
The Collapsing Crime Rates of the ’90s Might Have Been Driven by Cellphones - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/how-mobile-phones-could-have-changed-the-drug-game/590503/
======
curtis
This article barely mentions lead, which seems like a big oversight. See Kevin
Drum's "An Updated Lead-Crime Roundup for 2018":
[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-
le...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-
roundup-for-2018/).

~~~
badpun
The whole world went from leaded to unleaded fuel around the same time. During
that time in Poland, where I live, crime, if anything, went up. Someone should
do a study across all countries where the data is obtainable to confirm/refute
the lead hypothesis.

~~~
rstuart4133
You absorb the lead when you are a child. It's biggest effect is in young
adult years. I'd expect at least a 10 year delay from "reduction of
atmospheric lead" to "reduced crime rates".

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dr01d
Nope. Video games IMO. Cheap awesome entertainment for basically everyone.
Everyone can afford consoles and escape reality. Why act out aggression in
real life and risk prison when video games let you do all that and more?

~~~
codesushi42
Or free and easy access to porn. Really.

~~~
artificial
90s dialup Internet was not in every house yet. Microsoft succeeded in getting
PCs in homes but free was not the name of the game with pay per minute online
access. Things didn’t really take off until the 00s with broadband access.

~~~
codesushi42
Not true. Pay per minute Internet access did not last that long, by the mid
90s it wasn't even a thing. Image porn on the Internet was a big deal in the
90s, especially in the second half of the decade. Plenty of people had dial
up, hence the massive popularity of ICQ and later AIM. And of course email,
online gaming, and the dotcom bubble...

And I never said Internet porn. While not free, porn was still cheap and easy
to get on cable or satellite, or at video rental stores.

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frereubu
Any correlation like this - as implicitly stated in the article - should be
taken with a massive pinch of salt. They're only given any credence because
they "make sense" \- i.e. fit preconceived notions of how the world works,
mixed with a magic PR-friendly sprinkling of supposedly counter-intuition -
rather than anything meaningful in the stats.

For more, see [http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-
correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations) where you will
find that, for example, the number of people who drowned by falling into a
pool correlates with the number of films that Nicholas Cage appeared in that
year.

~~~
bjourne
But the article does enumerate flaws wit the cellphone-violent crime
hypothesis:

The University of Leeds criminologist Graham Farrell, who is closely
associated with the hypothesis that better security technology is the primary
cause of the crime decline, also took issue with some of the paper’s data
analysis. “At first glance, it seems to be that antenna [density] increased
mostly after homicide already declined,” he wrote to me in an email.

The data that the economists presented don’t match the chronology of the
decline of homicides, especially considering that their proxy variable—how
many antennas were up—would almost certainly precede cellphone usage by some
period of time. The timing, he said, is “not even close.”

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but no one said it did.

~~~
frereubu
It's the title, combined with the fact that they've even given the idea air
time, which made me write that comment. My argument is essentially that this
article shouldn't have been written.

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stcredzero
I hope this is correct. If it's correct, then this is something very powerful!
It would mean that disintermediation can reduce violence! In retrospect, this
seems obvious. There was a recent study of house cats in a southern English
town, where the cats were tracked with GPS collars, and some were given camera
collars. (There was also a documentary on the study on streaming services.)
One thing they saw, was that cats used chemical and auditory signalling, as
well as physical encounters, to negotiate schedules that prevented them from
encountering each other.

I wonder if it would be possible to create an app where people could (with
consent) register people they really don't like. The exact locations and
identities wouldn't be displayed, but venues might glow red as if they're
radioactive. Couples who have broken up might want to use this, for example.
It would be like an anti-Foursquare. (Just spitballing a silly idea.)

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brentm
I have for a long time believe that the entertainment value provided by the
internet and connected devices should not be overlooked when considering
factors that contributed to this decline in crime during this period. Just
having something to entertain people can help keep them out of trouble.

~~~
RickJWagner
The entertainment value is also a cheap distraction. Poverty isn't so
miserable when a little entertainment is available.

~~~
inawarminister
Bread and circus of the modern era. Not that surprising. Most criminality
is/was done due to opportunity[0] after all, and when you're busy consuming
entertainment...

[0]
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/2193-7680-1-3](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/2193-7680-1-3)

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m0th87
Meanwhile, the economists behind Freakonomics argue that it was caused by the
legalization of abortion: [http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-
crime-who-sh...](http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-
should-you-believe/)

I don't have a strong opinion on whether cell phones or abortion or anything
else caused the collapse in crime, but do feel like the theories you'll read
about the most (assuming you're not an academic in the social sciences) are
the ones that make for the most interesting headlines.

