the crash of the crack
market caused a crime drop, but the net effect of crack is still being felt in the form of
violent crime
4. Aging of the population: since people mellow out as they get older, more older
people must lead to less crime, but demographic change is too slow and subtle a
process to explain the suddenness of the crime decline
5. Tougher gun-control laws: when guns are easily available, homicide rates can be high,
but that is not true in every country guns do not cause crime stiff increase in
prison time for anyone caught in possession of an illegal gun has proven moderately
effective in reduction in crime
6. Strong economy: a stronger job market may make certain crimes relatively less
attractive, but that is only the case for crimes with a direct financial motivation as
opposed to violent crimes (while these percentages have also dropped) studies
have shown virtually no link between the economy and violent crime
7. Increased number of police: when police were randomly sprinkled in some cities and
not in others, you could see that crime declined in the cities where the police
happened to land
8. Increased use of capital punishment: given the rarity with which executions are
carried out and the long delays in doing so, no reasonable criminal should be
deterred by the threat of execution (and if life on death row is safer than life on the
streets, it’s hard to believe that the fear of execution is a driving force in a criminal’s
calculus); capital punishment could not explain a big drop in homicides; because the
death penalty is rarely given for crimes other than homicide; its deterrent effect
cannot account for a decline in other violent crimes
9. Gun buyback: the payoff to the gun seller isn’t an adequate incentive for anyone who
plans to use his gun and the number of surrendered guns is no match for even the
number of new guns simultaneously coming to the market does not impact a lot
to the fall of crime
10. Legality of abortion: children born during the abortion ban are more likely to become
criminals when a woman is denied an abortion, she often resents her baby and
fails to provide it with a good home the factors that drove women to have an
, abortion seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led
unhappy and possibly criminal lives legalized abortion led to less unwantedness,
unwantedness leads to high crime, so legalized abortion led to less crime early-
legalizing states saw crime begin to fall earlier and states with the highest abortion
rates experienced the greatest crime drops
Crime rates had risen because of the justice system: conviction rates declined, criminals who
were convicted served shorter sentences, there was an expansion in the rights of people
accused of crimes, and politicians were growing shorter on crime (for fear of sounding racist)
if you wanted to commit a crime, there was a slimmer likelihood of being convicted and, if
convicted, a shorter prison term; crime rates had risen because of the decrease in policing
Broken window theory (Wilson and Kelling): argues that minor nuisances, if left unchecked,
turn into major nuisances
Syllogistic logic – Gensler
Syllogistic logic: studies arguments whose validity depends on ‘all’, ‘no’, ‘some’, and similar
notions
Here we use capital letters for general
categories and small letters for specific
individuals we use 5 words: ‘all’, ‘no’,
‘some’, ‘is’, and ‘not’
Well-formed formulas (wffs):
sequences having any of these 8
forms above (you can use different
letters) wffs are correct formulas
and non-wffs are misformed formulas
Rules for constructing wffs:
Wffs beginning with a word (not a letter) use 2 capital letters
Wffs beginning with a letter (not a word) begin with a small letter
If a wff begins with a small letter, then the second letter can be either capital or small:
- Use capital letters for general terms (terms that describe or put in a category)
use capitals for ‘a so and so’ adjectives, and verbs
- Use small letters for singular terms (terms that pick out a specific person or thing)
use small letters for ‘the so and so’, ‘this so and so’ and proper names
Syllogism: argument using syllogistic wffs vertical sequence of one or more wffs in which
each letter occurs twice, and the letters form a chain (each wff has at least one letter in
common with the wff just below it, if there is one, and the first wff has at least one letter in
common with the last wff)
The last wff in a syllogism is the conclusion; any other wffs are premises
