By Michael Fitzgerald, The Imprint, October 8, 2020
A novel new research projection suggests crime rates will decrease in the coming years if demographic and economic trends hold steady — even if people are imprisoned at lower rates.
The analysis from three top criminologists evaluated trends like inflation and teen birth rates, concluding that those factors “outweigh the impact of imprisonment rates on crime.” Further, they found, “a state’s level of imprisonment has little to do with what happens to its rate of murder over time and nothing to do with its rate of robbery.” New York, for example, which decreased its prison population by about a third since the late 1990s, still saw crime decrease over 40% during the same timeframe.
Reacting to the study, Alex Piquero, a widely cited criminologist and chair of the sociology department at the University of Miami, said it was an important contribution to the literature at a time when candidates in the current presidential race have made high-stakes claims about law and order.
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