The Value of Innovation

Chapter 11Isolating the Effects of Innovation

In the early 1990s, the crime rate in the United States had been rising relentlessly. Death by gunfire, intentional and otherwise, had become commonplace, as had carjacking, crack dealing, robbery, and rape. Violent crime had become a gruesome, constant companion. And things were about to get even worse, according to all the experts. [1]

The cause was the so-called super-predator: a scrawny, big-city teenager with a cheap gun in his hand and nothing in his heart. Thousands just like him were out there, a generation of killers preparing to send the country into total chaos.

In 1995, criminologist James Alan Fox wrote a report for the US attorney general grimly detailing the forthcoming spike in murders by teenagers. Fox proposed optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. In the optimistic scenario, he predicted the rate of teen homicides would rise another 15% over the next decade; in the pessimistic scenario, it would more than double.

Other criminologists as well as political scientists and similarly informed forecasters laid out the same horrible picture, as did President Clinton. This dire situation prompted many innovative solutions to solve this persistent problem.

Then, instead of going up and up and up, crime began to fall and fall and fall. The reversal was startling in several respects, with every category of crime falling in every part of the country. It was persistent, with incremental decreases seen year after year. And it ...