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Consistency is an established indicator of causation in public health research. The consistency of an association between an environmental exposure and a public health outcome is determined by whether the association has been “repeatedly observed by different persons, in different places, circumstances and times” (Hill, (1965). The association between individual preschool lead exposure and later…

From John Pekkanen (2006) (PDF), “Why Is Lead Still Poisoning Our Children?” Washingtonian Magazine: “Nevin’s conclusions amplify earlier studies linking lead exposure and criminal behavior, none more striking than work by Deborah W. Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. Longitudinal studies analyze the same group of individuals over a period of time,…

Hill (1965) states that “the strongest support for the causation hypothesis may be revealed” when an action is taken to prevent a suspected cause of disease, and later trends show “experimental evidence” of cause and effect: “Is the frequency of the associated events affected?” In other words, does the hypothesized causal relationship have predictive power?…

At a minimum, the time-precedence causation indicator requires that the suspected cause precede the effect. The best-fit time lags for lead and crime trends, with a shorter lag for property crime than for violent crime, provide especially compelling evidence of time precedence. The same lags are evident around the world, with divergent international crime trends…

Bonczar & Beck (1997) estimated the lifetime risk of going to state or federal prison at birth and showed how the remaining risk of going to prison for the first time declines with age, based on the assumption that “incarceration rates recorded in 1991 remain unchanged in the future”. For black males, the lifetime risk…

New York City’s crime decline is often attributed to better policing, but some tactics have been controversial, including the “stop, question, and frisk” tactic that peaked at about 700,000 stops in 2011. “A large percentage of those stopped were minorities, and critics and plaintiffs in federal court proceedings questioned whether all these stops could have…

Coates (2015) presented a graph showing that the USA violent crime rate surged after 1960, but the incarceration rate didn’t start rising until after 1970. Based on this time lag, Coates concluded that incarceration “rose independent of crime”. Hymowitz (2015) responded that this lag was better explained by policy that was “slow to catch up…

In 2015, the Marshall Project reported that criminal justice reform organizations were uniting behind the “Cut50” goal to reduce the prison population by 50% over 10 to 15 years. That report also acknowledged the following implication of this goal: “Left mostly unsaid is that achieving the goal of this “Cut50” movement would entail touching what…

In 2013, the USA murder rate fell to the lowest level ever recorded in FBI data that goes back to 1960. The FBI and the news media did not think that milestone was worth noting. In 2014, the murder rate fell to another new record low, again without any media attention. In 2015, there was…

Hill (1965) says it is helpful if a causal hypothesis is biologically plausible. The plausibility of preschool lead exposure affecting learning and behavior has been demonstrated by extensive research showing adverse neurochemical, subcellular, and cellular effects on brain development (Banks, 1997). There are also “toxicological effects with behavioural concomitants at exceedingly low levels of exposure”.…

A February 2021 WaPo commentary by Keith Humphreys began with the following observation: “Prisons are getting Whiter.” That fact was also made clear in 2020 Featured Content from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) showing 2008-2018 trends in prison incarceration rates: “From 2008 to 2018, the imprisonment rate dropped 28% among black residents, 21% among…

In North America and Europe, the phaseout of leaded gasoline occurred over the span of a decade or longer. The phaseout was mostly implemented from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s in Canada and the USA, and from the mid-1980s through the 1990s in Western Europe. That is why crime in Britain peaked about 10 years…

“Cable newscasters, criminologists, and city officials have repeatedly warned Americans of rising crime nationwide. But the “crime is up” narrative doesn’t tell the full story, experts say.” (The Crime Report, July 16, 2021) In fact, some cable newscasters insist that the USA is experiencing a massive crime surge, even as robbery, burglary, and felony larceny-theft…

Alabama lawmakers have passed legislation to build two new 4,000-bed prisons. This decision was made without any understanding of how and why Alabama’s prison population fell 23% from July 2012 through July 2021. Alabama will fund the $1.34 billion cost of the two prisons with $400 million in federal Covid-19 relief funds, $154 million from…

Nevin (2000) found that lead exposure trends explained 90% to 96% of temporal variation from the 1950s through 1996 in unwed conception rates (unwed births and abortions) for ages 15-17, 18-19, and 20-24. The best-fit lag for each age group was consistent with the impact of lead exposure on neurodevelopment in the first years of…

