Not very long ago, it seemed to many that levels of crime and violence were well beyond simple mechanisms of societal control. Many liberals argued that the causes of crime lay in unjust societal inequality and material deprivation. Conservatives who saw a crisis in values as leading to lawlessness, often felt that they were fighting trends that ran deeply through a generation and stemmed from the core of capitalism itself. When they advocated a “get-tough” approach to crime, they issued prescriptions that were general and never, for instance, promised specific, measurable reductions in criminal activity.
But even this well-advised reticence is weakening. Falling crime rates have given rise to a new willingness on the part of governmental officials to claim to be able to control crime. Witness, for example, the commanding officer in New York City’s 77th Precinct talking about the 40% reduction in major felonies in 12 month period ending March 31st 1997 over the year ending March 31st of 1996. Quoted in the New York Daily News describing his expectations for continued reductions, he waxes, “This place is like a sponge, and we’re wringing more and more crime out of it.” (Marzulli 1997: 1). If we have gone from believing that levels of crime were virtually beyond the control of societal action to likening the quality of its intractability to that of a wet sponge we have, at least at the level of public rhetoric, gone some considerable distance.
From the ranks of the NYPD we should not perhaps be surprised to hear police work credited with success, but police are by no means the only voices in the chorus extoling their impact.. James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, for example, are among several promiment scholars who also herald new modes and levels of policing activism as consequential for public safety (1989). Go beyond policing to law enforcement more generally and the ranks of those ready to point to active, better managed and less tolerant public institutions grows larger still. Longer sentences for greater numbers of offenders has also been claimed as producing less crime (DiIulio 1994). More generally, a range of improvements that have over the last two decades increasingly spread throughout the crime justice system are being identified by scholars, (comprehensively by Alfred Blumstein and Joan Petersilia) as factors in lowered crime rates. These include longer sentences, a more intense focus on "highly productive" criminals and attention to situational factors that serve either to faciliate or dampen criminal activity.
Changes in policing, more prison cells and higher populations of people under the supervision of the criminal justice system are far from cost-free solutions for the improving public safety problems. It is therefore extremely important to determine to what degree, if any, law enforcement oriented approaches actually do promote safer streets and neighborhoods, and which ones work better than others. It is conceivable that the most heavily promoted remedies are actually having the least effect on crime and are, in fact, distracting observers from deeper transformations really at work. Given the enormous stakes involved in criminal justice issues, both supporters and opponents of stricter law enforcement would have cause to regret this misunderstanding. The later because historically disadvantaged groups are disproportinately the objects of such policies; the former, because the working majority that has recently existed to enact these policies is likely to be significantly weakened if the case for them is not sustained; and everyone, for the wasted human and material resources that will have been mispent on poorly conceived approaches.
Regretably, given the importance of these questions, it is well beyond the scope of this paper to settle them. Clearly we are still too deeply embedded in the midst of this trend to have either the data or the perspective needed for any explanation to be more than tentatively persuasive. Undoubtedly hypotheses beyond those we describe will also be formulated. Nevertheless, this is not entirely new ground. Americans and others have been thinking about crime and deviance with at least a pretense to scientific rigor for over a century. Both public officials and “public intellectuals” are making assertions at least pointing to facts. We are therefore in a position to describe the contours at least of the current debate: its “facts”; the explanatory frameworks under construction for them; and what evidence is proffered to support the most important explanatory claims. It is the facts then, that we turn to first, i.e., how is it that we are coming to believe that the country is safer.
Table 1 below demonstrates the uniformity of the declines from prior to 1995. No category of crime has fallen less than double digits from its post-1992 peak. (Peak totals are shown in bold.) These data were notable not only for the direction and magnitude of the change in victimization they reported, but even more so for their agreement across geographical expanse of the country and among nearly all of the categories of respondents. One year reductions in personal crimes (Rape/Sexual Assault, Robbery, Assault and Personal Theft) from 1994 to 1995 were statistically significant at the 95% confidence level for all three types of area categorized: Urban, Suburban and Rural. Similarly, three of the four regions of the country (Northeast, Midwest, South and West) also showed statistically significant reductions (1.6/1000 fall for the Northeast was outside the confidence intervals.) (p. 6).
