Porn availability goes up, crime goes down in U.S.

Radley Balko at The Agitator points out that as pornography has become more and more widely available in the U.S. with the rise of the Internet, sex crimes against children, abortions, teen pregnancy, divorce, crimes against women, and rape have dropped. Of course, the U.S. is still worse than many countries on several of those attributes, as the earlier study about rates of religiosity showed. This would be interesting to compare across countries with different levels of Internet connectivity. This item via Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where you can find further commentary.