ABSTRACT
The street crimes represent a particularly serious form of unpredictability and thus an important threat to trust. These connections can be seen clearly in now-legendary low crime rates found in postwar Japan. Low crime rates in Japan allow the Japanese, even in large cities, to feel comfortable being away from their homes, in public places, at night. This chapter argues that to fit postwar trends a plausible explanation of crime must be capable of accounting for rapid change and must generally support the timing of trends and established subgroup differences in rates of offending. Under right circumstances, institutions could be expected to change rapidly enough to account for fluctuations observed in postwar American crime rates. There is no reason to think that gender-based institutional constraints on crime are any different than they are for other behavior. In general, institutions limit crime in interrelated ways: by reducing individual motivation to commit crime and by supplying effective controls to curb criminal behavior.
