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"As crime keeps dropping, it?s no time for backsliding"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this notable editorial from yesterday's USA Today.  Here are excerpts: At the beginning of the 1990s violent crime was soaring, and some experts predicted that it would go even higher as a generation of "superpredators" came of age. When the rate began going down instead, the predictions and explanations continued anyway.  One popular theory was that the drop was merely the result of the settling of gang turf wars related to crack cocaine. Another was that crime was heavily influenced by economics, so it would naturally go down at a time of surging growth.  As it turned out, the downward trend has continued for nearly 20 years, through good economic times and bad.... At the risk of being humbled by future trends, let us point to a couple of possible explanations, and a note of caution about what lies ahead...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 09, 2010 (boomark / email).