Skip to product information
1 of 1

Oxford University Press, USA

City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control

City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control

Regular price €48,95 EUR
Regular price Sale price €48,95 EUR
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Format
The forty-percent drop in crime that occurred across the U.S. from 1991 to 2000 remains largely an unsolved mystery. Even more puzzling is the eighty-percent drop over nineteen years in New York City. Twice as long and twice as large, it is the largest crime decline on record.

In The City That Became Safe, Franklin E. Zimring seeks out the New York difference through a comprehensive investigation into the city's falling crime rates. The usual understanding is that aggressive police created a zero-tolerance law enforcement regime that drove crime rates down. Is this
political sound bite true-are the official statistics generated by the police accurate? Though zero-tolerance policing and quality-of-life were never a consistent part of the NYPD's strategy, Zimring shows the numbers are correct and argues that some combination of more cops, new tactics, and new
management can take some credit for the decline. That the police can make a difference at all in preventing crime overturns decades of conventional wisdom from criminologists, but Zimring also points out what most experts have missed: the New York experience challenges the basic assumptions driving
American crime- and drug-control policies.

New York has shown that crime rates can be greatly reduced without increasing prison populations. New York teaches that targeted harm reduction strategies can drastically cut down on drug related violence even if illegal drug use remains high. And New York has proven that epidemic levels of violent
crime are not hard-wired into the populations or cultures of urban America. This careful and penetrating analysis of how the nation's largest city became safe rewrites the playbook on crime and its control for all big cities.


Author: Franklin E. Zimring
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 11/23/2011
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780199844425

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/05/2011
Choice 06/01/2012
New York Times Book Review 09/27/2012 pg. 48

About the Author

Franklin E. Zimring is the William G. Simon Professor of Law and chair of the Criminal Justice Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2005, he has been the first Wolfen Distinguished Scholar at Boalt Hall School of Law. Professor Zimring's recent books include The Great American Crime Decline and The Next Frontier (with David T. Johnson) .

View full details