| '92 | '93 | '94 | '95 | % Change '92 - '95 | % Change Peak - '95 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Crimes | 42,834 | 43,547 | 42,362 | 38,446 | -10.24% | -11.71% |
| Personal Crimes | 10,618 | 11,365 | 11,350 | 9,966 | -6.14% | -12.31% |
| Crimes of Violence | 10,249 | 10,848 | 10,861 | 9,601 | -6.32% | -11.60% |
| Rape/ Sexual Assault | 607 | 485 | 433 | 340 | -43.99% | -- |
| Robbery | 1,272 | 1,291 | 1,299 | 1,142 | -10.22% | -- |
| Assault | 8,370 | 9,072 | 9,129 | 8,119 | -3.00% | -11.06% |
| Property Crimes | 32,217 | 32,182 | 31,612 | 28,480 | -11.60% | -- |
| Household Burglary | 5,803 | 5,984 | 5,483 | 4,825 | -16.85% | -19.37% |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1,835 | 1,961 | 1,764 | 1,654 | -9.86% | -15.66% |
| Theft | 24,579 | 24,238 | 23,766 | 22,002 | -10.48% | -- |
| Population 12 or older | 209,428,008* | 211,524,770 | 213,747,400 | 215,709,450 | ||
| Number of Households | 99,037,811* | 99,926,400 | 100,808,030 | 101,888,380 |
The pattern for region and settlement type was mirrored by data for Property Crimes from 1994 to 1995, except that the declines in the Northeast region were statistically significant at the 95% confidence interval (p. 10). For both types of crime, other demographic subsets showed extremely consistent data patterning. Across age groups, ethnicities, income levels and genders drops were recorded and most of these were statistically significant at the 95% confidence level.
| Crime Index Total | Violent Crime | Property Crime | Murder | Forcible Rape | Robbery | Aggravated Assault | Burglary | Larceny- Theft | Motor Vehicle Theft | Arson |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3% | 4.25% | 2.5% | 5.25% | 4.5% | 6.0% | 2.75% | 5.75% | 1% | 4% | 5% |
A second question in the same survey asked whether respondents felt safer on the streets of their neighborhood. Of the Races, Hispanics reported feeling substantially safer than others in the survey (16.2% vs. 9.6%). Urban dwellers said they felt safer by only slightly higher margins (12.1%), but theirs was the only category among community types above the entire sample. The two other groups expressing safer feelings were respondents who had not completed high school and those who earned less than $15,000.
Interestingly, there is a noticeable divergence in the percentages of those who felt crime rates were dropping versus those who merely felt safer. I would suggest several possible explanations for this effect. First, it is possible that the constant stream of news reports announcing falling crime has registered and is believed, but some of these respondents do not believe that they are directly benefiting. Second, a sense of personal security and crime rates may not be related linearly. In an environment suffused with multiple threats, the reduction of only some of the dangers leaves many others with more than enough potency to do harm. Moreover, it may be in the nature of criminal threats, often posed by unknown strangers at random moments, that they are felt to loom unseen. Therefore statistical crime rates do not correspond to any other supporting visible evidence that might alleviate fears and insecurity. In addition, it is entirely possible that there is a time lag between lower crime rates and an increased sense of security for citizens. A sense of trust or confidence in community may revive only gradually, especially since increased dangers in the form of higher levels of crime have been a feature of life in many communities for decades. Finally, it may also be that a national survey is so broadly cast that the effects generated in some urban areas that have seen substantial reductions in crime are diluted by others that have not. This is perhaps especially likely with relatively newer phenomena, as reductions in crime are.
Reductions in crime for New York City are important for two reasons. The first is the impact that changes in New York crime figures have on those for the nation as a whole. Through the 1980’s the City has averaged approximately 2,000 murders per year. That level constituted approximately 10% of the entire country’s murders, which between 1973 and 1994, ranged from a low of 18,780 (1976) and 24,700 (1991). (Maguire 1995: T3109) Since 1994 however, murders in New York have fallen by half, to under a thousand. That drop alone then accounts for what would be approximately 5% of the total for the nation (DiIulio 1995: p. 1). Second, New York City appears to exert considerable influence over law enforcement practices adopted elsewhere in the country. In part, this is due to the department's proximity to major print and electronic media outlets. In addition, New York is also the largest single police force in the country. It has resources in terms of budget and force levels that simply dwarf those available to nearly all other municipal departments. Its practices therefore have both the visibility and status that tend to inspire emulation.
