This morning’s NY Times struggles with a seeming paradox.  The nation is in a recession and the national crime rate is down.

How is this possible?  Turns out no one can really explain it.  Lord knows there are a lot of proposed causes for upticks or decreases in crime rates.  Prison rates, active policing, low-profile immigrants,  improved public housing policy, better medicine, expanded gun ownership,  abortion, poverty levels, illegal drugs.

Sure everyone has their hunches.  Problem is, according to the article, no one has ever really effectively argued any of these supposed correlations into the realm of causation.