Rates of street crime have dropped substantially over the past several decades, but important nuances of this decline are underappreciated and the reasons for it remain unclear. We suggest that the narrow conception of change adopted within criminology has hindered the field's capacity to develop a stronger scientific understanding of crime trends. Criminology has focused heavily on within-person changes in crime, devoting comparatively little attention to changes in aggregate crime rates. In this review, we make a case for integrating research on crime trends into the core of criminology. After describing the late twentieth century crime drop, we present a conceptual framework that situates the study of crime trends in the criminological theoretical literature and illuminates several unresolved questions central to criminological inquiry. We then highlight major shortcomings of current empirical approaches and outline several methodological improvements that would enhance our capacity to describe and exp...

中文翻译：

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将犯罪趋势重新带入犯罪学：对文献的批判性评估和未来调查的蓝图

在过去的几十年中，街头犯罪的发生率已大大下降，但这种下降的重要细微差别并未得到充分重视，其原因仍不清楚。我们认为，犯罪学中采用的狭义变化观念阻碍了该领域对犯罪趋势形成更深刻的科学认识的能力。犯罪学一直将重点放在人内犯罪的变化上，而很少关注犯罪总发生率的变化。在这篇综述中，我们为将犯罪趋势研究整合到犯罪学的核心中提供了理由。在描述了二十世纪末的犯罪率下降之后，我们提出了一个概念框架，该框架以犯罪学理论文献中的犯罪趋势研究为基础，并阐明了犯罪学探究中几个尚未解决的问题。