Editorial
It was easier to explain things when murder rates were going up. People could point to video games, violent and amoral television, to guns, to drugs, to permissiveness, to poverty, to demographics and the decline of civilized standards. But when the number of murders in Seattle falls to the lowest point in 25 years, as it did in 2001 — then what?
It is certainly not an improvement in video games or television fare. It’s not fewer guns. The late boom shrank the poverty rate, but not by 64 percent. Murder did shrink by that much in Seattle, from 69 in 1994 to 25 last year.
Why?
Is it demographics? The baby boom peaked in 1957, and if you assume the peak boomer would have a child at age 25, that child would now be 20 — a prime age for committing crimes.
Is it the police? They may be thanked for doing a good job, but even Seattle’s chief of police hesitates to take the credit for the spectacular drop in murder rates. So it is likely not the police.
Chief Gil Kerlikowske said part of the reason is better response to domestic violence. Only three of last year’s murders involved an attack on a spouse or dependent.
Another reason is an improvement in emergency medical service, so that fewer people who are shot die. If that is true, it is a reason to support emergency medical services.
Another reason, offered by criminologists, is that so many young men are in prison. Tough sentences protect the public.
Another possible reason is a reassertion of citizenship and morality. It is not universal, and is not as strong as decades ago. But it is there.
You can see it in the election and subsequent success of ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York, and in the three-strikes initiative in Washington. You can see it in the survival of the death penalty, and the widespread support of police during the WTO disturbances.
How much of an explanation that is, we don’t know. The effect of prevailing attitudes cannot be so easily measured as ownership of guns or hours in front of the TV set. And recall that the number is just 25 people, killed in 25 separate acts that may defy sociological explanations.
In any case, on the measure of murder, the century has started out well. Let’s keep it that way.