~~~
jgalt212
or the elimination of leaded gasoline.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Or too cheap to steal consumer goods.

~~~
sdinsn
Crime rates fell across the board, not just petty crime. Violent crime rates
fell especially hard

~~~
Gibbon1
Rape dropped by 75-80% between 1970 and 2015.

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smileysteve
This is an interesting freakonomic style perspective.

It makes the 1984 Lifeline (more commonly yet erroneously known as
ObamaPhones) project to get phones to impoverished people have larger network
effects.

It also points to the faults of the 'War on Drugs', as very little of this
territory would be needed without black markets.

~~~
kennywinker
So much drug and gang related crime can be pinned on the conceptual failure of
the “war on drugs”. But it succeeded where it was supposed to: incarcerating
millions of black and brown people, and maintaining white supremacy.

For a brief history of the racial motives behind the war on drugs, check out
this episode of On The Media:

[https://www.wbez.org/shows/on-the-media/this-american-war-
on...](https://www.wbez.org/shows/on-the-media/this-american-war-on-
drugs/f9053d04-7aa9-4e11-990e-f31bb02a4115)

The bit about Billie Holiday is particularly heartbreaking and infuriating.

~~~
merpnderp
So weird when people say the war on drugs was about racial superiority. Sure
some people promoting it were racists, but a lot of voices in drug ridden
communities demanded action against the addicts and criminals. Shockingly
enough (to those not paying attention), the communities with the largest drug
usage suffered the most from drug related crime.

~~~
eridius
There were multiple potential solutions to drug use/crime. The chosen solution
was the one that took away the freedom of millions of POC without actually
solving the problem. And when it failed, they just doubled down even harder,
because of course it didn't actually fail.

~~~
merpnderp
I don’t believe there are multiple potential solutions that anyone in the 70’s
believed worked better than throwing criminals in jail. To this day it is a
primary possibility for why crime receded so quickly in the 90’s.

~~~
kennywinker
Tell that to the millions of (mostly black and brown) people whose lives were
ruined due to possession or sale of small amounts of cannabis. I’m sure as
states legalize cannabis we’ll see a spike in crime now?

Even if we agree that tough-on-crime works (I do not agree, but say I did),
the way the war on drugs applied tough on crime was predominately on people of
color. If you were white and sold weed you were MUCH less likely to go to jail
than if you were black or latino. We could have locked up all those white weed
dealers and driven the crime rate down even lower. So at very very very best
the war on drugs was the right policy applied in a racist way. At very best.

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theandrewbailey
This might be my perspective from a flyover state, but weren't cellphones rare
until the late 90s/early 2000s?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Yes, but people who got a lot of value out of them (e.g. drug dealers) were
early adopters.

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Causality1
>The data that the economists presented don’t match the chronology of the
decline of homicides, especially considering that their proxy variable—how
many antennas were up—would almost certainly precede cellphone usage by some
period of time. The timing, he said, is “not even close.”

So the response to the post title is "No, not really"?

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agumonkey
Ok, not the first time I see the land-less business theory. Half surprising,
half sad (that people still ~need to make money this way), half happy since it
makes most lives better I suppose.

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dmh2000
Freakonomics speculated that it was because of Roe vs Wade in 1972.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Would that imply that unwelcome babies are more likely to become criminals?

~~~
fouc
More about single mothers, lack of oversight/parenting because she's
struggling to put food on the table.

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clubm8
A rise in cell phones coupled with a decrease in cash (more and more CC usage)
making robbery less profitable while penalties stayed the same makes intuitive
sense.

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b0rsuk
Right in the first sentence the article equates cellphones with smartphones.
Manipulation.

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Theodores
Another mystery is why the police have not used the cellphone data to take out
every dealer. They would only have to do so a city at a time to put the fear
into everyone nationwide. The text messages are always incriminating only if
you pretend to be naive and a stickler for evidence (wanting to see the drugs)
can the nature of the messages be denied.

America is different, but in the pre-cellphone UK there were pubs to meet
dealers in. After a beer and a walk to the car the transaction could be made.
A fully legit landline call could be made to arrange meeting up for a beer, no
code words needed. With cell phones and messaging there is invariably some
discussion on quantity required, hence evidence one would think would be good
for court.

Coupled with this change there has been woeful cutbacks to policing in the UK
so there are no resources for clearing drugs out of a community. It sort of
suits the government to have people stoned rather than demanding social
change, people with drugs or related paraphernalia are not wanting to get in
trouble with the authorities.

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ceejayoz
The answer to this "mystery" in the US would be the Fourth Amendment. The UK
has similar requirements for warrants.

