Good (and surprising) news about crime rates

This new piece from the Washington Post, which is headlined "Major Cities' Plummeting Crime Rates Mystifying," provides both good news on crime rates and a new reason to wonder if anyone can assess with any confidence what makes crime rates rise and fall.  Here are excerpts:

Violent crime has plummeted in the Washington area and in major cities across the country, a trend criminologists describe as baffling and unexpected.  The District, New York and Los Angeles are on track for fewer killings this year than in any other year in at least four decades.  Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other cities are also seeing notable reductions in homicides.

"Experts did not see this coming at all," said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist and professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.... Criminologists have different theories about why crime is down so much, although many agree that the common belief that crime is connected to the economy is false....

The District is on track to have fewer killings than in any year since 1964, when the population was about 760,000 and Vietnam War protests were just beginning.  In the years since, the city has struggled at times with civil unrest, the arrival of crack cocaine and the rise of street gangs. In 1991, the District was known as the murder capital of the United States, recording 479 that year.  This year, there have been 79....

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum, said the drop in homicides this year is notable, especially considering the weather.  "This does come at an important time," he said.  "We're midway through summer, and summer is when you see the most significant increase in street violence. Departments have had to be more strategic in terms of gangs and hot spots."  Wexler said that crime isn't down everywhere.  Baltimore and Dallas are among some cities experiencing a higher number of killings compared with last year.

Gary LaFree, a criminology professor at the University of Maryland, said it has taken police decades to figure out how to effectively target crime.  "In the '60s, crime was like an act of God, like a tornado or earthquake," LaFree said.  "Where policing has changed is that we've gotten the idea this is a problem we created and there are human solutions to it.  Obviously, crime is not randomly distributed.  It is connected to hot spots in cities and other areas."

LaFree and others agree that crime doesn't automatically go up when the economy is poor. Property crime is also trending down in many jurisdictions, including the District, Prince George's and Montgomery.  The FBI reported last week that bank robberies across the country fell in the first quarter of the year, with 1,498 reported, compared with 1,604 in the first quarter of 2008.  Criminologists point to the Great Depression in the 1930s as a time of relatively low crime compared with the Roaring Twenties, when the country experienced more violence.

Okay team, in an effort to generate some debate, I will throw out two not-quite-absurd hypothesis for the unexpected drop in crime being reported here:

Hypothesis #1 — More guns, less crime:  In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in Heller and (silly?) concerns about possible new gun control efforts under and Obama Administration, gun sales have been up a lot over the last year.  Perhaps this new encouraging crime data reveals that more people packing heat really can help reduce crime rates.

Hypothesis #2 — More hope, less crime:  The election of Barack Obama, who ran on a campaign of hope, surely embodies the cliche that anyone can grow up in America and become President.  In addition to breaking barriers with historic appointments to the positions of Supreme Court Justice, Attorney General and Solicitor General, President Obama has often preached messages of personally responsibility as well as hope.  Perhaps giving more folks good reasons to hope leads to fewer folks having bad reasons to commit crimes.