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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
271 points paulpauper | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.249s | source
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casenmgreen ◴[25 Jun 25 18:01 UTC] No.44380132[source]▶
Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available.

If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot.

If it is, crime rates are down.

When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for the effect to show up.

Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young adults.

This is apparently the only possible theory at the moment. It's not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.

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mensetmanusman ◴[26 Jun 25 00:24 UTC] No.44383084[source]▶
America closes a college per week and multiple primary schools per week. There are fewer youth to commit crime or otherwise.

In NYC the black community has a majority of pregnancies not end with the birth of a child. This is where abortion policy is focused.

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BirAdam ◴[26 Jun 25 02:09 UTC] No.44383612[source]▶
It’s simpler and less nefarious than that. Kids have to meet up to produce offspring. If kids don’t meet up, no drugs, no sex, no kids having kids. Video games, smart phones, and chat apps are more likely the cause of this change.
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1. wickedsight ◴[27 Jun 25 07:42 UTC] No.44394622[source]▶
Someone else commented about a correlation between violent video games and reduction in crime. I feel like 'people are inside playing games' is as much of an explanation for that as is 'violent games give violent people an outlet'.

I am not a violent kid, but when I was young I would cause some mischief in the form of making fires in the forest and using pipe to blow paper darts into open windows. Then when video games came up, we stopped going outside and played video games together.

Coincidentally, cyber crime is massively rising and a lot of the perpetrators are relatively young in my experience. I feel like maybe violent crime is dropping because these people found different ways of getting what they want, like selling bogus investment schemes online.