In 2015, Glenn Kessler fact-checked a claim that a Black male “born today” had a one in three chance of being incarcerated during his lifetime. Kessler traced that claim to a 2013 Sentencing Project report that cited imprisonment risks from a 2003 analysis by Bonczar. That 2003 analysis stated that its lifetime risk estimates assumed…

I first wrote about the pipeline to prison running dry in 2015. At that time, I cited available data through 2013 showing stunning declines in juvenile arrest rates and juveniles in state and federal prisons, adult jails, and juvenile residential placement (corrections) facilities. “From 1991-2013,… juvenile (under 18) arrest rates fell by 63% for violent…

In the field of criminology, the Age-Crime Curve is settled science. The Age-Crime Curve “The prevalence of offending tends to increase from late childhood, peak in the teenage years (from 15 to 19) and then decline in the early 20s. This bell-shaped age trend, called the age-crime curve, is universal in Western populations … However,…

In May, 2020, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that active U.S. oil and natural gas rigs had fallen to the lowest level on record. This was eight months before President Trump left office, but this was not caused by Trump’s energy policy. The 2020 collapse in drilling was caused by the COVID pandemic. COVID…

In its 2020 Energy Outlook, BP declared that the world reached Peak Oil demand in 2019. BP’s 2022 report revised that forecast, with oil demand expected to surpass the 2019 level by the mid-2020s before beginning to fall. The 2022 BP outlook was prepared before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (OilPrice.com, 2022). Recent data suggest…

Everyone loves a true crime mystery. Dateline NBC – “the OG of true crime” – is the most-watched newsmagazine on TV. With that fan base, you would think that NBC might want to follow up on the amazing true crime mystery investigated by Dick Mendel in 2014. “For the juvenile justice field, there is no…

“The prevalence of offending tends to increase from late childhood, peak in the teenage years (from 15 to 19) and then decline in the early 20s. This bell-shaped age trend, called the age-crime curve, is universal in Western populations” (National Institute of Justice, 2014) This statement was not true in 2019 and it was even…

The massive decline in juvenile offending has – predictably – spread to arrest rates for ages 18-20 and 21-24.   Adult-onset offending is very rare, but 40% to 60% of youths with juvenile arrests continue offending in early adulthood. “For those who do persist, the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a period of increasing…

Massive declines in arrest rates for juveniles and adults ages 18-24 have caused an astonishing change in the age distribution of felony arrests since 1980. The age distribution of felony arrests from 1980 through 2020 provides an important insight into why some crime categories have fallen to record lows over recent years while other types…

Recent reports on USA prisoners and jail inmates in 2021 show youth incarceration is still heading toward zero. The prison incarceration rate for men ages 18-19 fell 88% from 2001-2021. The trendline for that decline hits zero in 2025. The number of juveniles in adult prisons fell 92% from 2000-2021, and juveniles in adult jails…

USA arrest rates by age have only been updated through 2020, but juvenile arrest data reported by 10 states (FL, TX, CA, NY, VA, TN, WA, SC, GA, NC) show the trend toward zero juvenile crime continued in 2021. Weighted average data for these 10 states (accounting for about half of the USA population) show…

The OJJDP has updated juvenile residential placement commitment rates through 2021 (court ordered commitments per 100,000 juveniles,  here). Juvenile residential placement data are generally reported for every other year. The graph below reflects reported data, and straight-line interpolation for years between years of reported data, from 1997-2021. The juvenile residential placement commitment rate peaked in…

The transition to a new FBI reporting system made preliminary 2021 crime data unreliable, creating a “massive gap in information … exploited by politicians in midterm election campaigns“. The FBI has now released updated, reliable crime data through 2022 (here) and YTD data through September 2023 showing the percent change compared to 2022 (here). These…

The 2022 prisoners report showed that young male imprisonment rates are still heading toward zero. The imprisonment rate for men ages 18-19 fell 89% from 2001-2022, with Black men recording the steepest decline. In this age group, the 2022 Black male imprisonment rate was just slightly higher than the 2001 White male imprisonment rate. The…