I want to look at the impact of cell phones of crime prevention. I can’t seem to make any progress getting such data from the NYPD. The San Diego paper has this story. Maybe I’d have better luck there. Besides San Diego has always been an interesting case vis-a-vis crime reduction because they mirrored the…
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Seems to be what’s happening in Newark, which laid off 163 police officers last month.
Frank Zimring has always been one of the better criminologists out there. This nine minute video from the Vera Institute of Justice hows some of the reasons why.
People normally don’t get very excited over the elections of a State’s Attorney. But the recent election lose of Patricia Jessamy (and victory for Gregg Bernstein) is the most exiting crime-fighting development in Baltimore in many years. Peter Hermann has a good story in the Sunabout the potential for corporation between police and prosecutors. In…
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Seems like the city got off easy by having to pay $870,000 and promise to do the right thing. About 100,000 people were arrested each year in first half of the 2000s. Last year the number was down to about 70,000, which is still a lot. By comparison, New York City had 341,000 arrests in…
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A good article by Ben Nuckols about crime in Baltimore and the good things happening under Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld. In a blighted west Baltimore neighborhood, Lt. Ian Dombroski turns his unmarked police car around a corner and sees several men standing outside a liquor store. They scatter immediately. Dombroski knows they’re probably selling drugs,…
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Ninety percent of those stopped by the NYPD are black and latino. So says the New York Times. Is this a cause for concern? I don’t know. Something certainly bothers me when my male black and hispanic students complain of being stopped by the police often (and often rudely stopped). But there is one touchy…
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Lenny Levitt poses an interesting question is his weekly column: From 2004 through 2009, [New York City] police have had nearly three million stop-and-frisk encounters, which involve patting people down or questioning them. Virtually all of those stopped are black or Hispanic. In 88 per cent of the cases, the people searched or questioned were…
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Everywhere Bill Bratton goes, crime seems to go down. Since 2002, homicides in L.A. decreased by more than 50%. And yet so many professors are unwilling to accept that good policing has a major impact on crime. In the academic world, Bratton still seems to get little credit and respect. Why is that? Here’s an…
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If you look at this chart, it’s not hard to think that the great crime drop was caused by locking up all the criminals. A student brought this up in class. In the 1990s, it looks pretty convincing: But just looking at the 1990s misses the big picture. Here’s the same data going back to…
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