Since were allowed to stretch with a silly philosphy such as this; Instead of killing innocent babies, why don't we just kill the criminals?? Instead of punishing the innocent, punish the guilty. Punishment by death will discourage crime, and naturally, get rid of the ones that do commit the crime.
Just finished the book... not bad. Here is what he said on the subject in slightly more detail: Major newspaper articles published from 1991 to 2001 attribute the following causes to the drop in crime (numbers in parenthesis are the number of articles per corresponding cause). Innovative policing strategies (52) Increased reliance on prisons (47) Changes in crack and other drug markets (33) Aging of the population (32) Tougher gun control laws (32) Strong economy (28) Increased number of police (26) All other explanations including capital punishment, concealed weapons laws, gun buybacks, etc (34) According to the book.... sorry don't have time or energy to recap in detail, here are his evaluations of the conventional wisdom listed above. The ones not listed do not contribute statistically. The numbers in parenthesis are the percentage contribution to the total drop in crime rates: Increased reliance on prisons (33%) Changes in crack and other drug markets (15%) Increased number of police (10%) That means conventional wisdom doesn't explain 42% of the crime drop during that period of time. Enter his explanation... abortion and Roe v. Wade in 1973. He includes some references for situations that were the exact opposite.... statistics that show children by women who are denied abortions are more likely to become criminals, which occured in Europe where some countries had the opposite history as the US (abortion was banned after a long period of time as opposed to legalized). See the initial post for info about the link between crime and abortion. Where the initial post leaves off... "There are even more correlations, positive and negative, that shore up the abortion-crime link."... it states: In states with the high abortion rates, the entire crime drop occured in the young, post Roe demographic. There was no crime drop in the older criminal demographic. Another statistic was that there were far fewer single teenage mothers -- for many of the aborted baby girls would have been the children most likely to replicate their own mothers' tendencies. Also, studies in Australia and Canada show similar links between legalized abortion and crime. To illustrate the possible impact of abortion he shows that the first year abortion was legalized there was 1 abortion for every 4 live births, and the second year there was 1 abortion for every 2.25 live births... numbers that are quite capable of producing MASSIVE demographic shifts. To show his intent is not to take a moral or ethical stance, he drops a quote from G.K. Chesterton, "When there aren't enough hats to go around, the problem isn't solved by lopping off some heads."
To elaborate on ONE of his debunking sections.... (half paraphrased to save time, half quoted directly from Freakonomics)... Even though capital punishment quadrupled between the 1980's and 1990's, there were only 478 executions in the US during the 1990's. Among prisoners on death row, the annual execution rate is 2%. The typical crack selling gang has an average annual death rate of 7% in comparison. If life on death row is safer than life on the streets, it's hard to believe that the fear of execution is a driving force in a criminal's calculus. The negative incentive of capital punishment is simply not serious enough for a criminal to change his behavior. Assume the death penalty IS a deterrent. How much crime does it actually deter? According to an often cited paper stating the most optomistic rates, executing 1 criminal deters 7 homicides. In 1991, there were 14 executions in the US. In 2001 there were 66. According to the above stated rates, those 52 additional executions would have accounted for 364 fewer homicides -- less than 4% of the the actual decrease in homicides that year. Furthermore, the death penalty is rarely given to crimes other than homicides, so it doesn't deter other types of crime. I have no idea about the 1 and 7 stat, but I assume from the context that pro-death penalty advocates must use it as evidence for their case.
He doesn't state it explicitly, but I assume when he is speaking of trends he is not using gross numbers, but per capita numbers. If he is not, then it doesn't matter because the population of the US has consistently grown over time and therefore a gross drop would indicate a per capita drop.
Obviously it would go up, but there are only a fraction of people who would get abortions if it were made illegal again... this is only a statistical study and it isn't making moral judgments.
See above post.... the experiments have already been done in reverse. Make abortion illegal and see how the crime rate increases.
