Chapter 4

This chapter starts off by talking about a Romanian communist who made abortion illegal. Even though this was way out in left field, I knew that the authors were using this in some correlation to crime. Then the book explains how the crime rate has decreased a significant amount in the 1990s. They give eight different reasons why the crime rate has decreased and then go into more detail if the particular reason really deters crime. The topics which the authors truly believed deter crime were the increase in the number of policemen, increased punishment, and changes in crack law. Increasing the number of policemen seems logical to deter crime because most criminal acts will not be done if these criminals know they are going to get caught. So since more policemen will be out patrolling, most of these criminals who were about to commit a criminal act will not. Increased punishment also seems logical. If I was a criminal and I was about to commit a crime, I would definitely think of the repercussions. If the penalty was one year I think I would have a much different outlook to commit this crime then if the penalty was five years. The book also talked about gun laws and how this issue could possibly deter the crime rate. They explained how if it is illegal to have a gun, then only the “bad” people will get the guns and the “good” people will not have guns. They explain that if everyone could get a gun then this will allow the “good” people to protect themselves and could deter crime since criminals would be scared of the victim having the gun. However, I feel that if everyone could get a gun license then this could actually put the victim in a worse position. If the criminal sees that a victim has a gun, they could feel threaten and shoot the victim which could lead to a severe injury or death. However, if the victim does not have a gun then the criminal will not feel as threatened and will probably just steal the victim’s money. Anyways, after explaining all the possibilities that would deter crime, the authors then went back to abortion. The book theorized that higher abortion leads to less crime. I was thinking that this theory makes a lot of sense. Abortion gives women the chance to decide if they want to have the baby or not. When there is no choice, these parents must have their baby and usually if you don’t want to have a baby there is a legitimate reason why. This kids grow up with the wrong guidance or in really bad environments and this leads to them being involved in crime. When these parents have a choice if they want the baby, then all the babies that are born come into this world with parents who are ready for a baby. It seems logical that these babies will have better guidance since the parents were ready for them which would lead to less crime. It’s too bad that after explaining this whole theory the authors conclude by saying this theory is wrong.