NCJ Number
190239
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 88 Issue: 4 Dated: Summer 1998 Pages: 1217-1231
Date Published
1998
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article presented rational for the decline of New York City’s crime rate since 1994 from an insiders’ viewpoint.
Abstract
In 1994, New York City experienced a significant decline in its crime rate creating a debate over the origins of the crime reduction. The authors of this article strongly implicated the police as playing an important role in the reduction of crime in New York City. Their rational in the support of the police’s role had three origins: (1) the police had a guiding “idea” about how to prevent crimes, a “theory of action”; (2) the “idea” was applied in New York City’s subway and the subway experiences became the “pretest” for what would happen city-wide; and (3) the police chiefs, at the time, struggled with issues of how to improve policing through police leadership, management, and administration. This article addressed these three points of origin. The theory of action rests on the idea that if law enforcement waits until serious crimes occur to intervene it is too late. There is the need to deal with the disorderly behavior now in order to prevent the cycle from accelerating. In putting the idea into action, the New York City Transit Authority reclaimed the subways by properly understanding the problem, as illegal and disorderly behavior, and developed policies and trained officers to deal with the disorder. The commissioner of the New York City Police Department was seen as having a clear plan, an idea on how to prevent crime, an organizational strategy to implement, and a successful pre-test site in the city’s subways. It was believed that the restoration of assertive policing in 1994 and 1995 interacted with community forces to achieve a decline in crime.