Criminal Sociology

Consider the precipitous drop in American crime in the mid-1990s. One hypothesis is that the drop stemmed from a single piece of legislation, the Clean Air Act, which required automobiles to switch from leaded gasoline to unleaded. With less lead in the air, crime saw a significant drop twenty-three years later. It turns out high lead levels in the

Clearly, depending on which theory of crime one adopts, the target variable for causal intervention becomes very different: jobs, disorder suppression via law enforcement, or supporting collective efficacy via the nonprofit sector for (A), (B), and (C), respectively.

Bill Tafoya, the special agent who served as our “futurist” at Quantico, advocated a minimum of a ten-year commitment of money and resources on the magnitude of what we sent into the Persian Gulf. He calls for a wide-scale reinstatement of Project Head Start, one of the most effective long-term, anticrime programs in history. He doesn’t think more