Cheap The Great American Crime Decline (Studies in Crime and Public Policy) (Book) (Franklin E. Zimring) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Great American Crime Decline (Studies in Crime and Public Policy)

Best social scientific explanation of crime decline thus far
I am not a big fan of social science. Much of it reminds me of a saying from my undergraduate days at the University of Chicago, "If we can't measure it, it does not exist." So much of the time, social science insists upon squeezing reality into the narrow confines of what it can and can not prove with its weird little mathematical games and the end result, honestly stated (which it usually is not) 85% of the time is that they can not answer any of the significant questions one way or the other. <
> <
>Zimring is a social scientist, and the foregoing applies to him. I do not much like him; he takes seriously alot of social science nonsense that I think is either silly or repugnant. That said, this book is high quality and important, in a number of ways. <
> <
>First, with regard to style, Zimring, in one way, is as wretched a writer as usual in social science. His ugly, abrupt style has all of the grace and flow of the phone book read by a badly programmed voice recognition computer. However, he redeems himself by being mercifully concise. His writing is not pretty, but he gets to the point fast, says what he say to say and moves on. In the hands of the average professor this would have been a 900 page snorer of a book; Zimring keeps it under 250 pages. Also, his prose is not as jargon-ridden as it might be. He talks about multivariant regression analysis more than I want, but, compared to the norm in this field -- which is setting the bar pretty low! -- his language is easy to follow. <
> <
>Second, despite being a card-carrying social science professor at a major university, Zimring is, or at least visibily tries to be, intellectually honest. Beneath the multivariant regression analysis and the snarky remarks about the other guy's inability to understand basic statistical demographics, I get the impression that Zimring actually cares about the subject and wants to add to our understanding of it. His major conclusions are not mutually consistent, which, in itself, is a good sign of intellectual honestly; he is not trying to shoehorn his results into the confines of a pre-conceived theory. What he concludes is as follows: <
> <
>(a) There was, of course, a huge and sustained decrease in violent crime in America in the 1990s. Unlike most folks, Zimring is curious about how this pattern fits in with the rest of the world, so he looks at comparative crime statistics for Canada and Western Europe during the same period. He finds that the crime trends in Western Europe are utterly different from those in America, but that the trends in Canada are extremely similar to those of the US. (I would have liked to see some Mexican statistics, but that is being greedy.) <
> <
>(b) There is a short list of things that most folks think cause crime to go up and down: the state of the economy, demographics (how many young males there are at any given time), the imprisonment rate and the number of police. He briefly reviews the social scientific literature on each and concludes that, while each of these things sounds like it ought to influence crime rates, we really have no idea whether they have any more effect on the homicide rate than do varations in sunspots. There is somewhat weird to me about Zimring on this subject. He will trash the reliability of social science in a way that gladdens my anti-social science heart, prove that they can not prove that X causes Y to save their lives but he then turns around and keeps relying on their conclusions anyway. Here, after proving that no one has the slightest idea if the economy, demographics and policing really influence crime, he then goes on assuming that they do. In short, like most social scientists, in theory he insists upon rigorous proof. In reality, he never gets the rigorous proof he wants. Then, instead of admitting we do not know jack -- at least not using social science -- he then turns around and relies upon the vague hunches of social science which sound plausible but we can not prove. How the end result of this approach differs from those of us who do not use multivariant regression analyss escapes me, but Zimring is not alone in this. <
> <
>(c) There is a new, and truly repulsive, theory of why crime went down in the 1990s. According to Steven Leavit, the oh-so-brillant writer of Freakonomics we have less crime, because, thanks to Roe v. Wade, the poor and disadantaged aborted their unborn children who then did not grow up to join the Bloods and the Crips. This theory celebrates pre-emptive capital punishment on a mass scale; it advocates reducing crime by killing all of the babies who might turn into criminals. Hey, if you aborted ALL male babies, you would have virtually NO violent crime. King Herod returns! I have about as much inclination to look seriously at this theory as I do to check the lab notes of the Nazis doctors at the death camps who did their "scientific experiments" on their unwilling subjects. Who cares if this theory is right or wrong; killing huge numbers of babies is not a good way to reduce crime! <
> <
