Crime drop in Ghana? Some insights from crime patterns and trends

This study examines crime rate trends in Ghana in the context of research into the international crime drop. Ghanaian police-recorded crime data are imperfect, but crime rates appear to have increased to the early 2000s then to have declined significantly. However, the national trend for all crime types masks significant variation by crime type and region. The national trends appear, broadly speaking, consistent with long-term crime increases and decreases in high-income countries, but with a lag that may reflect Ghana’s economic development trajectory. This may be consistent with the routine activity perspective if both crime opportunities and economic development increased in parallel, followed by a crime decline that reflected increased security measures or other change. The study raises many questions that require further research, and some suggestions to that end are outlined.

The dark footprint of state violence: A synthetic approach to the American crime decline

This project combines the conversation on the national crime rate with emerging discussions on the violence that the state perpetrates against civilians. To measure US lethal violence holistically, we reconceptualize the traditional definitional boundaries of violence to erase arbitrary distinctions between state- and civilian-caused crime and violence. Discussions of the “crime decline” focus specifically on civilian crime, positioning civilians as the sole danger to the health, wealth, and safety of individuals. Violence committed by the state—from police homicide to deaths in custody to in-prison sexual assault—is not found in the traditionally reported crime rate. These absences belie real dangers posed to individuals which are historical and contemporary, nonnegligible, and possibly rising. We present Uniform Crime Report data side-by-side with data on police killings, deaths in custody, and executions from sources such as Fatal Encounters, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Center for Disease Control to produce a robust discussion of deaths produced through the criminal legal system. We ground this empirical analysis in a broader conceptual framework that situates state violence squarely within the realm of US crime, and explore the implications of this more holistic view of crime for future analyses.

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime over the Last Two Decades

Donohue and Levitt (2001) presented evidence that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s played an important role in the crime drop of the 1990s. That paper concluded with a strong out-of-sample prediction regarding the next two decades: “When a steady state is reached roughly twenty years from now, the impact of abortion will be roughly twice as great as the impact felt so far. Our results suggest that all else equal, legalized abortion will account for persistent declines of 1% a year in crime over the next two decades.” Estimating parallel specifications to the original paper, but using the seventeen years of data generated after that paper was written, we find strong support for the prediction and the broad hypothesis, while illuminating some previously unrecognized patterns of crime and arrests. We estimate that overall crime fell 17.5% from 1998 to 2014 due to legalized abortion—a decline of 1% per year. From 1991 to 2014, the violent and property crime rates each fell by 50%. Legalized abortion is estimated to have reduced violent crime by 47% and property crime by 33% over this period, and thus can explain most of the observed crime decline.