International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 11

The Cyclical Evolution of Homicides and Security
1978; Wadman and Allison 2004). In doing so, they echoed citizen groups that were
calling for investigations. Under pressure from the resulting commissions of inquiry,
the electoral system loosened its grip on police services. Corruption declined, although
it still continued to exist.
It was at this time that private security became a force to be reckoned with.
Americans had turned to the security market in response to the high crime rate
that developed in the 1920s. In the United States, the number of private detectives is
estimated to have gone from twenty thousand in 1920 to one hundred thousand in
1930. Over that same period, storekeepers and industrialists acquired better protection
of their establishments and assets by resorting to watchmen, alarm systems, safes, and
other security equipment (Fogelson 1977).
In short, the declining homicide rate of the 1930s and the recession of the 1940s
and 1950s took place during a period of relative poverty, low consumption, tighter social
controls, improved police personnel, vigorous police operations, weaker organized
crime, and expanding private security.
1956–1989: The Growth of Crime in a Period of Economic Expansion
The homicide rates (but also the rates of most crimes for which there are reliable
statistics) grew steadily from 1960 to 1975. They then remained high, and fluctuations
were irregular. This growth in crime and its peak were seen not only in Canada and
the United States but also in most Western countries. And it came about at a time of
economic expansion: growing wealth and consumption, low unemployment. Purchasing
power rose year after year. Mass production increased the number of targets likely to
be of interest to thieves, particularly as electronic devices, were becoming lighter and
easier to transport. The number of bank branches and convenience stores rose, offering
targets to robbers. People increasingly traveled by car to go to work, to go out in the
evening, to go away at the weekend, or on holiday. As a result, houses were left empty, a
bargain for burglars. With plenty, came carelessness, and citizens protected themselves
less and less well (Cohen and Felson 1979; Cusson 1990).
The population was younger, with a vast increase in the percentages aged fifteen
to twenty-five, the age range known to be the most active in terms of offending. These
young people became increasingly engaged in dissent and protest, particularly at the
end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Young adults, of whom there were
simply too many, found it hard to find a foothold in the labor market.
Nearly everywhere in North America, police forces were caught off guard by
a rising tide of crime. The bureaucratization of the police had reduced its adaptability,
and the policing conception that held sway in the 1960s was missing the point. Police
chiefs and officers were obsessed with the means and lost sight of the ends (Goldstein
1990). They relied on ineffective vehicle patrols. In United States inner cities, a gulf
appeared between police officers and young Blacks.
The resemblance between the 1920s and the 1960s is striking. Those two
periods—separated by forty years—of growth in partying and homicide were both
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