KCBS In Depth: Fighting Urban Crime
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – Urban crime has been decreasing in many cities, but nowhere is that more prevalent than in New York City.
UC Berkeley Law Professor Franklin Zimrig has authored a new book, "The City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control," which looks at some of the methods the city has used to decrease crime. Zimrig found that while urban crime declined across the country from 1991-2000, it was an even bigger drop in New York City.
KCBS Interviews Professor Franklin Zimrig on Urban Crime:
"What happened in New York City was that instead of a 40 percent drop, safety crime dropped by more than 80 percent. And it wasn't just during the 1990's. Their drop was twice as big, but it also lasted twice as long," said Zimrig. "All the way through the end of my study period, which is 2009, crime kept declining in New York."
Zimrig said that the crime rate decline has been startling for New York City and it is all crimes, from homicides to burglaries and auto thefts. He said there are several lessons from this time period that can be translated to cities in the Bay Area, first starting off with police departments.
"Police can make a great difference in crime. The New York difference was in the number of police the city deployed and the change in strategies they used. In the Bay Area, if we could get some of our prison budget into municipal policing, we could end up preventing a lot more crime and doing so at a much lower rate," said Zimrig. "What New York did was to use cops strategically in ways that Oakland is starting to do. You go where the crime is most repeated and most concentrated. It's called hotspots policing. You use your focus strategically and decide what your biggest problems are and you go to the places where those problems are and you keep your police resources there. If you go where the problems are most intense, with life threatening violence, you can make a big dent."
Zimrig said a change in the fight against drugs was also a big help in keeping the crime rate lower as New York officials tried to eliminate public drug markets, helping to decrease violent, drug-related crimes. Another preventative measure: the incarceration of criminals.
"The cost of keeping those people locked up was probably an inefficient way of reducing crime. If we can find a way of transferring some of the resources that we used to spend on incarceration, into the front end of crime-preventive policing, it will be a much more effective way of keeping the crime rate low," he said.
Zimrig said that it is still uncertain if policing measures such as gang injunctions and teen curfews, which are being debated in cities like Oakland, will be effective in helping to decrease the crime rate.
You can hear KCBS In Depth, a weekly half-hour news interview, Saturdays at 5:30a.m. and Sundays at 8:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. on KCBS All News 740AM and 106.9FM.
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