New National Academy of Sciences effort seeking to unpack the crime decline

As reported via this helpful piece at The Crime Report, some really important and smart folks are now hard at work trying to understand fully the modern US crime decline. Here are the basics of the effort as explained in the start of this linked report:

The crime level has dropped in the United States over the past two decades, but definitive explanations are lacking. With funding from the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences has organized a project to address that important issue. In a chat with The Crime Report’s Washington Bureau Chief Ted Gest, criminologist Richard Rosenfeld of the University of Missouri-St. Louis — who heads the effort — explains the project’s aims, reports on the topics covered at the first sessions in Washington in June, and explains why it would be a “bad bet” to assume the crime drop will continue indefinitely.

The Crime Report: How is this project organized?

Richard Rosenfeld: It is a so-called “roundtable” on crime trends.  The group met in June, and we plan to hold five more sessions over the next three years to hear from experts about various aspects of changes in crime rates over time, both in the United States and elsewhere.  We’re primarily focusing on changes in the United States over the last several decades, but at our first meeting we also talked about centuries-long changes in Europe and the U.S., going back to colonial America.  This is a broad and comprehensive look at changes over time in crime, and some of the factors connected with those changes.

TCR: Who is involved?

Rosenfeld: There are 16 members of the roundtable.  Twelve are academics, including nine criminologists: myself, Eric Baumer of Florida State University, Shawn Bushway of the University at Albany (SUNY), Manuel Eisner of the University of Cambridge, Susan Herman of Pace University, Dan Isom of the University of Missouri-St. Louis (a former police chief); Janet Lauritsen of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Maria Velez of the University of New Mexico, and David Weisburd of George Mason University and The Hebrew University.  The other academics are public health expert David Hemenway of Harvard; historian Randolph Roth of Ohio State University, and economist Jose Scheinkman of Princeton University.  Non-academics in the group are Jim Bueermann, a former police chief who now heads the Police Foundation, District Attorney George Gascon of San Francisco; Maxine Hayes, Washington State Health Officer, and Florida Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman.

TCR: Tell us about the first two sessions.

Rosenfeld: We met in Washington, D.C., for two days in June. The five public sessions covered these topics: U.S. crime trends in historical perspective, trends disaggregated by offense type, regional and local variations; gender, race and ethnicity of victims and offenders; and U.S. crime trends in international perspective. The content of the presentations, all of which were made by roundtable members, may be seen at this site.

At our next meeting, which will also be in Washington, at an early December date to be determined, we will focus on the “lead hypothesis,” that the removal of lead from paint and gasoline resulted in crime declines some years later and may largely explain the crime drop.  We’ll hear from people who have researched that topic.  We haven’t yet set the agendas for the four sessions that will follow that.

A few related posts on modern crime rates: 

• Effective Washington Post commentary talks up great (and still puzzling) crime decline
• Should we thank unleaded gas and the EPA for the great modern crime decline?
• Still more (and still puzzling) crime rate declines reported by FBI
• Is the great US crime decline now finally over?: BJS reports crime up in 2011
• FBI reports crime was down yet again in 2011 (though BJS said it was up)
• Is there really a simple explanation for record-low homicide rate in NYC (or the increase in Chicago)?
• Some speculations about the great crime decline in Florida