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The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America Hardcover – January 19, 2016

by Barry Latzer (Author)

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A compelling case can be made that violent crime, especially in the period after the late 1960s, was one of the most significant domestic issues in the United States, and perhaps in the nations of the West generally. Aside from the movement for black civil rights, it is hard to think of a phenomenon that had as profound effect on American life in the last third of the 20th century. After 1965, crime rose to such levels that it frightened virtually all Americans and prompted significant alterations in everyday behaviors and even in lifestyles. The risk of being mugged” became an issue when Americans chose places to live as well as schools for their children, when they selected commuter routes to work, and when they planned their leisure activities. In some locales, people were fearful of leaving their dwellings at any time, day or night, even to go to 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 U.S. with the insights of criminology. This work 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, etc.

Print length

424 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Encounter Books
Publication date

January 19, 2016
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

9781594038358
ISBN-13

978-1594038358
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Barry Latzer is Professor of Criminal Justice and a member of the Doctoral Faculty in Criminal Justice at the CUNY Graduate School and University Center and the Masters in Criminal Justice Faculty at John Jay. He received a JD from Fordham University (1985) and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1977). Professor Latzer has published widely on capital punishment and criminal procedure law. His casebook,Death Penalty Cases (Butterworth-Heinemann 2002), is now in its second edition. He also wrote two books on state constitutional criminal procedure:State Constitutional Criminal Law (Clark, Boardman, Callaghan 1995) and State Constitutions and Criminal Justice (Greenwood Press 1991). Professor Latzer briefly served as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn and as appellate counsel for indigent criminal defendants in New York City.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 159403835X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books (January 19, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 424 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781594038358
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594038358
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.69 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,237,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,453 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #1,668 in Violence in Society (Books)
- #4,279 in Criminology (Books)

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Barry Latzer

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Be sure to see Professor Latzer's one-hour interview on C-SPAN's AfterWords:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?403869-1/words-barry-latzer

For Professor Latzer's latest audio interview, see http://www.libertylawsite.org/2016/05/03/history-of-violence-a-conversation-with-barry-latzer/.

For over three and a half decades Barry Latzer was Professor of Criminal Justice at John Jay College, CUNY, where he was a member of the Masters’ and Doctoral faculties. He taught courses on criminal justice, criminal law and procedure, state constitutional law, capital punishment, and most recently, crime history.

Professor Latzer wrote and published six books, including a treatise on state constitutional law, and approximately 70 scholarly articles, research reports, magazine articles, book reviews and op-eds. His scholarly articles have been published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, the Journal of Criminal Justice, Judicature, Judges' Journal, Criminal Law Bulletin, and major law reviews. Other writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Beast, National Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, City Journal, the New York Post and the New York Daily News. A widely read interview with David Frum appeared in Atlantic, June 19, 2016. His recent article on “Alvin Bragg, the Prosecutor Who Won’t Prosecute,” was the cover story in the February 7, 2022 issue of National Review.

Professor Latzer received advanced degrees from the University of Massachusetts (Ph.D., 1977) and Fordham University School of Law (JD, 1985). His BA was from Brooklyn College (1966).

He briefly served as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn (1985-86) and as counsel to indigent criminal defendants in Manhattan (1986-87).

Barry Latzer has devoted the last decade to a major study of the history of violent crime in the United States. His recent book, The Rise and Fall of Violent in America (Encounter Books, 2016), a product of this research, examines the period from 1940 to 2015. The pre-1940 period is covered in his book just published by Louisiana State University Press: The Roots of Violent Crime in America: From the Gilded Age through the Great Depression (LSU Press, 2020).

Latzer’s most recent book, on criminal punishment in the United States, is entitled The Myth of Overpunishment: A Defense of the American Justice System and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public. It was published by Republic Books in 2022.

Barry Latzer and his wife live in New Jersey. They have one daughter who lives in Portland, OR. When he isn’t writing, Prof. Latzer may be seen hiking or at the opera (especially the ones with murders).

