The Atlantic, October 3, 2011 by Benjamin Schwartz
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/police-and-poetry/8691/
New York’s sustained, broad, and deep drop in violent crime occurred despite the city’s glaring economic inequality, its stubbornly unyielding poverty, educational deficiencies, number of “fatherless high-risk youth,” and the “social isolation” of its underclass.
Scientific American, August 2011 by Franklin E. Zimring
https://www.facebook.com/ScientificAmerican?sk=app_10442206389
Perhaps the most optimistic lesson to take from New York’s experience is that high rates of homicides and muggings are not hardwired into a city’s populations, cultures and institutions…. it demonstrates that the environment in which people are raised does not doom them to a lifetime outside the law—and that neither do their genes.
Contra Costa Times, September 12, 2011 by Rick Radin and Paul Burgarino
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18879656
“I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions that the crime rate can be reliably contained by police,” he said. “However, a careful and cautious accounting might well conclude that police-activated changes are responsible for part of the good news.”
San Francisco Chronicle, August 30, 2011 by Chip Johnson
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/30/BAS31KTC6V.DTL
Professor Franklin Zimring, a recognized expert on crime, said Quan’s plans are based on resources the understaffed Oakland Police Department doesn’t possess…. A curfew is an effective tool for street management and, contrary to the mayor’s opinion, there is “no legal barrier to a legitimately imposed curfew,” he said.
Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2011 by Carol J. Williams
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-match-20110824,0,1363334.story
Match.com doesn’t merely provide a platform for members to meet and arrange dates; it claims to be evaluating individuals and matching them for compatibility, said UC Berkeley law Professor Frank Zimring. “What Match.com is saying is, ‘Have we got a guy for you!’ ” Zimring said. “It’s a prescriptive rather than facilitative dating service.”
-The Baltimore Sun, August 17, 2011 by Justin Fenton
http://bit.ly/n8ns6R
“There’s certainly been no major economic or institutional steps forward that one would confidently expect would be reflected amid crime declines,” Zimring said. “It isn’t that declining crime reflects good news on a lot of other fronts — it’s almost an isolated piece of good news without any obvious linkage to other nice things happening in these cities.”
-San Francisco Chronicle, August 18, 2011 by Matthai Kuruvila
http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-08-18/news/29899333_1_oakland-police-mayor-jean-quan-city-council-members/2
Zimring said Oakland’s crime statistics prove that increasing or decreasing the number of police won’t necessarily impact the crime rate.… “There’s nothing crystal clear in the recent statistical patterns of Oakland when you look at them against the statistical patterns of other area cities,” Zimring said.
The Crime Report, August 2, 2011 by Ted Gest
http://www.thecrimereport.org/archive/2011-08-cops-and-crime
The major factor in the decline has been better policing, he says. “Cops matter a heck of a lot more than professors and policy makers have thought,” he told the association’s annual forum on criminal justice and public safety, held this year in Jersey City, N.J.
Catholic San Francisco, June 21, 2011 by George Raine
http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=16&id=58697
“Just imagine asking public servants to wake up every day and have them go to work planning to kill somebody,” said Woodford, who now leads a campaign to eliminate capital punishment in the nation. “It takes a toll on you. You begin to realize how much you are affected by participating in an execution. You have spent 30 to 60 days planning to kill somebody. How can that not affect you?”
Frank Zimring said, “There is in American history a long tradition of prison wardens who identify with the humanity and aspirations of the prisoners. You also have a divide between administrators who saw this as an adversarial relationship and administrators who saw it as a branch of human services, and Jeanne Woodford came from the psychology of human services. It’s a great tradition.”
The New York Times, May 29, 2011 by Manny Fernandez
http://nyti.ms/j2rHya
“It is not simply that it is a toddler’s death,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist and law professor…. “It is that it’s a toddler’s unreported death. Whether it is accidental, intentional or something in between, when the death of somebody that young goes unreported to the authorities, the lack of reporting suggests that this is intimately linked to events involving the custodial parent. Sometimes it’s abuse. Sometimes it’s neglect. Sometimes it’s an accident.”
Crain’s New York Business, May 29, 2011 by Jeremy Smerd and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/ (registration required; go to H:\Law School in the News\In the News 2011\News Clips for article)
He cheered the NYPD’s focus on high-crime areas and corners where drugs were openly sold. Drug use has not decreased, but sales have moved into people’s apartments; gone are turf wars between dealers. “That’s when the guns come out,” he said.