The Crime Drop in America (Cambridge Studies in Criminology) [Paperback]

Alfred Blumstein (Editor), Joel Wallman (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 11, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0521797128 | ISBN-13: 978-0521797122

Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980s and continued to climb until 1991 after which something unprecedented occurred. For the next seven years it declined to a level not seen since the 1960s. The puzzle of why this has happened has bedeviled criminologists, politicians, policy makers and average citizens. Numerous explanations have been put forth, from improvements in policing to the decline in crack cocaine use. The authors of this timely and critical book explain and assess the plausible causes and competing claims of credit for the crime drop. Here some of America's top criminologists examine the role of guns and gun violence, the growing prison population, homicide patterns, drug markets, economic opportunity, changes in policing, and changing demographics. As the authors point out, the trends that have contributed to the decline in violent crime--gun contol efforts (at both the local and federal levels), changes in drug markets (the decline of crack cocaine), and economic shifts (high employment in the flourishing economy of the late 1990s)--cannot continue indefinitely. The control and prevention of crime will continue to challenge scholars and public policy makers. This book presents the most authoritative, intelligent discussion available on the rise and fall of American violence. The perspectives offered here will undoubtedly influence the public debate and the planning of future responses to crime.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Despite the general public's perception, owing, in part, to recent highly publicized school shootings, crime in America has actually been dropping since 1992. The media have been dramatizing and sensationalizing high-profile crimes, failing to inform the public that these homicides make up less than one percent of the violent deaths of school-age children. Edited by Blumstein (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) and Wallman (Guggenheim Foundation), two of America's top experts on crime, this book provides a comprehensive review of crime in the United States. Designed primarily for criminologists, it covers the latest statistical and demographic data in an attempt to explain why the crime rate has dropped for eight consecutive years, reaching levels as low as those of the mid-1960s. The decrease is caused by a combination of variables: better policing, community policing, the decline of crack cocaine use, the increase in legitimate sources of income, changing demographics, the dramatic increase in the incarceration rate, and the aging of baby boomers, who are now out of the high-crime age. Recommended for specialized collections in criminology.DTim Delaney, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Pundits have been all too ready to assign credit for the recent near-miraculous reductions in violent crime. But before we commit to 1990s innovations in policing, sentencing, drug programs, and the like, it's necessary to take a careful look at the evidence. That's why this book is so important, and yet will surely irritate those who favor simple answers. The authors provide a patient and penetrating assessment of the contending explanations for the crime drop, nicely deflating the more strident claims and establishing a sound basis for moving forward." Philip Cook, Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University

"It is a pleasure to see sanity and balance brought to a topic that is typically fraught with emotionality and simple-minded, wrongheaded diagnoses and solutions. Blumstein and Wallman have accomplished just that. They have done a beautiful job of sorting out and assessing the demographic, economic, and public-policy origins of the great fluctuations in American crime during the past two decades. Both the editors and authors are to be congratulated for their insistence on multiple causes, their methodological sophistication, and their prudent interpretations." Neil Smelser, Director Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

"This is the definitive examination of the crime drop. Every criminologist should read it...before the crime rate starts to go up again." Jack Levin, Director, The Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, Northeastern University; co-author, The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder

"A towering optimistic masterpiece in its clear, logical revelation that both the causes and answers to crime are many and complex, and don't lend themselves to the simplistic, one-solution-fits-all, bumper-sticker type slogans of politicians." Peter Elikann, author of Superpredators: The Demonization of our Children by the Law; expert commentator, Court TV

"At last, a scholarly, disinterested examination of the rapid decline in violence during the 1990s, a phenomenon as puzzling as it was unprecedented. Many have claimed credit, from police executives to prison advocates, yet these essays show that many forces were at work. Targeted policing, a strong economy, new gun policies, higher imprisonment rates, stabilized drug markets - all played a role. Yet the book offers sober reminders that broad social forces, including changes in youth culture and marriage patterns, contribute to our crime condition. For all who care about a safe and just society, this book is a required primer." Jeremy Travis, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute, former Director of the National Institute of Justice (1994-2000) and Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters of the New York City Police Department (1990-94)

"While politicians pounded their chests, the authors were doing it the right way: systematically mining for evidence of what led to the great drop in crime during the 90s. What they unearthed is both provocative and convincing, and they only give politicians some of the credit." Wesley Skogan, Northwestern University

"Recent widespread declines in violence across the United States have puzzled criminologists and challenged traditional criminological theories. This volume, edited by Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, assesses a wide variety of alleged causes of the decline. Criminologists interested in making sense of the puzzle will find the thematic collection of papers to be essential reading." Robert J. Sampson, Lucy Flower Professor of Sociology and of the Social Sciences in the College, The University of Chicago

"...it is an important source...as a resource book, for a set of facts, and for an understanding of the extreme complexity behind the 'bumper sticker' arguments made by politicians, this book is absolutely invaluable...a wealth of information, charts, data, and arguments to make the book well worth purchasing..." Law and Politics Book Review

"Recommended for specialized collections in criminology." Library Journal

"...a 'must-read' for criminologists. The questions examined are important, the research is carefully done, and the findings will not only help us sort out competing explanations for the current crime drop, but will also expand our general knowledge about crime causation and its control." American Journal of Sociology

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (September 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521797128
• ISBN-13: 978-0521797122
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,310,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Accurate, May 18, 2004

By 

Ted Goertzel (MEDFORD, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Crime Drop in America (Cambridge Studies in Criminology) (Paperback)

This is a highly informative and accurate book. It presents the data in a clear and graphic form, with a minimum of statistical manipulation. The studies cited by the previous reviewer, Lloyd Rowsey, are based on econometric modeling. Since the one he mentions, two other econometric models of abortion and homicide have been published with opposite results. One is by Ted Joyce, the other by John Lott and John Whitney. Econometric modeling can prove anything. If you want to understand crime in America in the 1990s, buy The Crime Drop.

