{"id":56829,"date":"2013-08-26T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T17:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=56829"},"modified":"2013-08-31T20:09:18","modified_gmt":"2013-09-01T01:09:18","slug":"the-relationship-between-lead-and-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/08\/26\/the-relationship-between-lead-and-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"The Relationship Between Lead and Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the late 1990s, I turned down my publisher\u2019s offer to do a third edition of my criminology textbook.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just that editions one and two had failed to make me a man of wealth and fame.\u00a0 But it was clear that crime had changed greatly.\u00a0 Rates of murder and robbery had fallen by nearly 50%; property crimes like car theft and burglary were also much lower.\u00a0 Anybody writing an honest and relevant book about crime would have a lot of explaining to do.\u00a0 And that would be a lot of work.<\/p>\n

I politely declined the publisher\u2019s offer.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t seem too upset.<\/p>\n

If I had undertaken the project, I probably would have relied heavily on the research articles in\u00a0The Crime Drop in America<\/i><\/a>, edited by Al Blumstein and Joel Wallman. They rounded up the usual suspects \u2013 the solid economy, new police strategies, the incarceration boom, the stabilization of drug markets, anti-gun policies.\u00a0 But we all missed something important \u2013 lead.\u00a0 Children exposed to high levels of lead in early childhood are more likely to have lower IQs, higher levels of aggression, and lower impulse-control.\u00a0 All those factors point to crime when children reach their teens if not earlier.<\/p>\n

Lead had long been suspected as a toxin, and even before World War I many countries acted to ban or reduce lead in paint and gasoline.\u00a0 But the U.S., thanks to the anti-regulatory efforts of the industries and support from anti-regulation, pro-business politicians,\u00a0did not undertake serious lead reduction<\/a>\u00a0until the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones<\/em> has been writing about lead and crime. Because race differences on both variables are so great, it\u2019s useful to look at Blacks and Whites separately.\u00a0 In the late 1970s, 15% of Black children under age three had dangerously high rates of lead in their blood (30 mcg\/dl or higher). Among Whites, that rate was only 2.5%.\u00a0 By 1990, even with a lower criterion level of 25 mcg\/dl, those rates had fallen to 1.4% and 0.4%, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a> \"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The huge reduction in lead was matched \u2013 years later when those children were old enough to commit crimes \u2013 with a reduction in crime. (note that the graphs show rates of arrest, which may somewhat exaggerate Black rates of offending):<\/p>\n


\n<\/a> \"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Much of the research pointing to lead as an important cause of crime looks at geographical areas rather than individuals.\u00a0 A study might compare cities, measuring changes in lead emissions and changes in violent crime 20 years later.\u00a0 But studies that follow individuals have found the same thing.\u00a0 Kids with higher blood levels of lead have higher rates of crime.\u00a0 The lead-crime hypothesis is fairly recent, and the evidence is not conclusive.\u00a0 But my best guess is that further research will confirm the idea that getting the lead out was, and will remain, an important crime-reduction policy.<\/p>\n

Kevin Drum also emphasizes race differences<\/a>.\u00a0 And here the evidence\u00a0is less solid:<\/p>\n

[A]rrest rates for violent crime have fallen much faster among black juveniles than among white juveniles…\u00a0 black juvenile crime rates fell further than white juvenile crime rates because they had been artificially elevated by lead exposure at a much higher rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that\u00a0 depends on how you intepret the data<\/a>. As the graphs of arrests show, the percentage reductions are roughly similar across races.\u00a0 Among Black youths, the arrest rates for all violent crime fell from 1600 per 100,000 to less than 700 \u2013 a 57% reduction.\u00a0 For Whites the reduction was from 307 to 140 or 54%. But in absolute numbers, because Black rates of criminality were so much higher, the reduction seems all the more impressive. In that sense, those rates \u201cfell further.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arrest rates for Blacks are still double those of Whites for property crimes, five times higher for homicide, and nine times higher for robbery.\u00a0 Lead may be a factor in those differences.\u00a0 Remember the lag time between childhood lead exposure and later crime. Twenty years ago, high blood levels of lead among children 1-5 years were three times as high for Blacks as for Whites.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the late 1990s, I turned down my publisher\u2019s offer to do a third edition of my criminology textbook.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just that editions one and two had failed to make me a man of wealth and fame.\u00a0 But it was clear that crime had changed greatly.\u00a0 Rates of murder and robbery had fallen by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":56895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,2056,2123,252,8080,8118,285,1760,1757,133],"class_list":["post-56829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-crimelaw","tag-environmentnature","tag-healthmedicine","tag-housingresidential-segregation","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/08\/Screenshot_129.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56829"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56948,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56829\/revisions\/56948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}