Franklin Zimring

Clean up of New York’s bad apples an inspiration to free-thinkers

Franklin Zimring cited in The Sydney Morning Herald, April 5, 2012

Professor Zimring concludes that the police, by inhibiting street crime, inhibited crime generally. They took away a milieu. This had the greatest impact on the greatest source of crimes—criminals coming out of prison—who found their old comfort zones were gone.

Clean up of New York’s bad apples an inspiration to free-thinkers
Franklin Zimring
cited in The Sydney Morning Herald, April 5, 2012
Professor Zimring concludes that the police, by inhibiting street crime, inhibited crime generally. They took away a milieu. This had the greatest impact on the greatest source of crimes—criminals coming out of prison—who found their old comfort zones were gone.

Bid to end death penalty headed to the ballot

Franklin Zimring quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, March 2, 2012

In California, “when the death penalty comes up as a political issue, it comes up as a question of basic sentiment: Which do you prefer, murder victims or the people that killed them?” Franklin Zimring, a UC Berkeley law professor who has written extensively about capital punishment, said in an interview.

Franklin Zimring Notes Downside of Police Video Cameras

The New York Times Upfront, February 20, 2012 by Erica Goode
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BUE/is_10_144/ai_n58571231/?tag=content;col1

One concern is what happens to any potentially embarrassing footage, says Franklin Zimring, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “I sure don’t want it on YouTube,” Zimring says. “The potential for a sort of permanent embarrassment is a looming presence when everything is filmed.”

Franklin Zimring Studies New York Police Tactics

-The New York Times, February 3, 2012 by N. R. Kleinfield, Al Baker and Joseph Goldstein
http://nyti.ms/wWPYie

Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied New York’s crime record, said, “In a funny sense, the department is and has been for some time a victim of its own success.” He added: “Anybody in that job has got to play a constant game of, ‘Can you top this?’ And that has been a hard game to play.”

-Chicago News Cooperative, February 10, 2012 by James Warren
http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/warren-new-yorks-lessons-on-fighting-crime-2/

Nothing really seems to account for New York’s differences other than increases in police resources and strategies focused on serious crime, and not, according to Mr. Zimring, the often mythologized “quality of life,” or so-called “broken windows” strategies that concentrate on, say, public prostitution or gambling.

-The New York Times, February 11, 2012 by Ross Douthat
http://nyti.ms/wakIJr

Prison is a school for crime and an anchor on advancement, and there’s a large body of research — from scholars like U.C.L.A.’s Mark Kleiman and Berkeley’s Franklin E. Zimring — suggesting that swift, certain punishment and larger police forces can do as much to keep crime low as the more draconian approach to sentencing that our justice system often takes.

Franklin Zimring Explains New York’s Policing Tactics

-The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2012 by Franklin E. Zimring
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181291838644350.html?KEYWORDS=Berkeley

As part of its CompStat system, it combined mapping and the analysis of crime statistics to target “hot spots” by concentrating patrol, detective and narcotics units. Hours were shifted so that more officers were working at night, when shootings peaked. Open-air drug markets were shut down, which didn’t significantly reduce drug sales but did eliminate 90% of drug-related killings, which usually involve turf conflicts.

-The New Yorker, January 30, 2012 by Adam Gopnik
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all

Zimring said, in a recent interview, “Remember, nobody ever made a living mugging. There’s no minimum wage in violent crime.” In a sense, he argues, it’s recreational, part of a life style: “Crime is a routine behavior; it’s a thing people do when they get used to doing it.”

Franklin Zimring Notes Impact of Prison Overcrowding

Neon Tommy, January 25, 2012 by Gracie Zheng
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/01/la-county-jails-address-overcrowding

“The larger the number of people in the jail, the more vulnerable the jail inmate is going to feel. The less [the inmate] can do, the more anxious [the inmate] will be,” said Franklin Zimring, a University of California, Berkeley law professor. “What crowding does is make a restriction on liberty and also [the jail] into a potentially threatening environment,” he said.