Is it like a point of conservative orthodoxy that the '94 crime bill spurred the Great Crime Decline? If so, that's really bad! Very little evidence for that position. The GCD is a mystery but there are tons of reasons to imagine tweren't the crime bill wot done it.
Sounds like a classic case of placebo effect. Crime rates ebb and flow for a whole bunch of reasons. By the time politicians got around to doing something, crime rates had peaked (almost 10 yrs after crack). Some mistake the natural decline as the crime bill “working”
