ABF Scholar Steven Levitt disputes new study on rise in homicides by black teens
December 31, 2008, Faculty in the news, Chicago Sun Times
Chicago Sun Times, December 31, 2008.
By Frank Main, Crime Reporter
Freakonomics author Steven Levitt dismissed a new study that points to a sharp rise in homicides by black teens in recent years.
The study's author, noted criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, blamed gang activity and lax gun laws as some of the main reasons.
Fox found homicides by blacks ages 14 to 17 jumped 34 percent from 2000 through 2007, while the number for whites in that group barely changed.
Levitt, the University of Chicago economist who criticized Fox in the 2005 best seller Freakonomics, accuses Fox of fearmongering.
He said Fox is choosing not to emphasize the bigger picture -- that since the early 1990s, homicides have fallen sharply in every age group, including black teens.
On his blog at freakonomics.com, Levitt criticized Fox for "the ominous reports he produced about juvenile homicide for Attorney General Janet Reno in the 1990s, even as crime began to plunge."
According to Fox's own statistics, there were twice as many black teenage killers in 1990 as in 2007.
In an interview, Fox agreed.
"Yes, it's not nearly as bad as it was in 1990, but it is worse than it was in 2000, so why don't we act now?" Fox said. Fox's study, released Monday, calls for "restoring federal funds for crime prevention and crime control."
In his blog, Levitt wrote: "While I suspect that directing federal money toward crime control would be a better use of funds than continued bailouts, I would argue that it is time to experiment with something more radical that would actually save the government an enormous amount of money: ending the war on drugs."
In Freakonomics, Levitt theorized that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s led to a major drop in murder and other violent crimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those aborted children, if they had been born, would have been more prone to commit crime, he explained.
Nationally, homicide rates have fallen since the early 1990s for white and black offenders of all ages. In Chicago this year, killings topped 500 for the first time since 2003 but are still at a more than 40-year low.
According to Fox's study, posted at www.jfox.neu.edu, in the past eight years in Chicago, homicides by white offenders ages 14 to 24 fell 47 percent while homicides by black offenders in the same age group fell 30 percent.
Nationally, homicides by offenders in that age group have fallen significantly in most other cities of than 1 million people but have generally increased in smaller cities.
Fox suggested that bigger cities are better equipped to handle gang problems.
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