CRIME IS NOT THE PROBLEM:
Lethal Violence in America
By Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins
Oxford University Press, 272 pages, $35
In “Crime Is Not the Problem,” Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins challenge the conventional wisdom that links crime with lethal violence. The authors ask us to think about crime control in a new and innovative way. Instead of devoting our almost exclusive attention to stamping out crime by attempting to deter and punish criminals, they suggest that we manage crime by concentrating on developing ways to make crime less lethal.
Zimring and Hawkins argue that the war on crime has been ineffective because it has cast its net too broadly, failing to distinguish between crime prevention in general and specific efforts to reduce lethal violence. Most developed nations have crime rates equivalent to those of the United States. What separates America from the rest of the industrial world is not the amount of crime but its lethal character. In the U.S., the rate of death and life-threatening violence from assaults is 4 to 18 times greater than in other developed nations.
High rates of death and serious injury are not merely the byproduct of high levels of crime and large numbers of criminals; lethal violence is a unique American problem. A detailed comparison from the book of death rates from property crimes in New York City and London is illustrative. The two cities have approximately the same population and the same number of combined robberies and burglaries. In 1992, however, the death toll from those crimes was 54 times higher in New York City. Two factors explain this huge difference. First, New York criminals’ preference for robbery over burglary. The ratio of burglaries to robberies in New York City is approximately 1-1; in London it is 9-1. Because robberies are much more likely to cause serious injury, we would expect New York City to have a higher death toll. But even if the ratio of burglaries to robberies were the same in both cities, New York would still have a death rate from property crimes 16 times higher than London’s. The reason why robbery and burglary are much more deadly in New York than in London is simple: Criminals in New York prefer firearms to all other weapons. Although robberies committed with firearms are less likely to result in injury than robberies commited with other weapons (because victims are generally compliant), when victims do resist they are almost 10 times more likely to be killed. Guns are used in 40 percent of New York City’s robberies, yet they account for 85 percent of its robbery killings. In London, firearms are almost never used.
A propensity for violence is characteristic not only of American crime, but of other aspects of social life. Only a small portion of homicides occur during the commission of crimes such as burglary, robbery and rape. Most homicides grow out of heated arguments and personal conflicts between acquaintances.
Violence occurs when either one or both parties decide to “resolve” their conflict by resorting to force. The difference between an aggravated assault and a criminal homicide is whether the victim lives or dies. And whether the victim lives or dies is often the result of the choice of weapon. Hence, the use of deadly weapons is the major reason that assaults kill 11 times as many people in New York City as in London. Firearms are used in 26 percent of New York assaults, compared with 1 percent in London. Knives are used 27 percent of
the time in New York, 6 percent in London. This leads Zimring and Hawkins to conclude that, “What sets the United States apart from other developed nations is a thin layer of life-threatening violence that probably accounts for less than 1 percent of American crime, and less than 10 percent of American violence.”
In support of the argument that the lethal nature of firearms plays a significant role in the death rate from assaults, the authors cite Zimring’s study of homicides in Chicago. Zimring’s research showed that most attacks that killed were similar in nature to those that did not kill. The study also found that 70 percent of all gun killings in Chicago were the result of a single bullet wound. If the intent were to kill, why didn’t the offender exhaust the full potential of the weapon? Zimring concluded that most homicides are actually “ambiguously motivated assaults” designed to injure but not necessarily to kill. Furthermore, follow-up studies have demonstrated that a difference in the caliber of firearm used can double the death rate from assaults. Even if the availability of firearms plays no role in the decision to assault someone, it does play a role in how deadly that assault will be.
Lethal violence, like everything else in America, is not equally distributed. Homicide, for example, is concentrated in America’s largest cities, and in particular neighborhoods of those cities. Consequently, sections of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are as safe as many small towns in America’s heartland. Research also indicates that life-threatening violence disproportionately afflicts black communities. According to Zimring and Hawkins, blacks are 5 times as likely to be homicide victims and 8 times as likely to be homicide offenders as whites. Furthermore, research not cited by the authors indicates that black males 14 to 24 years old make up just 1.2 percent of the population, yet they account for 18 percent of homicide victims and 31 percent of homicide offenders.
The most serious problem in the black community is not crime, but lethal violence. Black assault rates are twice those of whites, but 6 times more deadly, and primarily concentrated in the poorer neighborhoods of the inner city. Until lethal violence becomes the central target of our crime-control policy, blacks will continue to bear the brunt of our disparate crime-control efforts.
According to Zimring and Hawkins, the most promising model for the reduction of lethal violence already exists in our current approach to highway safety. Prior to the 1960s, highway accidents were blamed almost exclusively on human error, and driver’s education was our main strategy to prevent death and injury. As society began to realize the limits of driver’s education and that a certain number of accidents were inevitable, the focus shifted toward making automobile accidents less lethal. Seat belts, padded steering wheels, air bags and collapsible bumpers were introduced to make crashes more survivable. Although none of these measures has reduced the number of accidents, they have been enormously successful in cutting the death rate from crashes.
Crime-control policy should follow the same harm-reduction strategy. Sooner or later, most people will be the victim of a crime. Instead of devoting our exclusive attention to the elusive goal of changing the hearts and minds of criminals, we should concentrate on developing ways to make their crimes less deadly. For Zimring and Hawkins this means restricting the general availability of handguns–the single most important factor in our staggering death rate from violence. Guns are involved in only 1 out of 25 crimes, but they are involved in 2 out of 10 serious crimes and 7 out of 10 criminal homicides. Deprived of handguns, criminals would not become choirboys–they would find other weapons. Crime and violence would not disappear or necessarily be reduced. The death toll from crime, however, would decline dramatically.
As seasoned criminologists, Zimring and Hawkins are aware that there is enormous political resistance to pragmatic policy-making. Ideologues on the Right and Left have their preferred solutions to the crime problem. What is so startling about the approach taken by Zimring and Hawkins is that it avoids getting entangled in the question of who is to blame for crime–criminals or society. Instead it argues for sensible harm-reduction and loss-prevention strategies that can reduce our nation’s carnage from crime and violence.
