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true is that Oscar Danilo Blandon helped establish a link—between Colombian

cocaine cartels and inner-city crack merchants—that would alter American

history. By putting massive amounts of cocaine into the hands of street gangs,

Blandon and others like him gave rise to a devastating crack boom. And gangs

like the Black Gangster Disciple Nation were given new reason to exist.

As long as there have been cities, there have been gangs of one sort or another. In

the United States, gangs have traditionally been a sort of halfway house for

recent immigrants. In the 1920s, Chicago alone had more than 1,300 street gangs,

catering to every ethnic, political, and criminal leaning imaginable. As a rule,

gangs would prove much better at making mayhem than money. Some fancied

themselves commercial enterprises, and a few—the Mafia, most notably—

actually did make money (at least for the higher-ups). But most gangsters were,

as the cliché assures us, two-bit gangsters.

Black street gangs in particular flourished in Chicago, with membership in the

tens of thousands by the 1970s. They constituted the sort of criminals, petty and

otherwise, who sucked the life out of urban areas. Part of the problem was that

these criminals never seemed to get locked up. The 1960s and 1970s were, in

retrospect, a great time to be a street criminal in most American cities. The

likelihood of punishment was so low—this was the heyday of a liberal justice

system and the criminals’ rights movement—that it simply didn’t cost very much

to commit a crime.

By the 1980s, however, the courts had begun to radically reverse that trend.

Criminals’ rights were curtailed and stricter sentencing guidelines put in place.

More and more of Chicago’s black gangsters were getting sent to federal prisons.

By happy coincidence, some of their fellow inmates were Mexican gang members

with close ties to Colombian drug dealers. In the past, the black gangsters had

bought their drugs from a middleman, the Mafia—which, as it happened, was

then being pummeled by the federal government’s new anti-racketeering laws.

But by the time crack came to Chicago, the black gangsters had made the

connections to buy their cocaine directly from Colombian dealers.

Cocaine had never been a big seller in the ghetto: it was too expensive. But that

was before the invention of crack. This new product was ideal for a low-income,

street-level customer. Because it required such a tiny amount of pure cocaine,

one hit of crack cost only a few dollars. Its powerful high reached the brain in

just a few seconds—and then faded fast, sending the user back for more. From

the outset, crack was bound to be a huge success.

And who better to sell it than the thousands of junior members of all those street

gangs like the Black Gangster Disciple Nation? The gangs already owned the

territory—real estate was, in essence, their core business—and they were suitably

menacing to keep customers from even thinking about ripping them off.

Suddenly the urban street gang evolved from a club for wayward teenagers into

a true commercial enterprise.

The gang also presented an opportunity for longtime employment. Before crack,

it was just about impossible to earn a living in a street gang. When it was time for

a gangster to start supporting a family, he would have to quit. There was no such

thing as a thirty-year-old gangster: he was either working a legitimate job, dead,

or in prison. But with crack, there was real money to be made. Instead of moving

on and making way for the younger gangsters to ascend, the veterans stayed put.

This was happening just as the old-fashioned sort of lifetime jobs—factory jobs

especially—were disappearing. In the past, a semi-skilled black man in Chicago

could earn a decent wage working in a factory. With that option narrowing,

crack dealing looked even better. How hard could it be? The stuff was so

addictive that a fool could sell it.

Who cared if the crack game was a tournament that only a few of them could

possibly win? Who cared if it was so dangerous—standing out there on a corner,

selling it as fast and anonymously as McDonald’s sells hamburgers, not knowing

any of your customers, wondering who might be coming to arrest or rob or kill

you? Who cared if your product got twelve-year-olds and grandmothers and

preachers so addicted that they stopped thinking about anything except their

next hit? Who cared if crack killed the neighborhood?

