Richard Wright is Curators’ Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St.Louis
Recently, our research team – made up of criminologists and economists – released a study that we believe helps to explain the great American crime drop, which began in the 1990s and has continued to this day. Years of interviewing and observing active street criminals in St. Louis and Atlanta convinced us that most of them committed crimes to get cash to bankroll illicit....