News Release

Societal changes major cause of recent drop in crime rates

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Penn State

Long-term societal changes, more than any one presidential initiative, have resulted in the dramatic decrease in crime rates during the last two decades, researchers say.

"The drop in most of the serious crimes has been especially pronounced during the Clinton presidency," says Dr. Darrell Steffensmeier, professor of sociology at Penn State. "FBI statistics show that violent crimes fell about 18 percent in 1996 from 1992, and national murder rates reached the lowest level since 1969. Property crime rates, particularly burglary, also fell steadily."

"President Clinton, in his 1998 State of the Union address and elsewhere, has taken credit for the crime reduction," Steffensmeier notes. "To some degree, he is justified, since, under his watch, the government has funded the hiring of more police officers and put a greater emphasis on community-based crime prevention initiatives."

"Some attribute the recent decline in crime to dramatic increases in incarceration rates that presumably incapacitate or prevent crimes by locking up high-frequency offenders who commit a disproportionate amount of all index crimes," says Steffensmeier. "However, because the rise in incarceration rates extends backwards at least into the late 1970s and thus predates the 1990s drop in crime, it appears unlikely that higher imprisonment rates explain much, if any, of the recent drop in crime, just as they don't account for its rise in the late 1980s."

A more likely explanation for the decline in crime rates is an improved economy and recent developments in crime prevention. The strong economy not only may cause some would-be criminals to seek legitimate employment, but it may also enhance overall public morale leading to greater confidence in government and other institutions.

Steffensmeier and Miles D. Harer, research analyst with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, are co-authors of the paper, "Making Sense of Recent U.S. Crime Trends, 1980-96/8: Age-Composition Effects and Other Explanations," presented today (Aug. 9) at the American Sociological Association meeting in Chicago. The same paper will appear in the August issue of the Journal Of Research In Crime And Delinquency.

"Also, over the past half-decade, media and citizen concerns about the `crime problem' have fueled an unprecedented number of rational crime-fighting initiatives,' " Steffensmeier notes. "These involve not only community policing, prosecution and mobilization but youth and gang programs, targeting of crime 'hot spots,' drug courts with diversion to treatment, in- and after-school programs, juvenile curfews, conflict resolution classes and community-based alternatives to incarceration."

"Another major factor here is the combined aging and cultural dominance of the baby boomers, now entering their forties and fifties," Steffensmeier says. "These now make up 30 percent of the population, and they head nearly 4 in 10 households. This enormous, accumulating age shift has now reached the threshold or `critical mass' stage needed to trigger an en masse change in our cultural values and collective conscience."

This in turn has resulted in greater civility and a lesser emphasis on narcissistic, materialistic values, adds the College of the Liberal Arts faculty member.

People, especially males, are most crime-prone in their late teens and early twenties. The relative shrinking of this age group might be construed as one cause of the reduced crime rate. This was certainly true during the 1980s and early 1990s, the Reagan and Bush years, according to Steffensmeier.

"On the other hand, age composition effects had only a small impact on crime rates during the Clinton Nineties," says Steffensmeier. "Even when the figures are adjusted for decreases in the most crime-prone age groups, there was still a significant drop in crime under Clinton. This suggests that, at least to some degree, crime rate declines were due to more basic changes in society."

"Our data suggests that, while crime rates will go up slowly between 2000 and 2010, the crime explosion expected by some experts will not take place," he notes.

UCR statistics are based on police department counts of citizen reports of victimization and on the number of crimes or victimizations witnessed by the police themselves. Offenses listed in the UCR do not refer to all types of crime, but to seven "serious" offenses that make up the Crime Index: homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft.

The NCVS is a survey of scientifically selected sample of households throughout the nation.

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EDITORS: Dr. Steffensmeier is at 814-466-6476 or at d4s@psu.edu by email; Mr. Harer is at mharer@bop.gov by e-mail.


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