Gaming to thank for falling US crime rate?

By Fred Dutton Published 21 June, 2011

Study: violent games keep kids off the street.

It might come as news to CSI fans, but murder and robbery rates have been on the decline in the US since 1991, with an especially sharp drop reported in the last two years.

As summarised today by the BBC, the various hypotheses put forward to explain the trend include better police work, decreased demand for crack cocaine, the "Obama effect" and, perhaps surprisingly, the increased popularity of gaming.

A study carried out in April by researchers in Texas working with the Centre for European Economic Research has rejected the widely-held perception that games potentially make consumers more violent, and instead insisted that the pastime is actually helping to keep them occupied and off the streets.

Titled Understanding the Effects of Violent Videogames on Violent Crime, it claims that an increased volume of violent game sales over the given test period has corresponded with a decrease in criminal incidents reported to law enforcement officers.

The report's basic argument is that any anti-social tendencies that games might inspire in users is offset by the time it takes to play them.

"We argue that since laboratory experiments have not examined the time use effects of videogames, which incapacitate violent activity by drawing individual gamers into extended gameplay, laboratory studies may be poor predictors of the net effects of violent videogames in society," wrote the report's author, economist Michael Ward

"Consequently, they overstate the importance of videogame induced aggression as a social cost."

Take that, Keith Vaz.

Those with an appetite for algebra and reams of impenetrable data can download the full report from Social Science Research Network.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (38) Latest comment 11 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RoaringPanda #1 11 months ago

    Fuck you, Jack Thompson!

  • BuddyChrist #2 11 months ago

    Crime will go back up when the programmers of all those failed games companies run out of food and new names for spin off companies.

  • Lunastra78 #3 11 months ago

    I'm also sure that most, if not all of those cases where games were blamed for inspiring crimes were only a bad excuse for lawyers trying to make a case for their clients.

  • DarthMartious #4 11 months ago

    "It might come as news to CSI fans, but crime has been on the decline in the US since 1991"

    What sort of crime? According to whom? Ah, the FBI via the Beeb have this to say:

    "Murder and robbery rates nearly halved from 1991-98".

    Ah, so murder and robbery are down. But why?

    " A study released last month suggested video games were keeping young people off the streets and therefore away from crime. Researchers in Texas working with the Centre for European Economic Research said this "incapacitation effect" more than offset any direct impact the content of the games may have had in encouraging violent behaviour."

    :|

    Sounds like crap research to me coupled with a spurious conclusion.

  • rockin_rob_1 #5 11 months ago

    take it this will be reported by the mail? or will they invent some stupid story about how games are turning us all into murdering psychopaths?

  • MysteryLamb #6 11 months ago

    The next debate prehaps..... gaming as a pacifier, good thing or bad?

  • Billy_Sastard #7 11 months ago

    Speculation is the key word.

  • Jacksie66 #8 11 months ago

    Yawwwwnn...

  • JamieR #9 11 months ago

    oh the irony

  • pokota #10 11 months ago

    I used to run a video rental store where at least half my customers were black or Hispanic, and a large portion of my customers in general were below the poverty line. The ironic thing was that it was the middle class and up kids who were into Military and FPS shooters. Kids with less money all made a bee-line to the sports games. The same with the dealers and thugs who came in, they were all about Madden, FIFA, or NBA Live.

    On a side note, professional athletes have become much bigger and better role models, which might also be related.

  • CaptainQuint #11 11 months ago

    Fucking classic!

  • Stuz359 #12 11 months ago

    So blokes are trading real killing with virtual killing? Finally.

  • lockload #13 11 months ago

    Fox news put this report in your pipe and smoke it

  • darkmorgado #14 11 months ago

    If I lived in that deluded, self-important shithole I'd probably kill myself too.

  • pokota #15 11 months ago

    The suicide rate in the U.S. doesn't seem to be anything atypical, and is actually lower than much of Europe. Hell, if people are killing themselves rather than other people, then that's OK with me.

    I wonder what the suicide rate is among gamers, though?

  • RazorObsession #16 11 months ago

    So glad they are looking at the issue from this particular angle, as I've always used violent video games as a "count to ten, breathe" substitute.

    I was raised by an old school, belt off, aggression towards children, violence is the first, last and only answer kind of father, who slipped through the modernization of parenting net, and missed the memo about not beating your children so hard that their bones snap like twigs, so that shoot first, ask questions later programming is within my consciousness whether I like it or not. Apples don't fall far from trees and all that.

    I have to make a conscious effort to not think about aggression as my first response, and the more violent and realistic videogames get, the better and longer the effect they have on me. Why go on a shooting spree, when fallout or Cod will suffice?

    Now all I do is play on weekends, and it typically lasts me the whole week without punching or shooting anyone in the face, for reals.