But as John DiIulio points out, while New York City may be leading the way, it is by no means the only major metropolitan area to see its murder rate drop. He reports that Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, Tallahassee, Baton Rouge, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Antonio, and Detroit, among other sizable cities have all seen significant decreases in violent crime. Given the substantial contribution such large cities make to the nation’s overall crime rate then, it is to be expected that when they see lessening crime, the country’s statistics should follow in tow.
The explanation commonly suggested in press articles describing decreases in crime centers on changes in police management from an “incident-oriented” to “problem-oriented” policing. According to Wilson and Kelling, this is the, “most significant redefinition of police work in the past half century.” [1989] Wilson and Kelling cite Professor Herman Goldstein as the source of the distinction that describes a proactive policing approach as opposed to a reactive one. The former addresses immediate conditions generating or facilitating criminal activity, while the latter is designed to react to discrete crime incidents after they have occurred. This earlier approach essentially documents and investigates crime in response to victim and witness reports.
Over the last two decades, it has become increasingly clear that the earlier approach was having virtually no effect on levels of public safety. National Institute of Justice studies (Blumstein and Petersilia 1994) cite a study conducted by Prof. George Kelling 1972 on the ineffectiveness of visible, random mobile patrol to deter crime and increase citizen security. Their review of government funded criminology points out that this was something of a milestone, an early attempt to examine with scientific rigor whether assumptions about and claims for police operating strategies could really hold up under scrutiny. Other elements of police response were equally unavailing. Studies of isolated detective work have shown that it too has almost no impact on the overall crime rates. Greater response times to “911 calls”, though an easily measurable gauge of police performance, also could not be shown to actually enhance public safety.
From documenting what does not work to attempting the opposite is only a short step. In a manner consistent with current philosophies of organizational change in the business world, leading police organizations have been prominently adopting responsive, aggressive, self-analytic, flexible, results-based approaches to crime. This philosophy, more than the tactics or strategies it adopts in given circumstances, is what seems to distinguish the most visibly successful contemporary departments from others.
In New York City for example, what may be called the Bratton era, (though his tenure as commissioner was relatively brief) began with a focus on “quality of life” crimes - aggressive panhandling, fare-evading, public disturbances (Andrews). In practice, attention to relatively minor crimes had three effects. First, it boosted the sense of security felt by citizens in public spaces. Second, it often netted criminals for minor crimes before they had the chance to commit more serious ones. The classic example being the arrest of a turnstile jumper for fare evasion and then discovering both a knife and outstanding warrants for past convictions. Third, as in the above example, it made it harder for people who routinely broke the law to carry concealed weapons and thus reduced the numbers of guns on the streets.
Despite the widespread recognition that these efforts won, they have not been frozen as the dominant philosophy of the department since their initial adoption. According to press accounts, a new set of operating priorities have been generated by the department for 1997, these focusing on gang activity and narcotics networks (Marzulli and Rashbaum, 1997). On an ongoing basis, the information pipeline providing intelligence and accountability in New York for these sorts of changes have been the now well-known Comstat sessions (Andrews as well as Remnick). In these, local precinct commanders were called before representatives of the commissioner to explain their strategies and tactics for addressing current policing problems in their commands. In addition to serving as opportunities to develop accountability, and disseminating operational lessons of what was working, these sessions also allowed the department to shift resources in response to emerging problems.
As DiIulio makes clear, New York is by no means the only municipality to aggressively attempt to develop effective policing responses. In fact there is a growing movement among police departments across the country to adopt some of the techniques given the most widespread credit for turnarounds in crime. (For a survey of such efforts see the Alliance for Redesigning Government webpage, a project of the National Academy for Public Administration.)
One increasingly common paradigm is that of “community policing.” (For examples see relevalnt Alliance material). There are essentially three overarching objectives of community policing efforts. The first is to gain a more accurate idea of the actual public safety problems affecting an area. By stationing officers in neighborhood locations rather than precincts or in patrol cars, police personnel get much more accurate and timely information about the problems they are called upon to solve. They are also often asked to expand their activities well beyond what has become the typical role of law enforcement. If drug dealing is housed in a dilapidated vacant building for example, instead of just making arrests, an officer's role may include interacting with other municipal agencies to have the structure torn down.