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Chris

Extremely Comprehensive History of Crime in America

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2020

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The author provides an extremely comprehensive history of crime in America from World War II to the early 21st Century. The author—a highly regarded professor of criminology—examines not only how crime rates change over time, but he also looks at differences in criminal behavior between immigrants and native-born, city-dwellers and rural residents, North and South, men and women, and by race and ethnicity. He also makes a few interesting cross-country comparisons.

Ultimately, the author concludes that crime is best explained by culture, not economics. Thus, the major reason that crime rates differ between groups and regions is not poverty, but rather the different propensities for crime among various subgroups. In particular, the author argues that the Southern United States is the most violent region in the country, with blacks being the most violent group in the region. When blacks migrated out of the southern countryside and into the northern and western cities, they brought their culture of violence with them. This culture of violence—when combined with the baby boom, the anonymity of the city, and the weakening of the criminal justice system in the 1960s and 1970s—led to the horrific crime wave of the mid-1960s to the early-1980s. As the Baby Boomers aged out of crime in the early-1980s, crime rates began to drop. The crack cocaine epidemic of the late-1980s and early-1990s quickly bright violent crime back to terrifying levels, but tough-on-crime policies and the increasing rejection of crack cocaine caused crime rates to fall again in the mid-1990s and remain low throughout the early 21st Century.

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customer

A must read book.

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2016

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Barry Latzer brings a new perspective to the examination of crime and crime statistics. His new book The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime will be the go to book for all interested in discovering which factors drove 1960 crime levels to such heights that people were afraid to leave their homes and then by the end of the 20th century saw crime decrease. Latzer examines demographic trends, migrations from South to North and a criminal justice system overwhelmed by all of these factors. This is a must read book for policy makers, professionals in law enforcement as well as all interested in crime and crime trends.

9 people found this helpful

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JH89

The book is easy to read and it is consistently surprising and informative

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2016

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This is a stimulating, well-researched, and provocative book on violent crime in the twentieth century United States. It is particularly valuable and unflinching when examining the fact that certain racial groups commit more crime than others. It must have taken courage to write this. The book is easy to read and it is consistently surprising and informative.

I do, however, want to add some caveats. The author appears to be a conservative and, in my view, has certain biases that lower the quality of the analysis. Here is one major example: the war on drugs. Most economists (as well as many other social scientists) who study crime believe that the prohibition of alcohol and other illicit drugs increases crime. This is so because black markets generate crime, as dealers in illicit drugs are unable to adjudicate disputes through the courts and distributors compete through violent means. This is surely one reason why the prohibition of alcohol increased violent crime in the United States. But, strangely, the book barely mentions this effect of prohibition. And the author never discusses the contemporary war on drugs and the role it plays in creating crime. Instead, the author only focuses on the fact that drug activity causes violence without considering why--namely, that drugs are illegal. For one more on these points, see Jeffrey Miron's work on the economics of drug prohibition.

There are other cases. I'm familiar with the empirical literature on the impact that Mexican immigration has on crime and the broad consensus is that Mexican immigration has few effects on violent crime (property crime is probably a different matter). See, for instance, Aaron Chalfin's "What is the Contribution of Mexican Immigration to U.S. Crime Rates?" But the author insists without real evidence that Mexican immigration does increase violent crime. Why? As far as I can see, the author presents little evidence for this conclusion.

One final surprise is that the author argues that mass incarceration decreased crime, but, in a short sidebar, notes that Canadian crime trends are remarkably similar to American ones (although the absolute levels are different). Yet Canada reduced crime about as well as America without resorting to mass incarceration. But Latzer doesn't explore why this would be or how it may cast doubt on his analysis (I suspect you will find something similar if you compare the US to other affluent countries).

To sum up: this is a good read if you're interested in the evolution of crime. But I do think that the author's biases sometimes lead him to push conclusions without adequate support and consideration of alternative explanations.

46 people found this helpful

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Michael

Good book. Some reviews mischaracterize his thesis.

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2020

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First, the book does consider culture when analyzing violence. But he doesn’t put all the blame on particular cultures. The author provides a nuanced view on the topic and will give you insights that disprove some common assumptions. I won’t tell you what they are in order to motivate you to read the book.

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