Why Is U.S. Violent Crime Declining? (Part 2): Goldberg
In the mid-1990s, even as crime rates across the U.S. were falling, a group of prominent criminologists and sociologists came along with the intention of scaring the hell out of us.
Don’t be fooled by this downturn in violence, they said. Something much worse is coming -- the “superpredators,” a group of children who, in 10 years, would grow into the most murderous cohort of teenagers the country had seen.
This is how Time magazine portrayed the problem in January 1996: “They are growing up, too frequently, in abusive or broken homes, with little adult supervision and few positive role models. Left to themselves, they spend much of their time hanging out on the streets or soaking up violent TV shows.”
Although the crime rate was dropping for adults, the article added, it was soaring for teens, a population that would soon be booming. It then quotes the esteemed criminologist James Alan Fox, who says: “This is the calm before the crime storm. So long as we fool ourselves in thinking we’re winning the war against crime, we may be blindsided by this bloodbath of teenage violence that is lurking in the future.”
Well, the future came, and no, you didn’t somehow miss the“bloodbath of teenage violence.” Because it didn’t happen. Crime rates continued to fall through the first decade of the new millennium, and continue to fall today. In the city whose crime patterns I know best, Washington, D.C., the homicide rate --perhaps the most important single marker of civilization’s advance or retreat -- is dropping through the floor.
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