The Crime Drop in America

Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980s and continued to climb until 1991, after which something unprecedented occurred. The crime level declined to a level not seen since the 1960s. This revised edition of The Crime Drop in America focuses first on the dramatic drop in crime rates in America in the 1990s, and then, in a new epilogue, on the patterns since 2000. The separate chapters written by distinguished experts cover the many factors affecting crime rates: policing, incarceration, drug markets, gun control, economics, and demographics. Detailed analyses emphasize the mutual effects of changes in crack markets, a major focus of youth violence, and the drop in rates of violence following decline in demand for crack. The contrasts between the crime-drop period of the 1990s and the period since 2000 are explored in the new epilogue, which also reviews major new developments in thinking about the causes and control of crime.

1. The recent rise and fall of American violence Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman; 2. Some recent trends in US violence Alfred Blumstein; 3. Guns and gun violence Garen Wintemute; 4. The limited importance of prison expansion William Spelman; 5. Patterns in adult homicide: 1980–95 Richard Rosenfeld; 6. The rise and decline of hard drugs, drug markets, and violence in inner-city New York Bruce Johnson, Andrew Golub, and Eloise Dunlap; 7. Have changes in policing reduced violent crime John Eck and Edward Maguire; 8. An economic model of recent trends in violence Jeff Grogger; 9. Demographics and US homicide James Alan Fox; Epilogue to the revised edition. After the crime drop Joel Wallman and Alfred Blumstein.

This revised edition focuses on the drop in crime rates in America in the 1990s, and on the patterns since 2000. The contrasts between the crime-drop periods are explored in the new epilogue, which reviews developments in thinking about the causes and control of crime.

Alfred Blumstein is a university professor and the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research and former Dean (from 1986 to 1993) at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management of Carnegie Mellon University. He is also director of the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR).
Joel Wallman is Senior Program Officer at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation in New York. He is the author of Aping Language (Cambridge University Press, 1992) He has also published in Computer Applications in the Biosciences, Current Anthropology, Criminology and Public Policy.