ABSTRACT
The crime drop of the 1990s was fi rst mentioned in Chapter 3 when discussing crime rate trends and routine activity theory. Routine activity theory performed very well in explaining the increase in crime rates from 1960 through to the 1990s. But beginning around 1990 (the exact year varies by crime type and by location) crime rates began to decrease, most often drastically. Figure 12.1 provides an indication of these decreases in crime from 1990 up to 2011 in Canada and the United States. As noted in Chapter 3 , in the years preceding 1990 property crime rates increased 300 percent in both Canada and the United States, while violent crime rates increased by 500 percent in Canada and by 400 percent in the United States. These are incredible increases in both property and violent crimes. The decreases since 1990 have not been as dramatic, but the downward trend does not seem to have reached bottom yet. The property crime rate, from its peak until 2011, has decreased by 58.7 percent and 43.4 percent for Canada and the United States, respectively; the violent crime rate has decreased by 20.1 percent and 49.1 percent in Canada and the United States, respectively, from its peak until 2011. Needless to say, this is a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of many criminologists, sociologists, and economists.