    Its when the fuckwits in parliament and the parent brigade finally get their own way and ban all violent video games, that this world will really have to start worrying.

    And not just about me, about all undiagnosed "sick" gamers in the world using games in this manner as "treatment".

  • inutaihanyou #17 11 months ago

    @darkmorgado

    Generalizing an entire country full of people isn't nice. Infact, its somewhat sad

  • anomagnus #18 11 months ago

    @darkmorgado

    I can only hope you do wind up living there then.

  • Inmediasress #19 11 months ago

    They should make up their minds either hate and despise games or praise them this kind of duble standard isn't exactly credible.
    Well the third option would be to leave the games to those that play them and not to people who never played a game yet appearently know everything about it.
    Always reminds me of those children's handbooks and whatnot, where people who don't have a child tell me how to raise one.

  • Dannyboy1100 #20 11 months ago

    This happens so often where people take 2 unrelated things that happened at the same time and say they are related...
    Video games used to be blamed for violence in youths and now it reduces crime?
    Honestly i think it's all bullshit

  • Grunk #21 11 months ago

    Daily mail:
    New study concludes that gaming is creating a nation of stay at home psychopaths.

  • Seoh #22 11 months ago

    A very difficult thing to prove. However there is a experiment that could be used to prove the hypothesis.

    Take a statistically significant number of murdering psychopaths who do not play video games, put them all in a house together and provide games consoles with CoD, GTA etc.. It is important they believe they are not being monitored or watched. Periodically introduce a defenceless potential victim and see if they get murdered.

    This of course would need to be paired with a control house containing no games consoles

  • Tinrib72 #23 11 months ago

    Darkmorgado, you really are a chump. On my visits to the US I found the level of hospitality and friendliness shown to me there was humbling as I know that wouldnt happen here in the UK if the situation was reversed. Christ, we even sneer (or worse) at other Brits if their accent is different from our own..

    Maybe you should get your head out of your arse at some point.

  • metamorphic #24 11 months ago

    Jack Thompson will be spilling his teeth in the tub over this.

  • hello_fi #25 11 months ago

    "If I lived in that deluded, self-important shithole I'd probably kill myself too."

    Come on everyone! If we all club together we can get him a one ticket to the states. For the greater good!

  • initialsBB #26 11 months ago

    If you read "Freakonomics" they have a totally different explanation, and the statistics to back up their claims.

  • Atropos #27 11 months ago

    @Seoh
    OK, that's the next hit reality-show right there...

    This is old news though, I read a similar statistic/correlation a few years back in Playboy were they noted that since the release of GTAIII the computer games market had quadrupled, while violent youth crime had halved.

    It's not good science, as such, as it is mixing up correlation and causation, but it is a very good argument against the "other side", as their arguments are mostly based on even flimsier anecdata.

    and @RazorObsession: You need to write an article for a newspaper about this.

  • Darren #28 11 months ago

    Violent street crime drops since 1991 while games and movie piracy continues to increase... is there a connection? ;)

  • blackbriar101 #29 11 months ago

    I wonder has the cover system caused a decline in homicides.

  • dagas #30 11 months ago

    I think crime is too complicated to be explained as simple as this. You cannot say that there is one reason alone that increases or decreases crime, there are a huge number of factors.

  • carlitoswagon #31 11 months ago

    Harsh words but games/TV may also be to blame for breeding a generation of fat lazy fucks.

  • PezzaDispenser #32 11 months ago

    Some people make hypotheses based on anything these days. I will make a counter claim:

    “Gaming can reduce crime rates around the world, but this has had an unfortunate effect on childhood obesity, but also has a great effect of the sales cheesy puffs"

    See I just did it… :)
    Edited by PezzaDispenser at 22/06/11 @ 13:17

  • Doctor_What #33 11 months ago

    They have demonstrated a correlation, but I don't see evidence here of causation. If they can do that THEN they'll have real news.

    @RazorObsession - rock on mate. I have a friend in an uncannily similar position. He copes, but it takes work to drive out those instincts. I also second what Atropos said: get your story out in the open.

  • theiceman #34 11 months ago

    @RazorObsession,General_Ironfist,

    I too had a very hard childhood:punch first ask questions later attitude,beatings for myself and my siblings on a daily basis.

    But i broke the chain for my kids,i still have anger issues all these years later,but with online shooters,i can let go of my anger without hurting anyone else in the real world.

  • JudasBlitzkrieg #35 11 months ago

    Take that, daily mail!

  • Architect_z #36 11 months ago

    Yeh but all the ASBO's have all been replaced by a bunch of hackers now.

  • Al_Swearengen #37 11 months ago

    @RazorObsession I think our fathers must be related.

  • Gammerz #38 11 months ago

    They've all switching to cyber-crime: hacking Playstation networks, Codemasters, SOCA etc...