For black Americans, the four decades between World War II and the crack

boom had been marked by steady and often dramatic improvement. Particularly

since the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the telltale signs of societal

progress had finally taken root among black Americans. The black-white income

gap was shrinking. So was the gap between black children’s test scores and those

of white children. Perhaps the most heartening gain had been in infant mortality.

As late as 1964, a black infant was twice as likely to die as a white infant, often of

a cause as basic as diarrhea or pneumonia. With segregated hospitals, many

black patients received what amounted to Third World care. But that changed

when the federal government ordered the hospitals to be desegregated: within

just seven years, the black infant mortality rate had been cut in half. By the 1980s,

virtually every facet of life was improving for black Americans, and the progress

showed no sign of stopping.

Then came crack.

While crack use was hardly a black-only phenomenon, it hit black

neighborhoods much harder than most. The evidence can be seen by measuring

the same indicators of societal progress cited above. After decades of decline,

black infant mortality began to soar in the 1980s, as did the rate of low-

birthweight babies and parent abandonment. The gap between black and white

schoolchildren widened. The number of blacks sent to prison tripled. Crack was

so dramatically destructive that if its effect is averaged for all black Americans,

not just crack users and their families, you will see that the group’s postwar

progress was not only stopped cold but was often knocked as much as ten years

backward. Black Americans were hurt more by crack cocaine than by any other

single cause since Jim Crow.

And then there was the crime. Within a five-year period, the homicide rate

among young urban blacks quadrupled. Suddenly it was just as dangerous to

live in parts of Chicago or St. Louis or Los Angeles as it was to live in Bogotá.

The violence associated with the crack boom was various and relentless. It

coincided with an even broader American crime wave that had been building for

two decades. Although the rise of this crime wave long predated crack, the trend

was so exacerbated by crack that criminologists got downright apocalyptic in

their predictions. James Alan Fox, perhaps the most widely quoted crime expert

in the popular press, warned of a coming “bloodbath” of youth violence.

But Fox and the other purveyors of conventional wisdom were wrong. The

bloodbath did not materialize. The crime rate in fact began to fall—so

unexpectedly and dramatically and thoroughly that now, from the distance of

several years, it is almost hard to recall the crushing grip of that crime wave.

Why did it fall?

For a few reasons, but one of them more surprising than the rest. Oscar Danilo

Blandon, the so-called Johnny Appleseed of Crack, may have been the instigator

of one ripple effect, in which by his actions a single person inadvertently causes

an ocean of despair. But unbeknownst to just about everybody, another

remarkably powerful ripple effect—this one moving in the opposite direction—

had just come into play.

In Levitt’s abortion paper, published in 2001, he and his co-author John Donohue

warned that their findings “should not be misinterpreted as either an

endorsement of abortion or a call for intervention by the state in the fertility

decisions of women.” They even suggested that crime might just as easily be

curbed by “providing better environments for those children at greatest risk for

future crime.”

Still, the very topic managed to offend just about everyone. Conservatives were

enraged that abortion could be construed as a crime-fighting tool. Liberals were

aghast that poor and black women were singled out. Economists grumbled that

Levitt’s methodology was not sound. As the media gorged on the abortion-crime

story, Levitt came under direct assault. He was called an ideologue (by

conservatives and liberals alike), a eugenicist, a racist, and downright evil.

In reality, he seems to be very much none of those. He has little taste for politics

and even less for moralizing. He is genial, low-key and unflappable, confident

but not cocky. He speaks with a considerable lisp. His appearance is High Nerd:

a plaid button-down shirt, nondescript khakis and a braided belt, brown sensible

shoes. His pocket calendar is branded with the National Bureau of Economic

Research logo. “I wish he would get more than three haircuts a year,” says his

wife, Jeannette, “and that he wasn’t still wearing the same glasses he got fifteen

years ago, which weren’t even in fashion then.” He was a good golfer in high

school but has so physically atrophied that he calls himself “the weakest human

being alive” and asks Jeannette to open jars around the house.

There is nothing in his appearance or manner, in other words, that suggests a

flamethrower.

