[PDF] The Great American Crime Decline eBook

Author : Franklin E. Zimring
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 41,42 MB
Release : 2008-11-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0199702535

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Many theories--from the routine to the bizarre--have been offered up to explain the crime decline of the 1990s. Was it record levels of imprisonment? An abatement of the crack cocaine epidemic? More police using better tactics? Or even the effects of legalized abortion? And what can we expect from crime rates in the future? Franklin E. Zimring here takes on the experts, and counters with the first in-depth portrait of the decline and its true significance. The major lesson from the 1990s is that relatively superficial changes in the character of urban life can be associated with up to 75% drops in the crime rate. Crime can drop even if there is no major change in the population, the economy or the schools. Offering the most reliable data available, Zimring documents the decline as the longest and largest since World War II. It ranges across both violent and non-violent offenses, all regions, and every demographic. All Americans, whether they live in cities or suburbs, whether rich or poor, are safer today. Casting a critical and unerring eye on current explanations, this book demonstrates that both long-standing theories of crime prevention and recently generated theories fall far short of explaining the 1990s drop. A careful study of Canadian crime trends reveals that imprisonment and economic factors may not have played the role in the U.S. crime drop that many have suggested. There was no magic bullet but instead a combination of factors working in concert rather than a single cause that produced the decline. Further--and happily for future progress, it is clear that declines in the crime rate do not require fundamental social or structural changes. Smaller shifts in policy can make large differences. The significant reductions in crime rates, especially in New York, where crime dropped twice the national average, suggests that there is room for other cities to repeat this astounding success. In this definitive look at the great American crime decline, Franklin E. Zimring finds no pat answers but evidence that even lower crime rates might be in store.

Author : Patrick Sharkey
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 17,54 MB
Release : 2019-02-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 039335654X

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From the late ’90s to the mid-2010s, American cities experienced an astonishing drop in violent crime, dramatically changing urban life. In many cases, places once characterized by decay and abandonment are now thriving, the fear of death by gunshot wound replaced by concern about skyrocketing rents. In Uneasy Peace, Patrick Sharkey, “the leading young scholar of urban crime and concentrated poverty” (Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis) reveals the striking effects: improved school test scores, because children are better able to learn when not traumatized by nearby violence; better chances that poor children will rise into the middle class; and a marked increase in the life expectancy of African American men. Some of the forces that brought about safer streets—such as the intensive efforts made by local organizations to confront violence in their own communities—have been positive, Sharkey explains. But the drop in violent crime has also come at the high cost of aggressive policing and mass incarceration. From Harlem to South Los Angeles, Sharkey draws on original data and textured accounts of neighborhoods across the country to document the most successful proven strategies for combating violent crime and to lay out innovative and necessary approaches to the problem of violence. At a time when crime is rising again, the issue of police brutality has taken center stage, and powerful political forces seek to disinvest in cities, the insights in this book are indispensable.

Author : Franklin E. Zimring
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 23,9 MB
Release : 2013-11
Category : Law
ISBN : 0199324166

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Discusses many of the ways that New York City dropped its crime rate between the years of 1991 and 2000.

Author : George L. Kelling
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 10,17 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0684837382

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Cites successful examples of community-based policing.

Author : Barry Latzer
Publisher : Encounter Books
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 34,25 MB
Release : 2017-06-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1594039305

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A compelling case can be made that violent crime, especially after the 1960s, was one of the most significant domestic issues in the United States. Indeed, few issues had as profound an effect on American life in the last third of the twentieth century. After 1965, crime rose to such levels that it frightened virtually all Americans and prompted significant alterations in everyday behaviors and even lifestyles. The risk of being mugged was a concern when Americans chose places to live and schools for their children, selected commuter routes to work, and planned their leisure activities. In some locales, people were afraid to leave their dwellings at any time, day or night, even to go to the market. In the worst of the post-1960s crime wave, Americans spent part of each day literally looking back over their shoulders. The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America is the first book to comprehensively examine this important phenomenon over the entire postwar era. It combines a social history of the United States with the insights of criminology and examines the relationship between rising and falling crime and such historical developments as the postwar economic boom, suburbanization and the rise of the middle class, baby booms and busts, war and antiwar protest, the urbanization of minorities, and more.

Author : William J. Stuntz
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 47,37 MB
Release : 2011-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0674051750

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Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.

Author : Alfred Blumstein
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 49,90 MB
Release : 2000-09-11
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780521797122

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Top criminologists explain the reasons for the drop in violent crime in America.

Author : Kevin Tyler Wolff
Publisher :
Page : 53 pages
File Size : 42,22 MB
Release : 2010
Category :
ISBN :

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ABSTRACT: Much scholarly attention has been given to crime trends during recent decades in which the United States and the world experienced a spike in violent crime during the late 1980s into the early-mid 1990s, followed by an unanticipated and unparalleled decline during the mid to late 1990s. These trends have been described in detail by a number of scholars that have offered explanations ranging from record increases in incarceration to the rise and fall of crack cocaine. A lack of consensus regarding the main factors driving these trends has kept researchers interested, and arguably stuck in this period. As a result, we lack an understanding as to what has occurred in the last decade, begging the question, "What has happened since the 1990s?" The purpose of this paper is threefold: First, to determine whether there have been any significant changes in crime across cities in the U.S. since the end of the Great American Crime Decline, as well as to explore what economic, social, and criminal justice factors may be associated with these changes. Secondly, with an eye towards theory, a commonly used variable is reconceptualized and explored in depth. Finally, the existence of a national trend is examined in the context of a large sample of U.S. cities with hopes of guiding future research in the area of crime trends.

Author : Steven Pinker
Publisher : Penguin Books
Page : 834 pages
File Size : 48,88 MB
Release : 2012-09-25
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0143122010

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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.