The Urban Institute has released a report seeking to explain why violent crime increased nationwide from 2005 to 2006, especially for robberies. The culprit? "America may have experienced an iCrime wave" because iPods may be "criminogenic," or crime-creating. Apple probably won't be putting this news in their next TV spot.
The basic scenario from the Urban Institute is that iPods are high-dollar, readily visible items on the street, and its wearers are distracted from their surroundings because they are rocking out to the extended cut of "Freebird." The iCrime wave follows on the heels of the Michael Jordan basketball shoe crime wave and the North Face puffy jacket crime wave of the 1980s and 1990s, the report states.
Fortunately, the iCrime wave may now be on the decline because iPods "have become so ubiquitous, many of those who covet one likely already have one." And that should make Steve Jobs very, very happy, even if the iPhone is still a ripoff.
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