“A remarkable book.”—Malcolm Gladwell, San Francisco Chronicle Deaths of civilians at the hands of on-duty police are in the national spotlight as never before. How many killings by police occur annually? What circumstances provoke police to shoot to kill? Who dies? The lack of answers to these basic questions points to a crisis in American government that urgently requires the attention of policy experts. When Police Kill is a groundbreaking analysis of the use of lethal force by police in the United States and how its death toll can be reduced. Franklin Zimring compiles data from federal records, crowdsourced research, and investigative journalism to provide a comprehensive, fact-based picture of how, when, where, and why police resort to deadly force. Of the 1,100 killings by police in the United States in 2015, he shows, 85 percent were fatal shootings and 95 percent of victims were male. The death rates for African Americans and Native Americans are twice their share of the population. Civilian deaths from shootings and other police actions are vastly higher in the United States than in other developed nations, but American police also confront an unusually high risk of fatal assault. Zimring offers policy prescriptions for how federal, state, and local governments can reduce killings by police without risking the lives of officers. Criminal prosecution of police officers involved in killings is rare and only necessary in extreme cases. But clear administrative rules could save hundreds of lives without endangering police officers. “Roughly 1,000 Americans die each year at the hands of the police...The civilian body count does not seem to be declining, even though violent crime generally and the on-duty deaths of police officers are down sharply...Zimring’s most explosive assertion—which leaps out...—is that police leaders don’t care...To paraphrase the French philosopher Joseph de Maistre, every country gets the police it deserves.” —Bill Keller, New York Times “If you think for one second that the issue of cop killings doesn’t go to the heart of the debate about gun violence, think again. Because what Zimring shows is that not only are most fatalities which occur at the hands of police the result of cops using guns, but the number of such deaths each year is undercounted by more than half!...[A] valuable and important book...It needs to be read.” —Mike Weisser, Huffington Post
This is an examination of adolescent violence in the United States as both a social phenomenon and a policy problem. Franklin Zimring, a scholar of law and crime, scrutinizes criminal statistics and demographic trends in order to authoritatively address public worries.
Many theories--from the routine to the bizarre--have been offered up to explain the crime decline of the 1990s. Was it record levels of imprisonment? An abatement of the crack cocaine epidemic? More police using better tactics? Or even the effects of legalized abortion? And what can we expect from crime rates in the future? Franklin E. Zimring here takes on the experts, and counters with the first in-depth portrait of the decline and its true significance. The major lesson from the 1990s is that relatively superficial changes in the character of urban life can be associated with up to 75% drops in the crime rate. Crime can drop even if there is no major change in the population, the economy or the schools. Offering the most reliable data available, Zimring documents the decline as the longest and largest since World War II. It ranges across both violent and non-violent offenses, all regions, and every demographic. All Americans, whether they live in cities or suburbs, whether rich or poor, are safer today. Casting a critical and unerring eye on current explanations, this book demonstrates that both long-standing theories of crime prevention and recently generated theories fall far short of explaining the 1990s drop. A careful study of Canadian crime trends reveals that imprisonment and economic factors may not have played the role in the U.S. crime drop that many have suggested. There was no magic bullet but instead a combination of factors working in concert rather than a single cause that produced the decline. Further--and happily for future progress, it is clear that declines in the crime rate do not require fundamental social or structural changes. Smaller shifts in policy can make large differences. The significant reductions in crime rates, especially in New York, where crime dropped twice the national average, suggests that there is room for other cities to repeat this astounding success. In this definitive look at the great American crime decline, Franklin E. Zimring finds no pat answers but evidence that even lower crime rates might be in store.
American Juvenile Justice is a definitive volume for courses on the criminology and policy analysis of adolescence. The focus is on the principles and policy of a separate and distinct system of juvenile justice. The book opens with an introduction of the creation of adolescence, presenting a justification for the category of the juvenile or a period of partial responsibility before full adulthood. Subsequent sections include empirical investigations of the nature of youth criminality and legal policy toward youth crime. At the heart of the book is an argument for a penal policy that recognizes diminished responsibility and a youth policy that emphasizes the benefits of letting the maturing process continue with minimal interruption. In this updated and expanded second edition, Zimring has included four new chapters with examinations on important topics including, US Supreme Court decisions of life sentences for minors, the elected use of juvenile courts over criminal court, punitive sex offender registration for juveniles, and appropriate tactics for juvenile justice reform.
