[lbo-talk] Reversing common wisdom on pornography

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 8/26/06, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> [Courtesy Sam Smith's Undernews]
>
> [This is probably a silly, superficial correlation.  But it beats the hell
> out of the opposite silly, superficial correlation.  So it could be of fun
> rhetorical use.]
>
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013#PaperDownload
>
> EVIDENCE THAT PORN REDUCES RAPE
>
> ANTHONY D'AMATO, NORTHWESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW - The incidence of rape in the
> United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography
> has become freely available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan
> Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced
> social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social
> violence. . . The decline [is] steeper than the stock market crash that led to
> the Great Depression. . . There were 2.7 rapes for every 1,000 people in 1980;
> by 2004, the same survey found the rate had decreased to 0.4 per 1000 people.

Take a look at "National Crime Victimization Survey Violent Crime
Trends, 1973-2004" at
<http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/viortrdtab.htm>, and
you'll see that incidences of almost all violent crimes -- from
robbery to aggravated assault -- as well as the total violent crime
rate declined, not just the rape incidence, except murder.

What you can say with confidence is that increased availability of
porn doesn't increase rape or other violent crimes.
-- 
Yoshie
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