American policymakers have often responded to big problems with declarations of war—on poverty, on drugs, and on terror, to mention three well-known examples. The outcomes of those efforts have been mixed, but one policy war that has met with far greater success over the last generation is the war on crime. Yet that victory, says sociologist Patrick Sharkey in his new book, is “tainted,” and the peace that so many now enjoy “uneasy.” It's a puzzling thesis, especially since, in his thorough and well-written account, Sharkey chronicles how far urban crime has declined, what brought the decline about, and the many ways in which America's most vulnerable urban residents benefited. Though he acknowledges the contributions of policing and incarceration to what he calls “one of the most important social trends to hit cities over the past several decades,” Sharkey nevertheless argues that we should now “turn the streets over to advocates” and abandon the practices that helped so many cities find peace and prosperity.
Sharkey begins by illustrating that “the level of violence in the United States has fallen dramatically from its latest peak in the early 1990s.” While this decline is real, aggregated crime data can create the false impression that these improvements have been felt equally across the country. Though violent-crime numbers have no doubt improved, many urban neighborhoods continue to experience elevated levels of violence, which in some cases rival those seen in the early 1990s. Explaining the crime decline, he rightly dismisses exogenous factors—such as shifts in age distribution, economic growth, and less alcohol use. Instead, he rightly attributes the decline to “response[s] to the crisis of violence itself.” Chief among them: the reclaiming, and subsequent transformation, of public spaces, which Sharkey calls “[t]he most fundamental change that took place in U.S. cities.” He divides credit for overall crime decline three ways—between policing, incarceration, and local community organizations “established to provide social services and safe spaces for young people, to create stronger neighborhoods, and to confront violence.”
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