—THE N EW Y ORK T IMES M AGAZINE, AUGUST 3, 2003

4

Where Have All the Criminals Gone?

In 1966, one year after Nicolae Ceaus.escu became the Communist dictator of

Romania, he made abortion illegal. “The fetus is the property of the entire

society,” he proclaimed. “Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who

abandons the laws of national continuity.”

Such grandiose declarations were commonplace during Ceau?escu’s reign, for

his master plan—to create a nation worthy of the New Socialist Man—was an

exercise in grandiosity. He built palaces for himself while alternately brutalizing

and neglecting his citizens. Abandoning agriculture in favor of manufacturing,

he forced many of the nation’s rural dwellers into unheated apartment buildings.

He gave government positions to forty family members including his wife,

Elena, who required forty homes and a commensurate supply of fur and jewels.

Madame Ceau?escu, known officially as the Best Mother Romania Could Have,

was not particularly maternal. “The worms never get satisfied, regardless of how

much food you give them,” she said when Romanians complained about the

food shortages brought on by her husband’s mismanagement. She had her own

children bugged to ensure their loyalty.

Ceau?escu’s ban on abortion was designed to achieve one of his major aims: to

rapidly strengthen Romania by boosting its population. Until 1966, Romania had

had one of the most liberal abortion policies in the world. Abortion was in fact

the main form of birth control, with four abortions for every live birth. Now,

virtually overnight, abortion was forbidden. The only exemptions were mothers

who already had four children or women with significant standing in the

Communist Party. At the same time, all contraception and sex education were

banned. Government agents sardonically known as the Menstrual Police

regularly rounded up women in their work-places to administer pregnancy tests.

If a woman repeatedly failed to conceive, she was forced to pay a steep “celibacy

tax.”

Ceaus.escu’s incentives produced the desired effect. Within one year of the

abortion ban, the Romanian birth rate had doubled. These babies were born into

a country where, unless you belonged to the Ceau?escu clan or the Communist

elite, life was miserable. But these children would turn out to have particularly

miserable lives. Compared to Romanian children born just a year earlier, the

cohort of children born after the abortion ban would do worse in every

measurable way: they would test lower in school, they would have less success

in the labor market, and they would also prove much more likely to become

criminals.

The abortion ban stayed in effect until Ceau?escu finally lost his grip on

Romania. On December 16, 1989, thousands of people took to the streets of

Timisoara to protest his corrosive regime. Many of the protestors were teenagers

and college students. The police killed dozens of them. One of the opposition

leaders, a forty-one-year-old professor, later said it was his thirteen-year-old

daughter who insisted he attend the protest, despite his fear. “What is most

interesting is that we learned not to be afraid from our children,” he said. “Most

were aged thirteen to twenty.” A few days after the massacre in Timisoara,

Ceaus.escu gave a speech in Bucharest before one hundred thousand people.

Again the young people were out in force. They shouted down Ceau?escu with

cries of “Timisoara!” and “Down with the murderers!” His time had come. He

and Elena tried to escape the country with $1 billion, but they were captured,

given a crude trial, and, on Christmas Day, executed by firing squad.

Of all the Communist leaders deposed in the years bracketing the collapse of the

Soviet Union, only Nicolae Ceau?escu met a violent death. It should not be

overlooked that his demise was precipitated in large measure by the youth of

Romania—a great number of whom, were it not for his abortion ban, would

never have been born at all.

The story of abortion in Romania might seem an odd way to begin telling the

story of American crime in the 1990s. But it’s not. In one important way, the

Romanian abortion story is a reverse image of the American crime story. The

point of overlap was on that Christmas Day of 1989, when Nicolae Ceau?escu

learned the hard way—with a bullet to the head—that his abortion ban had

much deeper implications than he knew.

On that day, crime was just about at its peak in the United States. In the previous

fifteen years, violent crime had risen 80 percent. It was crime that led the nightly