Crime: A Rhythm to the Madness

Is there a link between crime and population growth? And how does social change aggravate the current crime surge? James Q. Wilson, professor of management and public policy at UCLA and author of Thinking About Crime and The Moral Sense, gave his views last week in an interview with TIME assistant editor Susanne Washburn. Excerpts:

Any historian knows that crime waves, in fact, are cyclical. Earlier ones occurred in the 1830s, the late 1860s and the 1920s. The question is, What causes the cycles, and what affects their timing? Crime was abnormally low in the 1940s and 1950s and began to...

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