2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars YOU CAN'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER, January 15, 2004

By 

G. L. Rowsey (benicia, ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Crime Drop in America (Cambridge Studies in Criminology) (Hardcover)

'But blurbs, publication dates, and personal knowledge may suffice. Cambridge University Press' blurb for this book begins, "Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980s and continued to climb until 1991 after which something unprecedented occurred. For the next seven years it declined to a level not seen since the 1960s." The blurb continues, "As the authors point out, the trends that have contributed to the decline in violent crime...(include) gun control efforts (at both the local and federal levels), changes in drug markets (the decline of crack cocaine), and economic shifts (high employment in the flourishing economy of the late 1990s)..."

'In August of 1999, John Donohue of Stanford Law School and Steven Levitt of the National Bureau of Economic Research put up on the internet site of the Social Science Research Network Electronic Library ... a paper titled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime." The SSRN site was far from user-friendly and required a late version of Adobe Acrobat to download its several thousand freely downloadable papers, but papers' abstracts didn't require Adobe, and Donohue and Levitt's abstract began, "Crime has fallen dramatically in the 1990s. While many explanations for this decline have been offered, these other explanations have difficulty explaining the timing, large magnitude, persistence, and widespread nature of the drop." The abstract continued, "The empirical evidence we present is consistent with abortion playing an important role. First, the timing of the crime drop corresponds to the period in which the first cohorts affected by abortion are reaching the peak ages of criminal activity. Second, states that legalized abortion before the rest of the nation were the first to experience decreasing crime. Third, states with high abortion rates have seen a greater fall in crime since 1985, even after controlling for other factors that would be expected to influence crimes. Fourth, the declines in crime in high-abortion states are disproportionately concentrated among those under the ages of 25..."

'This remarkable paper was the most downloaded paper of all time at the SSRN site in 2000, but it was apparently widely ignored by the media in this country. Donohue and Leavitt point out that their paper simply illustrates that wanted babies are less likely to become young criminals than unwanted babies.

'Hopefully a revised edition of The Crime Drop in America by Blumstein, Wallman and Farrington will include a discussion of the Donohue and Levitt paper and the reaction to it.'

The preceding is a rewritten version of a my "review" of The Crime Drop in America which Amazon.com published on February 4, 2001. Evidently, Cambridge University Press has not issued a revised edition of the book since then, and my comments on its subject matter remain timely.

6 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover, February 4, 2001

By 

lloyd rowsey - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crime Drop in America (Cambridge Studies in Criminology) (Hardcover)

But blurbs, publication dates, and personal knowledge may suffice. Cambridge University Press' blurb for this book (from about Sept, 2000, the hardcover publication date) starts: "Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980"s and continued to climb until 1991 after which something unprecedented occurred. For the next seven years it declined to a level not seen since the 1960s." It concludes, "As the authors point out, the trends that have cotnributed to the decline in violent crime -- gun control efforts (at both the local and federal levels, changes in drug markets (the decline of crack cocaine), and economic shifts (high employment in the flourishing economy of the late 1990s) -- cannot continue indefinitely. . . ." In August of 1999, John Donohue of Stanford Law School and Steven Levitt of the National Bureau of Economic Research put up on the internet site of the Social Science Research Network Electronic Library (http://www.ssrn.com) a paper titled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime." The SSRN site is far from user-friendly and requires a late version of Adobe Acrobat to download its several thousand freely downloadable papers, but papers' abstracts don't require Adobe, and Donohue and Levitt's begins: "Crime has fallen dramatically in the 1990s. While many explanations for this decline have been offered, these other explanations have difficulty explaining the timing, large magnitude, persistence, and widespread nature of the drop." The abstract continues: "The empirical evidence we present is consistent with abortion playing an important role. First, the timing of the crime drop corresponds to the period in which the first cohorts affected by abortion are reaching the peak ages of criminal activity. Second, states that legalized abortion before the rest of the nation were the first to experience decreasing crime. Third, states with high abortion rates have seen a greater fall in crime since 1985, even after controlling for other factors that would be expected to influence crimes. Fourth, the declines in crime in high-abortion states are disproportionately concentrated among those under the ages of 25." And the abstract concludes: "All else equal, we predict that crime rates will continue to fall slowly for an addtional 15-20 years as the full effects of legalized abortion are gradually felt." This remarkable paper was (and is still, if I'm not mistaken) the most downloaded paper of all time at the SSRN site, but the paper has gone almost completely unremarked-upon in the big media in America. The authors point out that their paper simply illustrates that wanted babies are less likely to become young criminals than unwanted babies. Hopefully a second edition of C.U.P.'s Crime Drop in America will discuss Donohue and Levitt.