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LEAD_DOWN
August 28, 2013
"America's Real Criminal Element: Lead"
Mother Jones, Jan/Feb 2013
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
There's a theory going
around that the main "Crime Is at its Lowest Level in 50 Years.
source of the violent A Simple Molecule May Be the Reason Why."
crime wave of 60s Jan. 3, 2013
through 90s has been http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-crime-connection
lead exposure.
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones
has done a fair job of
laying out this thesis,
explaining how it Yes "correlation doesn't prove
essentially correlates causation", but absence of
much better than the correlation *does* disprove it. (Or goes a long
competing theories. way toward
And it isn't disproving it.)
Wherever lead gas was banned a *single*
blood levels of lead started correlation,
declining, and 20 years but multiple
later, violent crime came ones from
down with the lead. different
places and
(This is something that times.
bears repeating if
you're someone who uses
the TV screen as primary Kevin Drum summarizes:
lens: violent crime is
down. It is down. It "We now have a huge amount of
has decreased. Got evidence linking lead to violent
that?) crime. We have evidence not just
at the national level, but also
at the state level, the city
level, and the international
level. We have longitudinal
Drum also makes the studies that track children from
point that he's not birth to adulthood to find out if
positing a single higher blood lead levels lead to
factor explanation more arrests for violent
for all crime-- crimes. ... Everything we
he is suggesting now know about the effects of
that lead is the lead on the brain tells us that
one factor explaning even moderately high levels of
the rise in crime lead exposure are associated with
in the 60s, and the aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD,
drop in the 70s. and lower IQ."
A follow-up story discusses
some of the international data,
looking at drops in murder
rates in different places in
South America.
"Why Is Murder Down in São
Paulo? The Answer is..."
Kevin Drum, Aug. 2, 2013
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/murder-sao-paulo-lead-ethanol
"Falling crime
Where have all the burglars gone?"
July 20, 2013
A recent story in The Economist on
the subject of violent crime http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic
comments on the lead theory
dismissively in passing: "the
causal link is far from proven". They attribute the lead theory
to Jessica Wolpaw Reyes. This
is just one of a number of
researchers that Kevin Drum
sites... and then they don't
mention Kevin Drum at all.
(The Economist does *not*
It waxes enthusiastic read Mother Jones.)
about various other
theories: e.g. cops
are better at locking (And everyone else).
up bad guys. (Among the non-rich.)
Or alternately (attributed to
criminologist Jan van Dijk),
it's because of credit cards
and ATM machines: no one
carries cash any more, so
there's no reason for any of
us Rational Actors to mug
anyone.
Needless to say, the
causal links haven't been
exactly proved on these
theories either, but they
have the virtue of not
admitting that consumer
protections laws are good
for something.
Or that environmentalism
matters.
A few things about this
are of interest: if you
ask a question like
"what can we do about
urban crime?". The
first thing to try may
be to continue to clean And if you run into
things up. some guy with fancy
theories about how
it's all the fault
of gangsta rap
corrupting black
youth, you want to
step back and ask
for more data.
RACE_DOWN
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