by Robert James Bidinotto

About the author: Robert James Bidinotto is a staff writer for Reader’s Digest and the editor of the book Criminal Justice? The Legal System Versus Individual Responsibility.

Since 1960, per capita crime rates have more than tripled, while violent crime rates have nearly quintupled. By any measure, we live in a nation much less safe than that in which our parents grew up.

Liberal and Conservative Explanations of Crime

This simply cries out for an explanation. What in our modern society could possibly account for the sudden and explosive growth in force, fraud, and coercion"

Liberals typically posit socio-economic factors, such as poverty. Yet how can we attribute the rising tide of violence to rising poverty, when the periods of fastest crime growth have been during times of rapidly rising American wealth"

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