>Anyway, for better or worse, Zimring has none of my moral qualms about this repulsive theory, so he examines it in detail. And he proves mercilessly that the theory is total and complete nonsense, based on nothing and backed by nothing. He puts his conclusions more politely than that, but his bottom line is that none of the proof which ought to be there is there. For example, Leavit assumes that, due to Roe v. Wade, "poor quality" babies are being aborted, i.e. kids who would otherwise be poor and disadvantaged and thus would grow up to mug you and me. Leavit, however, does not bother to check if this assumption is true. Zimring does check, and it is not true; there is no evidence that "poor quality" babies are aborted at higher rates than anyone else. In fact, Roe has NOT reduced the number of poor kids in broken homes, those numbers have gone UP since Roe. Leavitt's whole disgusting theory turns out to be more faith-based science, but the faith in this case is that of Planned Parenthood instead of the Church. <
> <
>(d) Zimring's general conclusion about the national reduction in crime in the 1990s is that, while it is a fair guess that the booming economy and great increase in imprisonment had something to do with it, as did favorable demographics, the fact is, we do not why crime rates fell through the floor. The key fact set to him is Canada. Their crimes rates also went down, but their economy in the 1990s stunk and they did not get tough on crime. According to Zimring, any explanation of the national fall in rates has to also explain Canada, and with the limited exception of demographics -- which are shared -- none of the possible causal factors were at work in both America and Canada. Thus, Zimrng falls back on this screwy idea of mysterous crime cycles that happen for no ascertainable reason. He is honest enough to ask if his "crime cycles" are not the social science equivalent of astrology. I say "yes"; his "crime cycles" are a fancy label which explains nothing and serves only to conceal that he can not explain the variations in the crime rate. While I think his mystery "crime cycles" are hogwash, I do give Zimring great credit for making the comparison to Canada and raising these questions. The questions are very valid. <
> <
>(e) In one of his final chapters, Zimring shows impressive intellectual honesty and looks hard at the unique experience of New York City. If social science agrees on one thing about the decline in crime it is that it was NOT caused by anything which the police did. It is hardened social science dogma that the police can not reduce crime, and that the only way to reduce crime is to eliminate its "root causes" by getting rid of poverty and social injustice via massive government spending. In short, we are stuck with massive amounts of crime until we develop the intelligence to vote for the socialist revolution. <
> <
>The 1990s demolished this idea. We had massive reductions in crime, without the socialist revolution or anything remotely resembling it. The "root causes" of crime are still in place, but crime has plummetted. If ever a theory has been refuted by history it is the "root causes" theory of crime. <
> <
>This does not bother most social scientists, who continue to crank out the same dogma. The typical social science response is to simply ignore the evidence which is contrary to the dogma. Don't look at that little man behind the curtain! To his great credit, Zimring does not do this. He actually looks at the New York evidence. He concludes that: (1) New York City had twice as much crime reduction as the rest of the country; and (2) the largest factor in driving this crime reduction was changed police policy, both hiring alot more cops and managing them very differently. <
> <
>In short, and not that he would ever be so gauche or politically incorrect as to put it this way, Zimring's real bottom line is that, horror of horrors, Rudy Guiliani and Bill Bratton were right. Zimring does gets his dignity back as a social scientist, after expressing this heresy, by primly observing that we can not parse out why crime went down. Maybe it was more cops. Maybe it was broken windows crime theory. Maybe it was Compstat management techniques. But, multivariant regresson analysis can not tell us which one of the three did it, so Zimring can scuttle quickly away from his heresy and hide in the convenient, "we can't prove anything" default position. <
> <
>Nonsense, Professor. As much as you hate to admit it, your data points at a clear, general conclusion. New York City went from being the crime capital of America to America's safest large city, because of the policies of Rudy Guiliani and Bill Bratton. You may never admit it, but your logic and conclusions want you to vote Republican.

---

Social Science at its Best
The Great American Crime Decline is a model of what social science research can be. It deserves a place next to Durkheim's Suicide, Putnam's Bowling Alone, and Conley's The Pecking Order for its clear crisp writing, brilliant analysis and rigorous and understandable use of statistical graphics. The new information on Canada as a comparison fills an essential gap in the literature. The case study of the crime decline in New York City is better than anything else on a much discussed subject. This is the definitive book on the crime decline, building on Blumstein and Wallman's The Crime Drop in America. It should be read by anyone fed up with failed and futile efforts to force criminological data into econometric equations. I am using excerpts in my communications class at Rutgers University, as well as in the research methods class. No one interested in crime in America, or in American society, should miss it.