The Breadth and Causes of Contemporary Cross-National Homicide Trends

Bringing Crime Trends Back into Criminology: A Critical Assessment of the Literature and a Blueprint for Future Inquiry

“…McCall et al (2010) show that although many large cities exhibited homicide trends that parallel national trends between 1976 and 2005, several also experienced shifts that differed slightly in magnitude and timing (see also Baumer et al 1998, Rosenfeld et al 2005. Additionally, Baumer & Wolff (2014a) Scholars also investigate whether crime trends vary across microspatial locations, usually within a single city. This research typically employs group-based trajectory models or parametric growthcurve models to determine whether there are distinct clusters of areas (e.g., street segments or census tracts) that follow similar crime trends (e.g., stable, increasing, or decreasing).…”

“…There are many potentially useful frameworks that could help to better organize and guide research on crime trends, 7 but we build on the general framework outlined by Baumer & Wolff (2014a) to illuminate the utility of integrating theory more centrally within this literature. That framework is especially useful, in our view, because it parallels the basic dimensions of the etiology of criminal behavior more generally (see Cohen & Felson 1979, Tittle 1995 and because it draws attention to both the proximate and more distal causal mechanisms implied by the various arguments that have been advanced for contemporary crime reductions.…”

“…That framework is especially useful, in our view, because it parallels the basic dimensions of the etiology of criminal behavior more generally (see Cohen & Felson 1979, Tittle 1995 and because it draws attention to both the proximate and more distal causal mechanisms implied by the various arguments that have been advanced for contemporary crime reductions. Baumer & Wolff (2014a) maintain that each of the major explanations for the contemporary crime decline implies one or more of the following causal processes: (a) enhancements in the social controls to which individuals are exposed, thereby reducing the likelihood that they engage in crime; (b) reductions in propensities and motivations to engage in crime; and/or (c) decreases in the exposure of individuals to physical or social settings conducive to crime. The last of these categories references modifications in opportunity structures that, in turn, can influence social controls, criminal propensities, or both.…”

Why Crime Rates Are Falling throughout the Western World

“…The simple explanations center on secular subjects including situational crime prevention initiatives and target hardening, the bureaucratization of modern life, and cultural shifts that are denunciatory of crime and violence. The complex explanations concern interactions among cultural and secular changes that have influenced capacities for informal social control and individual self-control (Baumer and Wolff 2014;Eisner 2014).…”

Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality

“…In the US-focused literature on the decline of rates of crime, among the many explanations that have been offered and evaluated by researchers are the general aging of the population Baumer and Wolff 2014), a delayed effect of the legalization of abortion Levitt 2001, 2004;Foote and Goetz 2005), lower blood-lead levels among successive birth cohorts associated with the removal of lead from gasoline and paint (Nevin 2000(Nevin , 2007Reyes 2015), technological innovations that have made it more difficult to steal, especially locking systems in new cars (Farrell, Tilley, and Tseloni 2014), higher police staffing levels (Chalfin and McCrary 2013), innovative policing strategies (Braga and Bond 2008;Weisburd, Telep, Hinkle, and Eek 2010;Zimring 2007), an increase in the deployment of private security guards (Cook andMacDonald 2010, 2011) the waning of the crack cocaine epidemic (Fryer, Heaton, Levitt, and Murphy 2013), and the enormous rise of US incarceration rates (Levitt 1996;Liedke, Piehl, and Useem 2006;Raphael and Stoll 2013;Lofstrom and Raphael 2016). In an earlier assessment of the contribution of these factors in this journal, argues that nearly all of the US crime decline since 1991 can be explained by four factors: the legalization of abortion, the waning of the crack epidemic, the rise in the US incarceration rate, and the increase in police staffing levels.…”