An investigation into the reasons why New York City saw a dramatic drop in crime during the late 20th century into the 21st. Franklin Zimring provides a detailed and comprehensive statistical investigation into the city's falling crime rates.--Résumé de l'éditeur.
An assessment of incapacitation in which the authors expose the increasing reliance on restraint to justify imprisonment, analyse the existing theoretical literature and empirical research on incapacitation's effects, and explore the links between incapacitation and criminal justice policy. In the STUDIES IN CRIME AND PUBLIC POLICY series.
The authors provide a comprehensive treatment of the politics and impact of 'get tough' criminal sentencing legislation in the United States. The book includes a study of the celebrated California 'three strikes' law.
The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion. Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States. This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?"--
“... It’s the most entertaining book I’ve read this year.” — Steve Chapman, Columnist and Editorial Writer, The Chicago Tribune There are no pretentious pronouncements about public policy or dry conclusions from social science in these pages ... because it is a report from what Frank Zimring calls “my second career, and everybody else’s second career, the hard work of becoming an adult in the modern world.” Why is a piranha swimming in your pool a better illustration of how people get over-committed than a giant man eating shark? (Consult chapter 3.) What should you say when your eight-year-old asks whether you would save him or his sister if the lifeboat only had room for one? (See chapter 5.) Why are professors who hate to teach at their home campus positively lustful when invited to lecture somewhere else? (Chapter 11 explains.) When you finally succeed in giving up cigarettes, how should you feel about those who still smoke? (See chapter 2.) Why do so many of the people lined up to visit world famous landmarks look so unhappy to be there? (Chapter 20 reveals the secret.) “Frank Zimring has gained renown as a penetrating thinker and a tireless scholar, but Memos from Midlife reveals what his friends have always known: He is also a charming and thought-provoking companion with a devilish sense of humor. Addressing a range of unconventional topics, from ‘the arrogance of nostalgia’ to Portnoy’s real complaint, he provides both illumination and fun, as well as guidance on living wisely and well. It’s the most entertaining book I’ve read this year.” — Steve Chapman Columnist and Editorial Writer The Chicago Tribune A new collection of compelling and humorous essays, in the Journeys & Memoirs Series from Quid Pro Books.
Two of the nation's foremost criminal justice scholars present a comprehensive assessment of the factors behind the growth and subsequent overcrowding of American prisons. By critiquing the existing scholarship on prison scale from sociology and history to correctional forecasting and economics, they both reveal that explicit policy changes have had little influence on the increases in imprisonment in recent years and analyze whether it is possible to place limits effectively on prison population. "The Scale of Imprisonment has an exceptionally well designed literature review of interest to public policy, criminal justice, and public law scholars. Its careful review, analysis, and critique of research is stimulating and inventive."—American Political Science Review "The authors fram our thoughts about the soaring use of imprisonment and stimulate our thinking about the best way we as criminologists can conduct rational analysis and provide meaningful advice."—Susan Guarino-Ghezzi, Journal of Quantitative Criminology "Zimring and Hawkins bring a long tradition of excellent criminological scholarship to the seemingly intractable problems of prisons, prison overcrowding, and the need for alternative forms of punishment."—J. C. Watkins, Jr., Choice
This book presents a comprehensive examination of the drug control policy process in the United States. How are policy choices identified, debated and selected? How are the consequences of governmental policy measured and evaluated? How, if at all, do we learn from our mistakes? Zimring and Hawkins present different ways of understanding American drug policy and provide a foundation for an improved policy process. They argue that protection of children and youth should shape policy toward illicit crime, with attention to the fact that youth protection objectives may limit the effectiveness of some drug controls.
The death penalty is not simply the most serious criminal punishment. It has been a singular social, legal, and moral problem in the Western world over the past two hundred years. Capital punishment is disappearing from every nation in the West except the United States. No political science of capital punishment in the United States has been attempted until this book. Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins offer a redefinition of the central political and legal issues and a re-examination of the whole subject in the light of the social, political, and moral conditions of the United States in the 1980s. Lawyers, criminologists, political scientists, and motivated general readers will find the profile of a United States pursuing an active execution policy in the 1980s and 1990s to be an original and compelling contribution to the discussion of the future of the death penalty. Zimring and Hawkins's prediction for future policy, while based on historical precedent, is in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom about the United States Supreme Court. This book was first published in 1986.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.