Violent Games Credited With Reducing Crime Levels

maroberts writes "According to a research paper produced from a collaboration between the University of Texas and the Centre for European Economic Research, violent video games may induce aggressive behavior, but the incapacitation effect outweighs this and produces a genuine reduction in violent crime. This paper was referenced in a BBC news story giving reasons why the US crime rates are falling (at least outside the prisons!)"

Comments

There's less crime because they don't go outside.

[Senes]

They develop violent feelings but they take it all out on their fictional characters. They stop going outside (thousands of years of children spent their days outside because they lacked TV and vidya) so they aren't around other people even if they have all kinds of aggressive hormones flowing to compel them to pick a fight with the next person they see.

Re:Fuck you guys, someone has to say it

[dargaud]

1. Birth Control is far more commonly used now then in the previous generation. Perhaps there are less unwanted kids and more planned children who are better cared for so they don't become criminals.

Actually access to abortion, not just birth control, has been singled out _in the US_ as the main cause (and not just correlation) in the drop of violence in the last 20 or so years. The causation has been determined thanks to the delay between access to abortion in a community and the time it takes for the unwanted kids to grow up into criminals. Choice quote: "Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime". More

Re:Fuck you guys, someone has to say it

[dkleinsc]

2. Revival in religion. Yea I know this is Slashdot and a lot of the readers here are Atheists or against religion in one form or an other, but there has been a resurgence in religious people. Which teaches at least to stop people from doing unorganized violence.

Unfortunately, there's at least one study that strongly suggests that atheists are less likely to commit crime than religious adherents.

4. Improved conditions for the poor. Sure the gap between the rich and the poor is growing however the poor now have a better standard of life then they did in the past.

The poor in the US have an income that's basically identical in real dollars to the income of the poor in 1970. For instance, this graph from data from the US census.