Sanjay Marwah
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October 27, 1997
The New York Times
National Section
A12
Drop in Homicide Rates Linked to Decline
in Crack Epidemic
Related Article
Study Links Rate of Violence to Cohesion in Community (Aug. 17)
Graphic
Crack Use Around The Country: Mostly Down
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
At a time when many politicians and law-enforcement
saying their innovative police tactics are responsible for
the sharp
drop in homicide rates over the past five years, a new Justice
Department
study has found that the most important reason for the decline
may be the
waning of the crack cocaine epidemic.
The Justice Department report, commissioned by Attorney General
Janet
Reno, acknowledges that improved police work, along with longer
prison
sentences and improved emergency medical care, have all
contributed to
the lower homicide rate. But the report suggests that the close
link
between crack and homicide may be a fundamental dynamic that
explains
why homicide rates have declined not only in cities like New
York, which
have instituted aggressive police strategies, but also in cities
like Los
Angeles, where the police have been demoralized or have not
adopted
new methods.
"What we found is that there was a very strong statistical
correlation
between changes in crack use in the criminal population and
homicide
rates," said Jeremy Travis, director of the National Institute
of Justice, the
research arm of the Justice Department.
The study tracked homicide rates and crack use in six cities
from 1987 to
1993, using data on drug use obtained from the Justice
Department's
program to test newly arrested criminals for narcotics when they
are
brought to jail.
"In five of the six study communities," the report found,
"homicide rates
track quite closely with cocaine use levels among the adult male
arrestee
population." The report said that when homicide rates increased
in the
mid-1980s with the advent of the crack epidemic, "cocaine-test
positive
rates generally increased. Similarly, when homicide rates
declined,
cocaine-test positive rates also generally declined."
The report did not address the question of why crack use might
drive
homicide rates, but experts have suggested that it might be the
pharmacological properties of the drug, which creates a brief,
intense
high, often with feelings of paranoia, or the way crack spawned
a new
type of drug market, bringing in large numbers of younger
dealers who
began arming themselves with semiautomatic handguns.
The study, which was requested by Reno to try to understand what
has
led to the drop in homicide rates since 1992, is to be released
next
month. The cities that were selected were those that showed the
clearest
patterns in homicide trends, including Detroit and Washington as
well as
Indianapolis, where crack use and homicide rates have risen
dramatically
in the 1990s, an exception to the national declines. The other
three cities
in the study were Atlanta, Miami and New Orleans.
Some have criticized the new study, saying its sample of cities
was too
small and did not include some large cities like New York.
Jeffrey Fagan, a criminologist at Columbia University, said the
study
failed to take into account the loss of jobs, increasing income
inequality
and growing racial segregation that caused long-term decay in
the inner
cities and made them more susceptible to the "contagion of
crack, guns
and gangs."
"It was not demon crack" by itself that triggered the upsurge in
violence in
the 1980s, he said.
Lee Brown, the former police commissioner of New York who is now
a
candidate for mayor of Houston, commenting on the study's
findings, said
that he believed it was hard to single out any one factor that
was
responsible for the drop in homicide rates in cities across the
nation. "I
think it is a combination of factors, from crack going down to
community
policing to demographics," Brown said.
The study is one of several recent reports that document a close
relationship between the increase in crack in the 1980s and the
rise in
violent crime. The studies have also found a striking drop in
crack use,
particularly among young people, beginning about 1989, which may
help
account for the decline in violent crime since 1992.
A new study of 142 cities by Eric Baumer of the State University
of New
York at Albany and Richard Rosenfeld of the University of
Missouri at
St. Louis, for example, found that "the emergence and
proliferation of
crack cocaine is responsible, at least in part, for the increase
in violent
crime," especially robberies, in the 1980s.
"If these findings are correct," the authors wrote, "they may
help to
explain the recent decline in violent crime, including robbery
rates,
observed in many U.S. cities" because of the ebbing of the crack
epidemic.
"The early and pronounced decline in crime rates for New York
City,
widely attributed to enforcement measures, is also consistent
with New
York being among the first cities where crack appeared and, in
turn,
plateaued," the authors wrote.
