To: epicure who wrote (287430 ) 1/5/2016 1:05:34 PM From: Sam Respond to According to the Wiki article, violent crime has declined over the past 20 years, and historically has declined quite a bit since colonial times.[6] However, during the early 20th century, crime rates in the United States were higher compared to parts of Western Europe. For example, 198 homicides were recorded in the American city of Chicago in 1916, a city of slightly over 2 million at the time. This level of crime was not exceptional when compared to other American cities such as New York, but was much higher relative to European cities, such as London , which then had three times the population but recorded only 45 homicides in the same year. [7] The number of police officers increased considerably in the 1990s. [8] On September 16, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law. Under the act, over $30 billion in federal aid was spent over a six-year period to improve state and local law enforcement, prisons and crime prevention programs. [9] Proponents of the law, including the President, touted it as a lead contributor to the sharp drop in crime which occurred throughout the 1990s, [9] while critics have dismissed it as an unprecedented federal boondoggle. [9] The prison population has expanded since the mid-1970s . [8] Starting in the mid-1980s, the crack cocaine market grew rapidly before declining again a decade later. Some authors have pointed towards the link between violent crimes and crack use. [8] One hypothesis suggests a causal link between legalized abortion and the drop in crime during the 1990s. [10] Changing demographics of an aging population has been cited for the drop in overall crime. [11] Another hypothesis suggests reduced lead exposure as the cause; Scholar Mark A.R. Kleiman writes: "Given the decrease in lead exposure among children since the 1980s and the estimated effects of lead on crime, reduced lead exposure could easily explain a very large proportion—certainly more than half—of the crime decrease of the 1994-2004 period. A careful statistical study relating local changes in lead exposure to local crime rates estimates the fraction of the crime decline due to lead reduction as greater than 90 percent. [12] en.wikipedia.org
