Chapter 4: Where Have All The Criminal Gone?

This chapter sorts out the facts of crime from the fictions. 

In the 1960 crime rates were skyrocketing in New York. And going by the trends, working their magic on the data, economists predicted that in a few decades a super-predator – “a scrawny, big-city teenager with a cheap gun in his hand and nothing in his heart but ruthlessness” – would be roaming the streets creating complete havoc. 

However, instead of all hell breaking lose, by the 1990s crime rates actually dropped, and the same economists that predicted the super-predator were not scrambling to provide explanations. Its stricter policing, some said, others owed it to the economy, but none of them really knew the truth. Because none of them thought like Levitt!

Levitt explained how, in reality, safer streets in New York City, were all thanks to a young woman in Dallas named Norma McCorvey. Under the pseudonym Jane Roe, she fought for the legalization of abortion in America, which when put into effect, prevented thousands of potential criminals from being born.

And so again, in this chapter, the authors masterfully unravel the hidden side of something so many people thought they understood so well.