Report after report indicates that crime, especially violent crime, is down in recent years. The economy is terrible, and yet crime is down. There goes the common Leftist idea that that poverty causes crime (it is more likely that crime increases poverty, actually). Crime was also low during the Great Depression.
But some common ideas frequently promoted by social conservatives (and I can be considered a social conservative on most issues) also have to be questioned:
We are told that:
1. Unmarried men are more prone to violent crime because marriage tames men.
and
2. Viewing "adult" material makes men more disrespectful and violent towards women (at least, that's what some ugly stupid b---- told me... kidding... just kidding) and increases crime.
And yet...
A. We have more unmarried men than ever before. That is because of and increase in: 1) divorce, 2) shacking up, 3) men who never marry, 4) and the age at which men first marry.
B. Free/almost-free easily-accessed adult material of all sorts is ubiquitous and sources that are happy about that and dismayed by that both agree more and more people are viewing it.
C. Crime rates are down significantly.
Can anyone explain how all three of these things can be simultaneously true? Are we really to believe that crime rates would be down
even more if A and B were not true... if all of the adult material went away and 21-year-old guys who aren't even Mormons or Baptists were getting married and staying married? And how can that be proven?
It is possible, even likely, that correlations have been blamed when other correlations are really the issue? For example, maybe being unmarried doesn't make a man more likely to commit violent crime - maybe committing violent crime makes a man less likely to attract and keep a wife? Of course, there are plenty of married men who commit violent crime and plenty of women who stick with violent men.
I have heard that more adult material actually correlates to a decrease in rape, which would help explain a drop in the violent crime rate.
Are the crime rates all cooked?
Can it all be attributed to "three strikes" getting the most active and violent criminals off the streets?
I'm beginning to suspect Sociology is nothing but a bunch of snake oil and that nobody really knows anything, and that any study dealing with sociological issues can be interpreted any conflicting way. As Dennis Prager (a social conservative who does not buy the "smut causes crime" line) says, either studies confirm common sense or they are wrong.
What say you???
