The Rise and Fall of Crime
Here’s a comment I submitted to John Tierney’s blog.
Prof. Zimring and the criminologists didn’t predict the drop in crime that started in the 90’s, but it was what a simple model of deterrence would predict: when the probability of punishment rises to the level of the 1960’s, crime will fall to that level. (Actually, the probability didn’t rise that much for most crimes except murder, and the rates didn’t fall that much either). I didn’t predict it, but that’s because I didn’t have enough faith in the simple model.
For some figures, see this 1999 report by Morgan Reynolds.