Another study, by Andrew Golub and Bruce Johnson, of the
nonprofit
National Development and Research Institutes in New York, found
a
dramatic decrease in crack use among young people being sent to
jail in
places like Manhattan, Washington and Detroit, starting in the
late
1980's. In Manhattan, the rate of detected crack use among
juveniles
admitted to jail dropped to 22 percent in 1996 from 70 percent
in 1988.
In Washington, that rate declined to only 10 percent in 1996
from 30
percent in 1989, and in Detroit, it fell to 5 percent in 1996
from 45
percent in 1987.
The reason this decrease in crack use by young people is
significant,
criminologists say, is that it was a doubling of the rate of
homicides by
juveniles that produced much of the increase in violent crime in
the
1980s. The homicide rate for adults 24 and older has actually
been
shrinking since 1981.
Johnson said he believed that the reason young people stopped
smoking
crack "was that the standards of the street subculture changed."
He
explained, "In 1985 in New York, it was cool to get into crack,
it was
where there was lots of money to be made and easy to get into
business,
and the consequences weren't yet too harsh."
But by 1989, the situation had changed dramatically for young
people,
Johnson said. The crucial factor was what they had witnessed
with their
own eyes: the ravages of crack on their families and friends,
whom they
now looked down on as "crackheads." Crack suddenly was no longer
cool. While older, established users continued to smoke crack,
fewer
younger people started using it, depriving crack of new
recruits, Johnson
said. In this way, the epidemic was reversed.
Johnson said police crackdowns on drugs in cities like New York
had
clearly had an impact on crack, but he said the effect was more
on how
crack was marketed, closing down so-called open air drug
markets, than
on the drug's actual consumption.
Johnson's opinions was disputed by Robert Silbering, the special
narcotics prosecutor for New York City, who said he believed
that the
"dismantling of violent drug gangs" in New York by his office
and the
police had made a major difference in both crack use and in
making the
streets safer.
On the issue of why crack use leads to murder, David Musto, a
professor of child psychiatry and the history of medicine at the
Yale
School of Medicine, said: "There is a strong pharmacological
effect.
When you smoke crack, it gets to your brain very fast, and your
judgment is greatly flawed and you easily become paranoid."
When combined with the advent of new, more powerful handguns, he
said, "it is easy to see how homicide and crack are linked."
But Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon
University, said
the connection between crack and homicide could be linked to the
way
crack created new markets. Crack was a new, cheap drug that was
outside the control of the older, established dealers, he said.
"You had a
lot of kids recruited to sell it," he said, "and when they got
recruited, they
armed themselves, and then their friends got guns, too, to
protect
themselves," sparking an arms race on the streets.
Rosenfeld, of the University of Missouri, said the link was a
combination
of the pharmacological properties of crack and the new way the
drug
was sold. Because crack has an intense high that lasts only
about 10
minutes, he said, "you have lots of users who are in urgent need
of it, and
this creates a demand for lots of sellers, who sell it cheaply
in small
quantities." He added, "This generates lots of competition and
greater
levels of violence."
On Wed, 29 Oct 1997, Sharon Bolton wrote:
> Dear fellow list members,
> I read a report in yesterday's UK 'Guardian' newspaper about a new and
> fairly controversial report which has appeared in the US, suggesting that
> the fall in the US homicide rates in selected cities is more a result of the
> decline of the crack 'epidemic' than any zero tolerance policing programmes.
> Unfortunately, no reference was given - I wonder if anyone can let me know
> the details of the report, or of any published critical responses to it?
> (The information for the 'Guardian' article had been taken from the 'New
> York Times').
> Thanks in advance for your help,
>
> Sharon.
> -------------------------------------------
> Sharon Bolton
> Information Officer
> r.cade/The Data Archive
> University of Essex
> Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
> Tel: +44 (0) 1 206 872569
> Fax: +44 (0) 1 206 872003
> e-mail: sharonb@essex.ac.uk
> --------------------------------------------
>
>
Sanjay Marwah
The Institute of Public Policy
George Mason University
Mail Stop 3C6
Fairfax, VA 22030
(703) 993-2254
smarwah@gmu.edu