70-90 was a real serious rise and fall of assaults, burglaries, car thefts, etc.
We’ve had some minor waves during the opium epidemic and the big unemployment waves of '01, '08, '14, and '21.
Or lead in the gasoline that makes people crazy
Lead exposure, the different drug epidemics, big spikes in unemployment. They all contribute.
That said, we also had White Collar crime waves. And these tended to predate the street level crime waves, as the crimes contributed to the conditions of the later.
Nobody in political leadership really talks about the White Collar waves, though.
It just always feels like a Boogeyman phrase to me. But you’re right.
White collar crime is, to me at least, the real crime. People being victimized on an individual level is cruel and awful but leaving hundreds scammed and destitute is disgusting and abhorrent
It’s been flogged as an existential crisis for decades past relevance. So it has become a Boogeyman, in the same way Terrorism lost any semblance of relevancy by the '10s, but keeps getting flogged into the modern day.
Has there ever actually been a crime wave?
All I could imagine is economic turmoil that forces people to either not have enough money or not have a job, or both.
Or lead in the gasoline that makes people crazy
70-90 was a real serious rise and fall of assaults, burglaries, car thefts, etc.
We’ve had some minor waves during the opium epidemic and the big unemployment waves of '01, '08, '14, and '21.
Lead exposure, the different drug epidemics, big spikes in unemployment. They all contribute.
That said, we also had White Collar crime waves. And these tended to predate the street level crime waves, as the crimes contributed to the conditions of the later.
Nobody in political leadership really talks about the White Collar waves, though.
It just always feels like a Boogeyman phrase to me. But you’re right.
White collar crime is, to me at least, the real crime. People being victimized on an individual level is cruel and awful but leaving hundreds scammed and destitute is disgusting and abhorrent
It’s been flogged as an existential crisis for decades past relevance. So it has become a Boogeyman, in the same way Terrorism lost any semblance of relevancy by the '10s, but keeps getting flogged into the modern day.