One of the most immediately suggestive arguments for the role of policing in crime reductions is the fairly close coincidence between the two in time. Pro-active, results oriented policing has gradually taken hold as the dominant paradigm in policing just as “results” have started to be noticed. In addition, there are evident causal mechanisms linking the two. In terms of micro-encounters between police and threats to public safety, one can trace the ways in which dangers are reduced.
Moreover, as Blumstein catalogues, the police have not been alone in applying the systematic evaluative approaches to their law enforcement work. Prosecutors and even court systems have become more focused. Reforms that have spread throughout various courthouses and prosecutorial offices include: special narcotics courts; closer cooperation with arresting officers leading to improved evidence gathering; more considerate treatment of witnesses (often victims); career criminal prosecution programs; and more rational pre-trial bail-setting (allows low risk defendants to be released on their own recognizance, despite not having funds, thereby making space for suspects with high-risk flight profiles.)
They have also become more capable. According to Maguire (1997: t121), spending and personnel have risen dramatically over the last decade and a half or so. Since 1980, spending at all levels of government for the administration of justice as nearly tripled. Police protection has grown from $15 billion to $41 billion; judicial system costs have themselves nearly tripled from $7.7 billion to just under $21 billion; and expenditures for corrections have jumped most dramatically of all, from under $7 billion dollars to more than $31 billion dollars. Except for corrections, the increase in personnel made possible through these new monies was not so dramatic. Total employment for police and Judicial/Legal personnel rose only from about 714,000 and 248,000 to 857,000 and 373,400 respectively.
The truly striking increase in employment has come among corrections personnel. Since 1980, these have doubled from 270,000 to over 560,000 at all levels of government (Maguire, T121). Their rise has of course been accompanied by an equally, if not more, dramatic increase in the prison population over roughly the same time period. From 1980, the total number of people under some form of correctional supervision, that is, either in jail, prison, under parole or probation grew from 1.8 million to over 5.1 million, a 179% increase (Maguire, T61). The number of individuals in prison grew 210% and the growth in people on parole was 213%.
Gathering evidence on whether increasing levels of imprisonment (and given a universe of fewer crimes, a greater likelihood of apprehension) amounts to effective deterrence of criminal activity is a long term endeavor. Certainly the proponents of “Three Strike Laws” and mandatory sentencing have claimed a good deal for their proposals. But in addition to the effects these mechanisms may have on criminal decision-making they also have effects on the criminal justice system that should also be taken into account. If, for example, aged, three-time losers, crowd out younger more active criminals from jail cells, the dampening their deterrence effect has on overall crime rates may be more than offset by their having kept more “productive” criminals at work.
In addition to incapacitation, a similar effect seems to be at work through the increased deportation of criminally-involved aliens. Here the growth in numbers has been exponential. In 1980, there were only 364 deportations related to narcotics crime. In 1994, there were 28,032. In the four years from 1990 to 1994, over 100,000 narcotics-related deportations occurred, approximately 4/5s of such deportations (Maguire, T447).
If there is a policy prescription from this observation it might simply be that, levels of criminal activity, perhaps like other social challenges are best addressed on a variety of fronts similtaneously and opportunistically. Since factors reinforce one another, weakening any one of them, as the opportunity presents itself, can make further progress against others easier to achieve.
[2] Information for the City of New York, unfortunately must come from press accounts. NYPD issues what appear to be monthly press advisory touting their statistics but appear to have developed no other means for their release.
Blumstein, Alfred and Joan Petersilia. “25 Years of Criminal Justice Research: NIJ and Its Research Program.” The National Institute of Justice. December 1994. URL: http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/yea.txt
Burrell, Cassandra. “Nation Records Greatest Drop in Violent Crime Since 1970s.” The Star- Ledger. 14 April 1997 p. 6
DiIulio, John J. Jr. “Arresting Ideas: Tougher Law Enforcement Is Driving Down Urban Crime.” Policy Review. No. 74. Fall 1995. URL: http://www.heritage.org/heritage/p_review/fall95/thiuli.html [6 April 1997]
Federal Bureau of Investigation. a. “Uniform Crime Reporting Program Press Release.” 13 October 1996. URL: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr95prs.htm [24 April 1997].
---. b. “Preliminary Uniform Crime Report.” Press Release. 5 January 1997. URL: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr96prs.htm [24 April 1997]
---. c. “Uniform Crime Report: January - June 1996.” 5 January 1997. URL: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr0696.pdf [24 April 1997]
Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Tipping Point: What If Crime Really is an Epidemic?” The New Yorker. June 3, 1996
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. Viking. New York. 1987.
