By Alan Burdick @ NewYorker.com. July 5

Intriguing little article that reports that there have been more than a few studies that have shown the opposite of conventional wisdom.about violent media, i.e., movies, video games, tv shows, and professional sports, that it causes crime. Rather, these studies show it reduces it.

[....] The idea goes by several names—the crime-substitute hypothesis, routine-activity theory—but the gist is the same: people have found better things to do than commit crime, and those activities involve screens. Would-be criminals, the thought goes, are too busy watching “Game of Thrones” and texting their pals to stir up trouble in the real world.

Proponents of the idea are quick to concede that the link between screen time and lower crime rates is correlative, not causative. But a recent study offers compelling new data from a surprising source 

But a recent study offers compelling new data from a surprising source: televised sports. The paper, “Entertainment as Crime Prevention: Evidence from Chicago Sports Games,” which was published in the Journal of Sports Economics, in May, by two social-science researchers at the University of California at Davis, found that crime rates in Chicago fell by as much as twenty-five per cent during major televised sports events, such as Bears or White Sox games and the Super Bowl.

Their data set was rich [....]