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Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

I don't think enough emphasis is put in these studies on the rise of cheap entertainment for bored male youth. Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down.

Sure policing has gotten better, and crime prevention tech has advanced, but these studies tend to ignore the fact that would-be criminals rarely leave the house anymore...

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Cheap entertainment, available and effective family planning, and reduction in environmental toxins (e.g. lead) would all be likely suspects to me.

We looked at this once in class from a quantitative perspective, and IIRC, family planning was the only one that comported with the data.

Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down.

I really like your argument but I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s. I do wonder what role the quality of graphics plays here too (especially with regards to portraying violence).

Games in the 90s did cost more than AAA titles today but not by a huge amount and the hardware was similarly priced. Maybe it just took a couple more decades for gaming to be considered a truly mainstream activity rather than something for the geekier kids.

The big difference between games then and games today is the rise of multiplayer games. Gaming today is a much more social activity. I suspect that this is the primary reason why it's more mainstream and more addicting.

> I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s

They weren't "ubiquitous" for poor kids. For those kids, there was no way they would get their parents to buy us anything for (the 1991 equivalent of) $350 and $85/game.

Nobody assumed that upper middle class kids were normally carrying out burglaries...

The poor kids had Nintendo and Sega back then, just like the poor kids have Xbox and PlayStation today.

Maybe in middle class usa. Other places had very high import taxes for electronics.

Ps1 was actually 100x more common than sega/nintendo in my 3rd world childhood because it was almost free to get games.

For the price of a cartridge rental for two days you could get a pirate cd.

My dad sold my SNES and Final Fantasy II for money to keep his kids fed. Poor kids didn't necessarily have shit back then, and certainly the used game market wasn't as available as it is now.

> I really like your argument but I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s.

Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 sold more units in less time and haven't been discontinued yet. And they are competing with the internet.

Don't forget the internet as well.

In Finland, there has also been a drop in alcohol consumption and an increase in Cannabis use. Most of the offences here are done under the influence of alcohol.

+1 to this! Also consider the endless entertainment available via the internet. Today for about $50 per month I have access to a plethora of streaming movies and television shows via Netflix, practically unlimited news to read, and many more forms of entertainment at my finger tips. Just 20 years ago I might have paid $4 per move rental at the video store. I'm honestly wondering if the fall in crime is due to the rise of the super couch potato lifestyle similar to that portrayed in the movie Idiocracy.

I think you're underestimating the scope. It's not just video games, but access to an unimaginably large quantity of free video and music...someone's watching all those kitten videos.

And time spent consuming entertainment of any kind is time spent being docile. It's been postulated that the Arab Spring protests were heavily spurred by regular people who, having their Internet cut, had little else to do but express their anger

"someone's watching all those kitten videos."

I don't have data, but I doubt it's the boys who otherwise would have become criminals who watch kitten videos.

Where you, by chance, looking for a synonym for 'kitten'?

What about the ubiquitous (and growing) availability of pornography (I mean, there are mobile porn sites now. Clearly demand is huge)? That could be a real factor.

Lets not forget Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Right on cue 20 years later crime started dropping.

Games, and porn. Take care of your urges and aggression without leaving your house.

I wonder how much of it has to do with how kids getting caught for entry-level crimes like petty vandalism and shoplifting are treated. Are they getting thrown into big prisons where they can learn from their fellow inmates how to deal drugs, rob stores safely, steal identities, etc, and also get a criminal record that prevents them from ever getting an education or an honest job paying more than minimum wage? Or are they getting just enough of an encounter with the legal system to scare the crap out of them without any of the potential long-term consequences?

So this would mean that a lot of crime is the result of boredom right? That kind of makes a lot of sense.

I don't think most people want to commit crimes and hurt others. They do it out of necessity. That necessity might be hunger, money or boredom coupled with a bad environment.

So next up is definitely hunger. I'd say in the end people who wish to steal for money when they're well fed, entertained and not homeless are just bad batch of humans we need to deal with.

Taking this a step further... The more violent the video games, the more likely we are to take violent criminals off the street, right? I like where you're going with this.

No. Definitely not. I deal with the certain "urges" on a daily basis. No matter how much gore there is in a game, no matter how graphic, it will never replace.

Just like holding a brightly coloured object in front of someone doesn't cure depression. Nothing does, it only temporarily sets it aside.

It's a distraction if anything.

I hear you - my comment was in jest.

I'd point to the internet in general as well. It's pretty much ubiquitous at this point. Just stay inside and spend hours on youtube and facebook instead of going outside and getting up to no good.

It's not the violence per se, it's the ability to get entertainment on demand. Whether it's Call of Duty or Minecraft, the thing is that you aren't left with 'nothing to do'.

I think you nailed it. I think cams have people thinking twice. I know they prevented me from banging a well deserving dude once.

Nice one, ya probably true.

Smartphone and camera ubiquity probably also plays a role. Just as cops know if they try to Rodney King somebody it will be on YouTube an hour later, so are criminals aware there will be a bunch of digital evidence.

Support is given to this by the fact that many of the crimes that are rising are things people can't witness you doing (bank fraud, identity theft etc).

And it's definitely not a silver bullet doing this. It's a combination of all of the factors in the article and here on HN and more we haven't thought of, all doing their part.

Increased respect for the 2nd amendment probably plays a role. Private ownership of firearms means that a home invader may get a face full of lead, which has to act as a deterrent for some.

not conclusively, but that notion is countered by the fact that crime is down in at least one country where gun ownership is very difficult (UK) while being up in at least one country where it's not so bad (Brazil)

Has private ownership of firearms been increasing in a way that correlates with the decrease in crime?

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