Kleck, Gary. “Guns and Violence: A Summary of the Field” Speech. American Political Science Association. 1991. The Canadian Firearms Homepage. URL: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn- firearms/Kleck/point-blank-summary.html [25 April 1997]
Larini, Rudy. “Reports Show a Less Violent Garden State.” The Star-Ledger. 9 April 1997. pp. 1 and 16.
Liff, Bob. “City Crime Drop Bests U.S. Stats.” The New York Daily News. 6 January 1997. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_01/010697/News/9209.hta
Maguire, Kathleen and Ann L. Pastore, eds. (1997) Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. [Online]. URL: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook [4 May 1997].
Marzulli, John. ”City Murders Fall 28% in ‘97.” The New York Daily News. 1 May 1997. City Central. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_05/050197/news/20334.hta
Marzulli, John, Michael O. Allen and Alice McQuillan. “77th Pct. is Champ on Crime: Felonies Take 40% Fall.” The New York Daily News. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_04/040797/NEWS/17837.hta 7 April 1997 p8.
Marzulli, John and William K. Rashbaum. “New Blueprint Gangs Up On Crime.” The New York Daily News. 2 January 1997. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_01/010297/News/8910.hta
McQuillan, Alice a. “Crime’s Been Arrested: N.Y. Slayings Off 27% as ‘93 Trend Rolls On.” The New York Daily News. 1 April 1997. p. 5 URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_04/040197/News/17289.hta
--- b. “Adults Hailed As Crime Curb.” The New York Daily News. 19 February 1997. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_02/021997/News/13242.hta
“Policing for Profit: Welcome to the New World of Private Security.” The Economist. 19 April 1997. (Printed in U.S. Edition). pp. 21-24.
Perkins, Craig and Patsy Klaus. “Criminal Victimization 1994.” U. S. Dept. of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Crime Victimization Survey. April 1996, NCJ-158022. URL: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/pub/bjs/ascii/cv94.txt [21 April 1997]
---. “Criminal Victimization 1994.” U. S. Dept. of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Crime Victimization Survey. Abstract. April 1996, NCJ- 158022. URL: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cv94.htm [21 April 1997]
Rashbaum, William K. “City Safety in Numbers.” The New York Daily News. 29 December 1997. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/96_12/122996/News/8712.hta
Remnick, David. “The Crime Buster.” The New Yorker. February 24 & March 3, 1997. pp. 94-109.
Roehl, Janice A., Robert Huitt, Mary Ann Wycoff, Antony Pate, Donald Rebovich, and Ken Coyle. “National Process Evaluation of Operation Weed and Seed.” Series: NIJ Research in Brief. National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. October 1996. 30 pages. URL: http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/weedseed.txt [April 1997]
Siemaszko, Corky. “City Dwellers Feel Safer - Poll.” The New York Daily News. 2/13/97. URL: http://www2.mostnewyork.com/most/archive/97_02/021397/News/12704.hta
Taylor, Bruce M. “Changes in Criminal Victimization, 1994-95.” U. S. Dept. of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Crime Victimization Survey. April 1997, NCJ-162032. URL: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/ccv95.htm [21 April 1997]
“Youth Crime (1): What is a Child?” The Economist. 19 April 1997. (Printed in U.S. Edition). p.29-30.
“Youth Crime (2): Strangled.” The Economist. 19 April 1997. (Printed in U.S. Edition). p.30
United States. Dept. of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. “Statistics About Crime and Victims.” 13 April 1997. URL: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict.htm [21 April 1997]
---. ---. ---. “Crime Victimization Drops Three Percent From 1993 to 1994.” Press Release. 17 April 1996. URL: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/pub/bjs/press/cv94.pr [21 April 1997]
Wilson, James Q. and George L. Kelling. “Making Neighborhoods Safe.” The Atlantic Monthly. February 1989. URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/election/connection/crime/safehood.htm [6 April 1997]
Wilson, James Q. Thinking About Crime. Rev. Ed. Basic Books. New York. 1983.
“Zero Tolerance.” The Economist. 19 April 1997 (Printed in British Edition Only). The Economist Group. URL: http://www.economist.com/issue/19-04-97/br7848.html [4/26/97]