When compared with most other advanced countries, the United States stands out
for its very high homicide rates (Van Kesteren, Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta, 2000; Kurki,
1997). With six murders for every 100,000 people, the rate of lethal violence in America
is nearly five times higher than that of France, Germany, or England (van Kesteren,
Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta, 2000; Wacquant, 2006; Zimring and Hawkins, 1997).
What social factors explain our rates of crime? And why would we feel so safe,
considering that our violent crime rate is so high?
Sociologists have considered three explanations:
1.American culture emphasizes on individual economic success as themeasure of
self-worth, at the expense of family, neighborhood, artistic accomplishment, and
spiritual well-being (Currie, 1985).2.Not everyone has a high standard of living. The United States has one of the
largest income differentials in the world. When the gap begins to shrink, as it did
during Clinton-era prosperity, the crime rate declines (Martens, 2005).3.Guns—that is, the easy availability of guns and the lax enforcement of loose
gun control measures, coupled with an American value system that places gun
ownership as a sacred right—are a contributor to the crime rate.Despite the fact that our overall crimes rates are higher than some other advanced
countries, such as Ireland and Austria, and our outsize homicide rate distinguishes
the United States from all of Western Europe (Wacquant, 2006), it is also true that
crime rates in the United States have been falling. The National Crime Victimization
Survey (2005), which addresses victims of crime (and therefore leaves out murder),
reports that the violent crime rate has dropped by 58 percent and the property crime
rate has dropped by 52 percent since 1973. Violent crime dropped 14 percent in just
two years, between 2001 and 2003, and stayed the same between 2004 and 2005
(U.S. Department of Justice, 2005). (Figure 6.2).
So sociologists have to ask two questions: Why are some of our crime rates
so high? And why should the crime rate be falling? Research by sociologists and
CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES 187Did the legaliza-
tion of abortion
cause the dec-
line of crime? In
the book Freakonomics(2005), economist
Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dub-
ner suggest the controversial idea that
the legalization of abortion in 1973
meant that far fewer unwanted children
were born, and that these children would
have had few economic opportunities and
lower levels of education and employ-
ment. They would have become adults in
the mid-1990s—which is exactly when
the crime rate began to decline. Thus,
many would-be criminals—those with the
demographic “profile” of criminals—were
never born. Some disagree with their cal-
culations (Foote and Goetz, 2005).
This is a marvelous example of what
sociologists call a specious correlation.
Sure, the two variables may be correlated,
but there are so many intervening vari-
ables, not to mention 20 years of otherAbortion and the Crime Rate
How do we know
what we know
factors that might have influenced
things, that one cannot possibly say with
any certainty that this one variable
caused another. For one thing, how do we
know that the fetuses that were aborted
were more likely to be criminals? Or that
the legalization of abortion was not also
connected to a larger set of social and
economic reforms that reduced the crime
rate? Do you think, perhaps, that all the
recent efforts to make abortions more dif-
ficult will result in a dramatic increase in
crime 20 years from now? I doubt it.