Dragnet’s Joe Friday may have never uttered those words, but he would be impressed nonetheless by the facts on crime. There was a fascinating piece by Erik Eckholm in yesterday’s New York Times on the 
dramatic reductions in crime over the past several decades. Overall, crime peaked in 1991 and has fallen steadily since then.
All of this leads to the big question: why? Is it a change in tactics (e.g., aggressive policing, the “broken window” theory)? Is it a product of an increase in the costs of criminality (e.g., mandatory sentencing and the decision to keep 1.5 million people in prison)? Is it a product of good economic times? Perhaps it simply reflects demographics (e.g., the aging of the population, the decline in teenage pregnancy)? In the end, law professor Franklin E. Zimring (UC-Berkeley) is quoted as describing the search for an explanation as “criminological astrology.”
Max Ehrenfreund (Washington Post
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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