Dear Editor,
Crime is Jamaica's national challenge. What can we learn from other countries that successfully faced this challenge?
Data indicate that crime in the United States of America started to decline in 1992. The Impact of Legalised Abortion on Crime, published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001, authored by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University, points to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Jamaica has the same challenge, as our youth are more likely than their seniors to commit crimes.
Donohue and Levitt's study indicates that the states that had abortion legalised experienced reductions in crime; absence of unwanted children. Studies in Canada and Australia, too, claim to have established a correlation between legalised abortion and overall crime reduction.
Many of the women seeking illegal abortions in Jamaica are young, poor, unemployed, and live in economically and socially deprived communities. Many times, too, they are high school students. When a girl, barely in her teens, brings an unwanted child into this world, will she be able to provide the care, love, nurturing and guidance a child needs? Observation suggests that usually such children are neglected. Such neglected children end up as criminals; who is to blame? This is indeed an uncomfortable question with no easy answer.
Tashfeen Ahmad
mrtashfeen@hotmail.com
The crime and abortion link
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Crime is Jamaica's national challenge. What can we learn from other countries that successfully faced this challenge?
Data indicate that crime in the United States of America started to decline in 1992. The Impact of Legalised Abortion on Crime, published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001, authored by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University, points to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Jamaica has the same challenge, as our youth are more likely than their seniors to commit crimes.
Donohue and Levitt's study indicates that the states that had abortion legalised experienced reductions in crime; absence of unwanted children. Studies in Canada and Australia, too, claim to have established a correlation between legalised abortion and overall crime reduction.
Many of the women seeking illegal abortions in Jamaica are young, poor, unemployed, and live in economically and socially deprived communities. Many times, too, they are high school students. When a girl, barely in her teens, brings an unwanted child into this world, will she be able to provide the care, love, nurturing and guidance a child needs? Observation suggests that usually such children are neglected. Such neglected children end up as criminals; who is to blame? This is indeed an uncomfortable question with no easy answer.
Tashfeen Ahmad
mrtashfeen@hotmail.com
The crime and abortion link
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