In a Safer Age, U.S. Rethinks Its ‘Tough on Crime’ System
Perhaps nowhere has the drop been more stunning than in New York City, which reported only 328 homicides for 2014, compared with 2,245 in 1990. The homicide rate in some cities has fluctuated more — Washington ticked up to 104 in 2014, after a modern low of 88 in 2012. But that still is a drastic fall from a peak of 474 in 1990.
.. “Canada, with practically none of the policy changes we point to here, had a comparable decline in crime over the same period,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor and an expert in criminal justice at the University of California, Berkeley. He described the quest for an explanation as “criminological astrology.”
.. The fall in serious crime was accompanied by declines in other social ills such as teenage pregnancy, child abuse and juvenile delinquency, emphasizing the role of cultural shifts beyond the ken of the justice system.
“Young people are growing up in a safer environment and behaving more responsibly,” said Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and co-editor of a 2014 report by the National Academy of Sciences on the consequences of mass incarceration.