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Where Have All The Criminals Gone Summary

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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
“Where Have All the Criminals Gone” Paige Crites
POLS 101
Summary
“Where Have All the Criminals Gone” in Freakonomics, the authors talk mainly about the rises and falls of criminal activity in the United States in relation to abortion, but refers to the Communist dictator of Romania in 1966, Nicolae Ceausescu. This dictator ruled abortion illegal in the country, stating that “The fetus is property of the entire society.” Ceausescu believed that if the population increased, it would better the nation as a whole. He had people known as the Menstrual Police that would administer pregnancy tests where the women worked and if the failed the test repeatedly then they were forced to pay a celibacy tax. While his plan did increase the population, it also forced the children to be in a country where if they were low on the social and economic ladder, they did not have a good life. …show more content…

This explanation blamed the drop in crimes on that the criminals were getting older, and the records showed that. One statistic pointed out that a 65 year old person is 1/50 as likely to be incarcerated as the average teenager. The other explanation given, though, involved abortion. In 1973, Roe v. Wade shook America by legalizing abortion across the nation. This ties to how Romania made abortion illegal which meant that those kids were more likely to commit crimes due to the environment they were in. With the legalization of abortion in the U.S., it lead to lower crimes because that indigent population of children did not exist. The year following Roe v. Wade, there were about 750,000 women who obtained abortions, which meant that for every 4 births, there was an abortion. The authors make the assumption that “Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime,” (Levitt & Dubner,

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In the article, Unwinding Mass Incarceration by Stefan Lobuglio and Anne Piehl, they argue that unwinding the mass incarceration “well neither be cheap nor easy, and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.” Hence, their argument is clean-cut with evidence in the article to back up their argument of unwinding the mass incarceration. Similarly, a solid fill of a concluding statement upon the unwinding of the mass incarceration as stated in the article, “requires much more than stopping current practices or reversing course by mass commutations and early release programs.” Subsequently, from this article, there are numerous interesting key points, and perspective of unwinding the mass incarceration.

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The chapter then transitions away from abortions in Romania to the drop in crime rates in American cities before explain how abortions effect the crime rate due to the fact that they limit the part of the population that has the greatest chance of becoming criminals. The tone of these chapters were serious and

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“Article Analysis” “Let’s Assume the Kids (and Ahmed) Are Alright, Not Criminals” by Terri Burkes, is about a 14 year old boy from Ivring, Texas named Ahmed Mohamed who got arrested for building a clock, which was assumed to be a bomb. Its explains how Ahmed was unfairly treated, being interrogated by five police officers, his belonging were being searched, and he was accused multiple times of wanting to build a bomb. He also asked if he could contact his parents but those rights were denied. Law enforcement just automatically placed the terrified Ahmed into a juvenile detention center and was also suspended from school.

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Bridge 1 Gangsters Without Borders by T.W. Ward is an ethnography about the El Salvadorian gang Mara Salvatrucha. Ward chose to focus the majority of his research on the male members in order to earn their trust. With that in mind, I am presuming that the views of women portrayed in this ethnography are fundamentally the thoughts of its male members. Nonetheless, early on in my reading on this ethnography, I identified the role gender plays not only for the ethnographer but also for the gang members. The gender roles for these gang members mimic those of most societies, although some of the roles appear contradictory.

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It would also create more jobs, were else would the crops come from. The new programs that were made made a big difference for the country and the people. It made new jobs made things cheaper and affordable for the people that needed it the most. Young men gotjobs, families didn't have to be poor.

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This quote, from “Mind Over Mass and Media” suggests that the decline in crime may have been influenced by changes in popular culture and media. “When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s coincided with the great American crime decline. ”(pinker 1) In the article ¨Mind over mass and media” the author Steven Pinker is saying that due to the advancements in technology crime has declined since the 1950s. While Steven Pinker has a point, he overlooks the negative impact technology can have on younger minds.

