Lead and Crime

August 18, 2013
by Jay Livingston

In the late 1990s, I turned down my publisher’s offer to do a third edition of my criminology textbook.  It wasn’t just that editions one and two had failed to make me a man of wealth and fame.  But it was clear that crime had changed greatly.  Rates of murder and robbery had fallen by nearly 50%; property crimes like car theft and burglary were also much lower.  Anybody writing an honest and relevant book about crime would have a lot of explaining to do.  And that would be a lot of work.

I politely declined the publisher’s offer.  They didn’t seem too upset.

If I had undertaken the project, I probably would have relied heavily on the research articles in The Crime Drop in America, edited by Al Blumstein and Joel Wallman.* They rounded up the usual suspects – the solid economy, new police strategies, the incarceration boom, the stabilization of drug markets, anti-gun policies.  But we all missed something important – lead.  Children exposed to high levels of lead in early childhood are more likely to have lower IQs, higher levels of aggression, and lower impulse-control.  All those factors point to crime when children reach their teens if not earlier

Lead had long been suspected as a toxin, and even before World War I many countries acted to ban or reduce lead in paint and gasoline.  But the US, thanks to the anti-regulatory efforts of the industries and support from anti-regulation, pro-business politicians,** did not undertake serious lead reduction until the 1970s. 

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has been writing about lead and crime. Because race differences on both variables are so great, it’s useful to look at Blacks and Whites separately.  In the late 1970s, 15% of Black children under age three had dangerously high rates of lead in their blood (30 mcg/dl or higher). Among Whites, that rate was only 2.5%.  By 1990, even with a lower criterion level of 25 mcg/dl, those rates had fallen to 1.4% and 0.4%, respectively. 

The huge reduction in lead was matched – years later when those children were old enough to commit crimes – with a reduction in crime.  (The graphs show rates of arrest, which may somewhat exaggerate Black rates of offending.)

(Click on an image for a larger, clearer view.)

(“Violent crime” arrest rates are the sum of arrest rates of four crimes:
Murder, Rape, Robbery, and Aggravated Assault.)

Much of the research pointing to lead as an important cause of crime looks at geographical areas rather than individuals.  A study might compare cities, measuring changes in lead emissions and changes in violent crime 20 years later.  But studies that follow individuals have found the same thing.  Kids with higher blood levels of lead have higher rates of crime.  The lead-crime hypothesis is fairly recent, and the evidence is not conclusive.  But my best guess is that further research will confirm the idea that getting the lead out was, and will remain, an important crime-reduction policy. 

Kevin Drum also emphasises race differences.  And here the evidence is less solid. 

 arrest rates for violent crime have fallen much faster among black juveniles than among white juveniles . . . .  black juvenile crime rates fell further than white juvenile crime rates because they had been artificially elevated by lead exposure at a much higher rate.

But that  depends on how you interpret the data.*** As the graphs of arrests show, the percentage reductions are roughly similar across races.  Among Black youths, the arrest rates for all violent crime fell from 1600 per 100,000 to less than 700 – a 57% reduction.  For Whites the reduction was from 307 to 140 or 54%. But in absolute numbers, because Black rates of criminality were so much higher, the reduction seems all the more impressive. In that sense, those rates “fell further.”

Arrest rates for Blacks are still double those of Whites for property crimes, five times higher for homicide, and nine times higher for robbery.  Lead may be a factor in those differences.  Remember the lag time between childhood lead exposure and later crime. Twenty years ago, high blood levels of lead among children 1-5 years were three times as high for Blacks as for Whites. 
-------------------------

*I even had insider copies of those chapters well before the book went to press. Joel’s daughter and my son were in the same primary school class, and I knew him from parents’ night and other functions.

** See Markowitz and Rosner’s Deceit and Denial (2002). A review is here.

*** Drum basis his article on a paper by Rick Nevins (here).  The source of arrest date is this OJDDP report.

Quotes of the Day

August 16, 2013   
Posted by Jay Livingston

Just a couple of quotes – way too long for Twitter

1.  TV political talk is to politics as reality TV is to reality.  Off-camera producers are always trying to goose up the action. Robert Reich tells this story:

 Not long ago I debated a Republican economic advisor on a cable TV program. During the brief station-break, the show’s producer told me to “be angrier.” I told her I didn’t want to be angrier. “You have to,” she said. “Viewers are surfing through hundreds of channels and will stop for a gladiator contest.”

