lower crime rates not achieved as advertised...
Presidential candidate and ex-NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani has been running his campaign on 2 themes. Both of which are pretty much false. The 1st is his "9/11" experience. Giuliani's ads love to show him walking the streets with his team after the twin towers were struck. It looks good. There's only one problem.
The only reason they are "out on the streets" is because the center and headquarters that was designed to house them and give them a base to manage such an emergency had been blown up. The emergency center was in the World Trade Center. And it didn't get put there by accident.
Rudy ordered it. And he ordered it after being strongly advised to go with a different plan drew up by actual experts in the field. That plan put the emergency center underground. In Brooklyn. the advisors pointed out that the World Trade Center was a prime target. As were other big Manhattan skyscrapers and buildings. But Rudy would have none of that, even tho the center was already a target in 1993.
But that is not the only flaw in the Giuliani claim of great leadership in crisis. The ex NY mayor can't go to an event without protests from the police and firefighters. The real professionals who don't share Mr Giuliani's self image of being Mr Crisis Management. Giuliani has to actively avoid the protests at most of his campaign stops.
But the ex-mayor has one other card to play at his rallies and in his advertisements. His record on crime.
Rudy points to a decrease in crime in NYC during his tenure as mayor. He credits his creativity and revamping of the NY police along with his "tough, no nonsense" policies.
But is any of that true? Not really.
The fact is that crime went down in most every US city in the 90's. NY was not unique. And furthermore, much of the rate decline happened during his predecessor, David Dinkins, term as mayor. The drop began in 1990. Giuliani became mayor in 1994. Crime was already in steep decine before Rudy took office.
The biggest factor in that decline? It wasn't the innovative straegies of police commissioner Bratton. the rate began efore he came, and continued after his short tenure of 27 months. Hiring more police was a factor, like it always is. But the rate at which New York hired police between 1990 and 2001 and the actual reduction in crime aren't nearly as impressive as Giuliani's claims of huge percentage drops. When all the factors are properly looked at, The crime rate drop relative to Police hiring puts them in the middle of the pack instead of the front runner status Giuliani touts.
So what did cause this massive reduction? A robust economy contributed. But the biggest factor, according to best-selling economist Steven Levitt (author of Freakenomics) was Roe v Wade.
In a nutshell, Levitt shows how legalized abortion was the biggest factor in the rate of crime dropping, not only in New York, regardless of the mayor, but across the country.
Now, it should be mentioned that this has NOTHING to do with any morality whatsoever. It is not a "pro-abortion" argument. It simply looks at the unfettered data to draw conclusions.
In the famous decision (which few people ever bother to actually read or understand) Justice Harry Blackmun, wrote in very specific terms about the plight of those who Roe v Wade would most affect....
"The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent....Maternity, of additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. "
750,000 women had abortions in the year following the decision. By 1980 the number was 1.6 million. One for every 2.25 births.
Before Roe v Wade, primarily only priveledged women could afford an illegal abortion that was at least marginally safer than the coat hanger in the alley method of the working class. The procedure generally ran around the 500 dollar mark. You can do your own math on what that might cost 35 years later. After Roe v Wade, a safe and legal abortion was available to all for a mere 100 bucks or less. Sometimes free.
Which women would take advantage of such a new opportunity?
Most often, they were poor, unmarried women, some in their teens.
What future was ahead for those who didn't get born in the earliest days of legalized abortion?
They had a 50% more of a chance of living in poverty. And a 60% likelihood of growing up with one parent. Those 2 factors, like it or not, are amongst the strongest indicators that someone will end up a criminal. Other studies have shown that low maternal education is the single most powerful factor that leads to a criminal career.
As Levitt puts it..."In other words, the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives."
Legalized abortion had other consequences as well. Infantcide fell dramatically. Shotgun weddings went down sharply. There were some negative consequences as well. the conception vs birth rate showed that some women were using abortion as a birth control method. And that certainly has never set well with the American people.
But the biggest effect of legalized abortion was the one that would take a generation to reveal itself. that was abortion's impact on crime. In the later teen years, is the time when young men hit their criminal prime. When the years began to hit that those aborted fetus's would have been coming into that age, crime began to fall. And the rate continued to fall in the years that the entire generation of unwanted fetus's would have come of age. Legalized abortion simply lead to less unwantedness. And unwanted kids leads to higher crime. Therefore, as Levitt contends, legalized abortion lead to less crime.
And who benefitted from that statstical fact more than anyone and is trying to use the results as a benchmark of his own crime fighting prowess?
Rudy Giuliani.