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In opposition to pro-choice approval of legalization, an article of the Fordham Law Review, An American Tragedy: The Supreme Court on Abortion, delineates the decision in Roe v. Wade as unconstitutional on the grounds that the Court made egregious errors in the case. Byrn cites a number of mistakes, including the misinterpretation of common law, motivations behind nineteenth century abortion laws, the intent of the founding fathers, factual knowledge of fetuses, along with a disregard for the Supreme Court’s own definition of a person in section one of the fourteenth amendment compounded to generate the erroneous decision in Wade. As current interpretations of the fourteenth amendment include all human beings, especially the marginalized, as protected under the law, the exclusion of unborn children seems

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Judith Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion is an article defending abortion on the grounds of rights, duties, and justice. Thomson uses various thought experiments to represent different circumstances surrounding a pregnancy and the permissibility of abortion in these circumstances. One such thought experiment that she uses in her argument is the burglar example. If you open a window and a burglar climbs into your house, anti-abortionists would argue that the burglar has a right to stay in your house and you have a duty to shelter him because you are partially responsible for his presence there. Even if you install bars specifically to keep out burglars and the burglar still manages to break in then you are still partially responsible and he still

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The 1988 decision to legalize abortions was a historically significant event that altered the course of history by granting women the right to bodily autonomy, established a legal precedent and sparked a major public debate continuing to this day. Since the law was struck down, women in Canada have been granted the right to choose and have anatomy over their own bodies, saving many lives in the process. The absence of safe and legal abortions, women often resorted to alternate methods, seeking out unsafe procedures that put their lives at risk. 13% of deaths from pregnancy are related to unsafe and illegal abortions, this is translated to the deaths of 47000 women and 85 million injured each year. (SITE)

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As Levitt (2004) stated “those over the age of 65 experience victimization rates for serious violent crime that are less than one-tenth of those of teenagers” (p. 171) and since the young population got older, the crime followed in trend. Disagreements One of Levitt’s main four causes of the 1990s crime was the legalization of abortion in the 1970s. Levitt argued that unwanted children were at higher risk for crime and the legalization of abortion reduced the number of unwanted children. His hypothesis was brought about because “the five states that allowed abortion in 1970… experienced declines in crime rates earlier than the rest of the country”

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Before Roe v. wade the number of deaths from illegal abortions was around 5000 and in the 50s and 60s the number of illegal abortions ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. These illegal abortions pose major health risks to the life of the woman including damage to the bladder, intestines as well as rupturing of the uterus. The choice to become a mother must be given to the woman most importantly because it’s her body, her health, and she will be taking on a great responsibility. A woman’s choice to choose abortion should not be restricted by anyone; there are multiple reasons why abortion will be the more sensible decision for the female.

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McBride (2008) further points out how the 1930s, during the Great Depression, destitute families did all they could to prevent bringing more children into the world. Women that ended up pregnant generally sought out risky alternatives to abortion and ended up in hospitals where the majority died. During this period as many as 17,000 out of 800,000 performed abortions ended in death count. Turning abortion into a criminal offence only helped increasing the number of unsafe abortions that were executed in

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The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed.” This shows that women have been looked at differently in society because of their reproductive roles. The Court ruled that women notifying their husbands placed an “undue burden” on them or choosing to have an abortion, it was unconstitutional because the law violated a woman’s right to due process. The “undue burden” was a way for the courts to effectively test the constitutionality of abortion restrictions.

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Before the Supreme Court case that changed lives forever, there were many women that went back behind their husbands or their parents to have an abortion on the account of rape or incest. They gave abortions in an interesting way long with the risk of being disowned forever and tried for a cause of illegal abortions. In the 1960’s women were not allowed to walk into an abortion clinic or doctor’s office and get an abortion. “There was no federal law regulating abortions, and many states had banned the practice entirely, except when the life of the mother was endangered.”

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The study is anchored on the theory about an argue that abortion is an ex postbirth control method that provides sexually active women (at risk of a pregnancy) insurance in the event of an unintended pregnancy. The option to have an abortion of an unintended pregnancy lowers the cost to women of engaging in risky (noncontracepted) sexual activity. As the cost of an abortion increases, due to the enforcement of restrictive abortion laws, the cost of this unintended pregnancy insurance policy increases, which may induce women to alter their risky sexual behavior in ways that reduce the likelihood of an unintended pregnancy. In response to these restrictive abortion laws, women may change their frequency of unprotected sexual

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