Wednesday, November 28, 2007
chapter 4
Once again in this chapter is the role that incentives play in our everyday decisions. If you are going to commit a crime you have to first consider the reward and punishment. When they were in the period of low sentencing times of course you expect the crime rate to rise because the risk is worth the reward and even if you are caught the punishment would not be that severe. Some of the factors that this chapter mentioned that would lower the crime rate hit on some very touchy subject, especially the one about abortion. This brought up the point how much is a live baby worth compared to a fetus. And is the drop in the crime rate able to balance the losing of life? Also are these babies if born necessarily going to be the ones that commit the crime? I don't believe that you can prove that they will all commit crime, maybe that a higher percentage of them will but that is not justifiable by killing the ones that may or may not. Also I believe that there could be many factors that contributed to this lowering of the crime rate some that weren't even listed. These factors could have all just happened around the same time and now people are satisfied that they have the reasons they were looking for.
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2 comments:
You’re right about the fact that there a lot of other factors which the book did not select that did have an effect on crime rates. For example, I think a good economy do contribute to a lower crime rates because some criminals can sometime be rational too. When you think about the fact that the average crack dealer makes $3.30/hr, it only make sense that most people would rather work for McDonald’s for $7/hr than selling crack in a dark street corner. That’s a $3.70 differences, plus they don’t have to risk their lives and a future behind bar. The author even admitted in another chapter that a lack of incentive lead to a decrease in drug trafficking. It is safe to say that the economy did help in the fight against crimes.
Didn't the lack of insentive to sell crack arise because of the prices of crack dropping? It's kind of funny to say this, but the crack dealers weren't just looking at the short run, they had long term goals that were getting them through the day. Dreams of striking it rich in white gold. Which is weird.
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