Living in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the nation, I have gotten in the habit of reading the Baltimore Crime Beat, a blog within the Baltimore Sun, written mostly by Peter Hermann and Justin Fenton. Recent Crime Beat entries include, "Five shot in new round of city violence," "Closing arguments in county murder-for-hire trial," "Woman charged with fatally beating aunt," "Murder-suicide in Hopkins standoff," "Security officer shoots at man to thwart robbery," but then, "How to explain the nationwide crime drop?" Which one of these is not like the others? Justin notes:

Experts are hard-pressed to come up with an explanation.

And Justin was as puzzled as the experts.

Among the theories: As overall economic activity slows, more people who otherwise would be at work are unemployed and at home, and when they do travel they are not as likely to carry items of value, so burglaries and street robberies decline.

In the comments, I point out that police are under fire for under-reporting and down-grading crime to look good under CompStat. The Village Voice has profiled Adrian Schoolcraft, a frustrated officer that tape-recorded and went public with such directives. The Voice also interviewed a detective that was upset after police caught a serial rapist in the act, thanks to a tip from a neighbor. All of the perp's previous rapes had been downgraded to lesser charges like breaking & entering, making his pattern invisible to detectives. So how can we trust the statistics?

Commenter John felt, and Justin agreed, that crimes have always been under-reported, but that we can rely on the trends in the statistics. Because you can't fake trends in fake statistics. CNN also carried the story, and offered a different theory.

Americans may be bleak about the overall state of the country, but there's cause for optimism in at least one area: the fight against crime.

Criminologists were scratching heads and reviewing data Monday as they pondered the reasons for the significant statistical decline in crime nationwide last year, the third straight decline, according to the FBI's annual report on violent crime. The overall drop of 5.3 percent in violent crime and a total decline in reported property crimes of 4.6 percent for 2009 occurred during a recession, and, historically, crime has edged up when the nation's economy is troubled.

...

Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement seeking to tie the decline in crime to the Obama administration's stimulus package spending to assist local police departments.

"In 2009 the Obama administration provided over $4 billion in support to law enforcement and criminal justice initiatives through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, including $1 billion in COPS funding to keep police officers on the street," Holder said. "Investments in law enforcement play a significant role in reducing violent and property crime." [Nice try, Eric]

Republicans who opposed the stimulus spending were predictably unimpressed with the attorney general's claim. ... The criminologists also were reluctant to give the federal government too much credit.

I was unimpressed though, with all the reporting of hard-pressed experts and criminologists scratching heads. There are several well-known, though controversial, theories for the reduction in crime (statistics) that could be mentioned, if only to rebut them.

Home defense and concealed carry advocates advanced the More Guns, Less Crime theory, claiming that with more states adopting, "shall-issue" gun licensing, the good guys are well-armed enough to repel the bad guys. As I mentioned before, this theory took a major black eye when proponent John Lott could not substantiate a survey indicating that merely showing a weapon was usually enough to stop would-be attackers. Besides that, this theory is unpalatable to those who think that More Guns lead to More Crime. But in Baltimore, where legal gun ownership is available to very few, it could be worth discussing.

Another theory is that Three Strikes laws have incarcerated enough career criminals to bring about a reduction in crime. Since we are paying taxes to house and feed all those inmates, it would be nice to believe there is some benefit to an unevenly-enforced, Draconian law. I have read that the timing of such laws does not align perfectly with reductions in crime.

Some studies, including one by Freakonomics author Stephen Levitt and John Donohue, have advanced the theory that legalized abortion reduced the pool of unwanted children, and that it was those unwanted children that would have committed the crimes that haven't occurred. I call this one, More Richie, Less Fonzie. Not surprisingly, MR, LF has been attacked by anti-abortion conservatives - and by John Lott (or was it Mary Rosh?).

My own suspicion is that CompStat itself, the sharing and networking of information about crimes and offenders, and the expanded use of surveillance cameras, not as omnipresent as on TV but still significant, have each been a boon to law enforcement, which is why it pains me to see police fudging the data to CompStat that might aid in apprehensions.