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The Topic
Crime (shorthand for Crime, Police and the Courts) refers to relationships among criminal activity, the police, the courts and community life.
The Context
The decline in New York City’s crime was the great unanticipated and controversial story of the 1990s. Was the stupendous decline in all major crime indicators a vindication of broken windows policing, which argues that minor crime breeds both disorder and more serious crime and therefore must be fought tenaciously? Or did crime decline because of changing demographics, better education, the decline in the crack epidemic, and more affluence? Post-9/11 New York must contend with all its old problems of violent and petty crime, while also facing the enormous security issues posed by terrorism.
Best Books About Crime
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 | Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic by William Bratton & Peter Knobler (Random House, 1998. 329 pp.)
Former NYPD Commissioner Bratton's description of how he did it, using broken windows policing monitored precisely by CompStat, the state-of-the-art system that maps crime geographically across the city. In the New York Times Book Review, James Lardner called Turnaround "that tricky literary genre, the memoir of the ousted." more info... |
 | Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing by Bernard Harcourt (Harvard University Press, 2001. 288 pp.)
University of Chicago law professor looks at big city police departments that have implemented broken windows policing and calls them deluded. Using Michel Foucault's theories in Discipline and Punish, among others, Harcourt argues that broken windows "focuses on the presence of the disorderly rather than on the criminal act." What's more it's never been empirically proven effective, he says. In other words, Bratton didn't drive crime down in New York, and broken windows never works anyway. Who's right remains to be seen. more info... |
 | New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s by Andrew Karmen (New York University Press, 2000. 320 pp.)
John Jay College of Criminal Justice sociologist Karmen arguing essentially that Bratton didn't do it - that crime rates in New York were already falling before Bratton or CompStat. Instead, Karmen credits immigration, demographics, higher education, the decline in the crack epidemic, and the death of some bad guys. more info... |
 | Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities by George L. Kelling, Catherine M. Coles (Contributor), James Q. Wilson (Free Press, 1996.)
In a famous 1982 article in the Atlantic Monthly, Harvard political scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling argued that disorderly streets communicate a lack of control, emboldening criminals, upsetting law abiding citizens, and plunging the neighborhood into a downward "spiral of urban decay." That was the bible and it can't be ignored - whether you're a believer, an atheist, or an agnostic. Now there's this updated version, but the message stays: broken windows breed disorder. more info... |
 | Murder in New York City by Eric H. Monkkonen (Univ. of California, 2001. 238 pp. $29.95 )
UCLA professor of history Eric Monkkonen reports on his quantitative, multi-year study of who kills whom and why in New York. He says New York’s murder rate has been 10 to 15 times higher than London’s for the past 200 years, but says no single factor explains why. more info... |
 | NYPD: The Inside Story of New York's Legendary Police Department by Thomas Reppetto and James Lardner (Henry Holt, 2001. 384 pp.)
A pretty straightforward narrative history of the NYPD with a few golden moments - such as Bratton's days in the sun - highlighted. The authors argue that policing is "a pendular business, the profession swinging decisively back and forth between scandal and reform" at predictable 20-year intervals. Police behavior is governed by the "hidden ideas and emotions" that make up the organization's "inner life," including "the traditions, the fears, the lore and all the lessons, official and unofficial, spoken and silent, that cops pass along from generation to generation." more info... |
 | NYPD Battles Crime: Innovative Strategies by Eli B. Silverman (Northeastern University Press, 1999. 243 pp.)
A second John Jay College criminologist doesn't argue that Bratton didn't do it, but says he built on a history of external and internal initiatives that provided a solid base for re-eningeering the department. Silverman also argues that before Bratton, police put more energy into preventing police corruption and improving the NYPD's image than into combating crime. more info... |
 | NYPD: Stories of Survival from the World's Toughest Beat by Clint Willis (Editor) (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002. 299 pp.)
This fun collection of 18 essays and reminiscences by New York cops, former cops, and admirers tries to convey vivid, detailed descriptions of life on the job. Most of the essays succeed. more info... |
Reader Submissions / Others.
• Gangs Of New York by Various. The movie "Gangs Of New York," directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis, has brought renewed attention to the city's long colorful history of criminal gangs, and especially to the Five Points, which historian Edwin Burrows calls "New York's most infamous neighborhood, singled out by generations of reformers and journalists as a hive of nightmarish squalor, violence, disease and crime." (Book list compiled by Gotham Gazette)
• Small Town by Lawrence Block.
• Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier. a tremendous book. duneier is arguing that the broken windows policy is inhumane. by getting to know the greenwich village booksellers he determines that the elder booksellers serve as an important model for others who make their lives on the street, serving a role society is not completely fulfilling. in fulfilling this role they become much different than the graffitti covered wall or the abandoned car and deserved to be treated as such.
• Gotham Unbound: How New York City Was Liberated from the Grip of Organized Crime by James B. Jacobs, Coleen Friel, Robert Raddick. Examines how the Mafia infiltrated and controlled legitimate interests such as labor unions, construction, and waste disposal in New York City during the twentieth century.
Interested in other books about NYC? Visit our NYC Books section.
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