Not trying to defend our national dystopian nightmare of a surveillance state — but I'm pretty sure this is wrong?
Crime's been decreasing for years, and (from what I understand) this year is tracking to be one of the safest years on record?
Definitionally, there absolutely has to be a correlation (not causation) between those two factors you listed.
Didn't freakenomocs claim it (crime rate) was (primarilary) about abortion in the 1970s and less unwanted (and unsupervised/undisciplined) children growing up?
There’s also the leaded gasoline theory.
These charts make the exact point I was making.
Most of the crime decrease from its peak happened before the year 2000.
That means back in the days of law enforcement needing to do low-tech wiretapping techniques, crime was still rapidly decreasing.
There’s just not even a correlation. And, as a reminder, correlation is not causation even if it was there.