Summary
“Crime rates dropped unexpectedly and dramatically in the 1990s. The decline was notrestricted to particular types of crimes, methodology of crime reports, demographiccharacteristics, or geographical areas. Many hypotheses on the causes of the crime drop have been proposed, but none appear fully satisfactory. Empirical studies and theories of crime have suggested a link between crime and risk taking. Based on this link, rates of various risky behaviors should show the same decline as crime in the 1990s, and rates of crime and risky behavior should covary over time. Various American and Canadian databases reporting annual or biennial data on risky behaviors were examined. Various methods for cross-correlational analyses are described, including first differencing and ARIMA modeling, as methods to investigate the degree of covariation between crime and risk taking.”—Page 1.