Crime Rate in New York

In recent discussions of the crime rate in New York City, a controversial issue has been why the crime rate has decreased. On the one hand, "New York police will tell you that what happened in New York was that the city's policing strategies dramatically improved." On the other hand, criminologists "point to the decline of the crack trade and the aging of the population." Gladwell then argues that there is "a puzzling gap between the scale of the changes in policing and the size of the effect on places like Brownsville and East New York." My own view is that it is a mix of all things combined. The increase in police efforts and the decline of the crack trade both played a major role in the decreasing crime rate in New York areas. Though I concede that the decrease of the crime rate did drop in a very short amount of time, I still maintain that just one thing would not lessen the crime rate, it had to be a combined effort.