I had a nice post all done and "poof", I hit something and it was gone. This is a very interesting article. Please read if you have the time.

Are the Xbox and unleaded gas helping keep you safe from violent crime?

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X-Box effect: Dinner bells that summoned children from the great outdoors have long gone silent, and youths and young adults are spending more time on indoor pursuits involving high-definition TVs, gaming consoles and computers. That, say researchers, is having a positive impact on crime. Why? Fewer young people on the street mean fewer potential criminals and fewer targets for criminals.

Potential criminals may also be spending more of their time stealing virtual cars or robbing virtual banks.
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Gadgets and technology also have had other impacts on criminal behavior. Street corners and drug dens are no longer as dangerous as they once were, because cellphones and the Internet have largely taken their place as marketplaces for illicit goods, says UCLA Public Policy Professor Mark Kleiman.

"The cellphone and the beeper have made open air drug dealing and crack houses mostly obsolete,” he said.
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In 2001, University of Chicago Economics Professor Steven D. Levitt and Stanford Law Professor John J. Donohue published a study that later became the basis for a chapter in the best-selling book "Freakonomics," arguing that legal abortions appeared to account for as much as a 50 percent plunge in crime between 1985 and 1997. Underlying their theory was the assumption that legal abortions led to fewer unwanted babies being born and that those babies would have been at increased risk for criminality as adults because they were more likely to suffer abuse and neglect as children. The study found that in five states that legalized abortion before Roe, crime started falling before the rest of the country. Additionally, from the year of the Roe decision to 1988, states with high and low abortion rates had identical crime patterns. This was happening as the crack epidemic and urban violence began to peak.
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Immigration: New immigrants are often perceived as contributing to disorder, but the reverse is often true. Harvard Professor Robert Sampson, author of “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect,” examined crime statistics amid one of the largest influxes of new arrivals in U.S. history and found that, for the most part, immigrants brought with them strong work ethics, tight-knit family structures and a distaste for violent street crime.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/are- ... lent-crime

Actually, sad as it sounds I agree with all of that.

Let the gang members play Grand Theft Auto instead of stealing cars.

Sure. First a burglary to get that XBox so they can play virtual grand theft.