Where Have All The Criminals Gone Summary

Could the legalization of abortion 1973 be the cause for the drop of crime in the 1990’s? That is precisely what Dubner and Levitt are saying in the article “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?”. In this work Dubner and Levitt make the claim that the decrease in crime rates in the early 1990’s was caused by the legalization of abortion in America. The essay makes very convincing arguments against commonly accepted causes for the drop of crime and outlines this increase of abortion as the sole cause of the plummet in crime. “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?” has logical and believable arguments that are compelling due to their reinforcement of women’s choice. In the essay “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?” many possible causes for the decrease in crime are discarded. Some of these examples included innovative policing strategies, increased reliance on prisons, changes in the drug market, aging of the population, tougher gun control laws, a strong economy, …show more content…
It took around 17 years after the legalization to become noticeable, and that is why many people overlook it. When you use logic to view the scenario you get an understanding that this all makes sense. Around 1990 when crime rates began to decrease the would-be children that were aborted would have been reaching their teenage years. That means that around a million children that would have grown up in homes that would have elevated their odds of becoming criminals simple were not present each year. Dubner and Levitt end their essay by looking at the effectiveness of abortion as strategy for decreasing crime. In this part of the essay Dubner and Levitt point out the obvious that abortion is not an efficient strategy of reducing crime, and should not be pushed for that reason. They show that the purpose of this essay was to point out that abortion was just the leading cause of the decrease in crime for America in the