Where Have All Criminals Gone Summary

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Name Course Professor’s name Date Reading analysis of “Where Have All Criminals Gone” Executive summary This paper is a critical summary and analysis of Stephen Leavitt and Steven Dubner’s chapter 4 (“Where Have All the Criminals Gone”) in their book Freakonomics. The paper will borrow and apply Wolcott’s Steps for Better Thinking model in summarizing this chapter. The model is expected to bring out sense when applied in the analysis of this chapter and help in the derivation of conclusions based on evidence gathered. Framing the problem Leavitt and Dubner hypothesize that legalization of abortion has a negative impact on crime rates. This chapter explains the drop in crime rates observed in the 1990s. They propose that abortion reduces the degree of neglecting children thus, their gravitation towards crime drops. The chapter asserts that the largest proportion of criminals constitutes of children who felt unwanted by the parents or society. In that regard, abortion eliminates children who otherwise would have been born to become neglected. On the wider scope, the discussion about abortion…show more content…
Leavitt and Dubner seem to have well documented evidence to support their assertions. Their evidence starts with the story of the former dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu who banned abortion in 1966. Before the ban, abortion served as the only method of birth control used by Romanians. According to Leavitt and Dubner, the aftermath of the ban had extensive consequences including increased crime rates and unemployment rates among others. On a similar note, the authors note that angry Romanians began protesting against the ban on abortion in 1989, which saw their ruler executed when his attempt to escape flopped. The authors point out that the masterminds behind the protests and conquest of his reign were mostly young people born after he prohibited abortion in

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