So have we pretty much come to the conclusion that the generally accepted academic explanation for the post-60s industrialized world crime spike has even less evidence than the bonehead social conservative moralizer explanation? And they say the LIEberal Elite controlling our education system is just a conspiracy theory, lol.
While we're on the subject I'd like to point out that weakening of social norms and Battuta's explanations can interact. Reduced job security and immigration can both weaken social norms. Weakened social norms can increase drug use and vice versa. You can't deny, though, that your grandma has a point when she talks about the "good old days", when everyone worked twelve hours a day in a factory for a few slices of bread but at least there wasn't as much crime and people were polite. I'd also like to pounce on GB's earlier claim that happiness keep going up. Actually, if I remember correctly self-reported happiness scores have been almost perfectly stable for the past 50 years and female happiness has actually gone down. So no substantial difference there.
If you look at the Wikipedia graph of the US crime trend that GB provided it meshes pretty well with something a Republican might have drawn. The counterculture, and crime, was biggest in the 60s and 70s. Then people get bored with it, people vote for Reagan on his traditional values schtick, and the crime rate falls through the 90s and 2000s as Fundies take over. You'd only expect a linear trend if social norms continued to weaken indefinitely, but I don't think that's the case. A few specific values are changing (like acceptance of homosexuality) but overall social cons have gained strength in recent years. Just my non-liberal-arts-educated opinion.
