Facts

in contrast to the 1990s, which saw the dramatic drop in crime that occasioned the publication of The Crime Drop in America in 2000, the first years of the new century have evinced an impressively flat trajectory in crime. By 2000, crime rates were well below those of 1985, the year just prior to the surge in crime that preceded the drop. With violent crime rates now down to levels not seen since the 1960s, it was unlikely that the trend could maintain its sharply declining slope. Indeed, there were reasons to predict an increase in crime. The economy was stagnant, with largely immovable unemployment rates and especially bleak job prospects for those without specialized work skills suited to the information economy. Social services and financial supports funded by state and local governments had been reduced. Controls on gun sales were being weakened, in part through the powerful lobbying of the NRA for its individual-ownership interpretation of the Second Amendment. Methamphetamine and stronger varieties of heroin were showing up in urban markets. Suppression of crime through incapacitation was softening as net growth in imprisonment (intake minus outflow) was declining from a yearly compound growth rate of nearly 9 percent in the 1980s and more than 6 percent in the 1990s to less than 2 percent after 2000.