Experts see a combination of factors behind the nation’s crime decline. Here are some of the most common theories:
* Jeremy Travis and Michelle Waul, Reflections on the Crime Decline: Lessons for the Future? (Washington: Urban Institute, August 2002), http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/410546_crimedecline.pdf.
† Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, The Crime Drop in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
‡ Alfred Blumstein and Richard Rosenfeld, “Factors Contributing to U.S. Crime Trends,” in Understanding Crime Trends: Workshop Report, eds. Arthur S. Goldberger and Richard Rosenfeld (Washington: National Academies Press, 2008), 13, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12472&page=13.
§ Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (Washington: National Academies Press, 2014).
|| Franklin E. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline (New York: Oxford University Press, November 2006).
# Richard Wright et al., “Less Cash, Less Crime: Evidence From the Electronic Benefit Transfer Program,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series (2014), doi: 10.3386/w19996.
** Graham Farrell et al., “The Crime Drop and the Security Hypothesis,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 48, no. 2 (2011): 147, doi: 10.1177/0022427810391539.
†† Philip J. Cook and John MacDonald, “Public Safety Through Private Action: An Economic Assessment of BIDs, Locks, and Citizen Cooperation,” Economic Journal 121 (2010): 445, http://www.nber.org/papers/w15877.pdf.
‡‡ Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series (2007), http://www.nber.org/papers/w15877.pdf.