Back in the 60s, Paul Krassner* made the same point reporting about his appearance on the Joe Pyne show.  Pyne was a nasty right-winger, an ex-Marine who had lost his lower left leg to cancer.

Pyne: So I guess your long hair makes you a woman.
Krassner: So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.

The audience loved it. Said Krassner, “It doesn’t matter who wins – the lions or the Christians – as long as there’s action.”

2. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Crystal Meth. Dylan Matthews at WaPo’s Wonkblog looks into the accuracy of Breaking Bad’s picture of meth and finds that because of low wages, meth can be an “economic necessity” for working people trying to get ahead or just get by.

Guides to identifying and treating meth addiction, like Herbert Covey’s “The Methamphetamine Crisis,” tell readers to look out for “workaholics or low-income adults who use it to stay awake and perform in multiple jobs. Working, low-income individuals find meth attractive because they must work several jobs or long hours to support themselves or their families. They find that higher energy and alertness (ability to stay awake for prolonged periods) helps them cope with the demands of multiple jobs.”   

That’s also true for working-class women, whose second (or third) job is home and family.  Matthews quotes researcher Ralph Weisheit:

Women who have to have a job and then do traditional homemaking, they’re just exhausted and meth is a pick-me-up, a powerful one.

---------------------

* Krassner was an Abbie Hoffman-style lefty – smart, funny, and willing to be outrageous. He was editor and chief writer of The Realist, a satirical magazine, and creator of the red-white-and-blue “Fuck Communism” poster.

Pink - Gender or Class?

August 13, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

Pink, as we all know, is all about gender – ir’s for girls.  And sissies.

The University of Iowa . . . for decades has painted the locker room used by opponents pink to put them “in a passive mood” with a “sissy color,” in the words of a former head football coach, Hayden Fry.

That’s from Frank Bruni’s NY Times op-ed today.  But not all cultures link pink to femininity.  The Palermo soccer team wears pink uniforms as do other European teams.  (An earlier post on this is here, with links to Sociological Images posts on the same topic.)  In the US, it was only in the 1950s that pink took on its “boys keep out” message, and even then, a charcoal gray suit was often matched with a pink shirt or necktie.  In The Great Gatsby, set in 1922, Nick writes of Gatsby

His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before.

DiCaprio as Gatsby in the recent Baz Luhrman film.
The suit is pinker than it appears in this photo.

In the previous chapter, Tom Buchanan says that he has been “making a small investigation” of Gatsby’s past.

“And you found he was an Oxford man,” said Jordan helpfully.
“An Oxford man!” He was incredulous. “Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit.”    

Gatsby’s choice of suit colors reveals not his sexuality but his class origins.  An educated, upper-class gentleman – an Oxford man – would not wear a pink suit.  Anna Broadway cites this passage in her Atlantic article and adds,

According to an interview with the costume designer for Baz Luhrmann’s recent film, the color had working-class connotations.

Today, that class connotation is reversed. It’s the preppie type men at the country club who are wearing pink shirts or even, on the golf course, pants. That trend may be reinforced by something entirely fortuitous – a name.  The upscale fashion designer Thomas Pink, perhaps because of his name, does not shy away from pink as a color for men’s clothes. 

False Messiahs -- 1400 of Them

August 12, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

Does a baby have to earn its name?

A judge in Tennessee has changed a baby’s name. The parents had gone to the judge in a dispute over the baby’s last name. They agreed on the given names – Messiah DeShawn Martin. But the judge deleted the Messiah and changed the order of the other two. The child is Martin DeShawn McCollough, at least for now. (The story is here among many other places.)

The judge acted on behalf of all Christianity.

The word ‘Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ.

She also claimed that the name Messiah would harm the child.*

It could put him at odds with a lot of people, and at this point he has had no choice in what his name is.

That last part is indisputable. The kid is only seven months old. But the judge is bucking a trend.  Messiah as a given name is on the rise.

Last year, 761 other Messiahs entered the US population bringing the total to over 1400. They got their names the old-fashioned way. They didn’t “earn” them. Only one Messiah, if the judge is correct, earned the name.

The judge didn’t say how she felt about Jesus. But for some reason, the coming of Messiah matches a waning in the popularity of Jesus. 

----------------------
*In an earlier post, I noted that in Italy, a civil official to “advise and dissuade overly-creative parents” who propose names that are “ridiculous, shameful, or embarrassing.” I added that in the US, no such restrictions applied.  The parents have appealed the judge’s decision, and I expect that they’ll win.