This book explores New York City’s historic crime drop over the past quarter of a century. New York City’s dramatic crime decline is a real brainteaser: no one predicted it and, as of yet, no one has explained it, at least to the satisfaction of most social scientists who study crime trends. Three strategic lessons emerge from the contributions to this volume on New York’s crime drop. It is suggested that future research should: • go wide by putting New York in comparative context, nationally and internationally; • go long by putting New York’s recent experience in historical context; • develop a strong ground game by investigating New York’s crime drop across multiple spatial units, down to the street segment. The contributors to Understanding New York’s Crime Drop aim to provoke expanded and sustained attention to crime trends in New York and elsewhere. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Justice Quarterly.

Studying the flagship New York City Police Department is critical to understanding policing and democratic society. An examination of the department by experts who have been studying it for years, The New York City Police Department: The Impact of Its Policies and Practices provides a frank and open discussion about the NYPD from an elite group of

For over sixty million Americans, possessing a criminal record overshadows everything else about their public identity. A rap sheet, or even a court appearance or background report that reveals a run-in with the law, can have fateful consequences for a person’s interactions with just about everyone else. The Eternal Criminal Record makes transparent a pervasive system of police databases and identity screening that has become a routine feature of American life. The United States is unique in making criminal information easy to obtain by employers, landlords, neighbors, even cyberstalkers. Its nationally integrated rap-sheet system is second to none as an effective law enforcement tool, but it has also facilitated the transfer of ever more sensitive information into the public domain. While there are good reasons for a person’s criminal past to be public knowledge, records of arrests that fail to result in convictions are of questionable benefit. Simply by placing someone under arrest, a police officer has the power to tag a person with a legal history that effectively incriminates him or her for life. In James Jacobs’s view, law-abiding citizens have a right to know when individuals in their community or workplace represent a potential threat. But convicted persons have rights, too. Jacobs closely examines the problems created by erroneous record keeping, critiques the way the records of individuals who go years without a new conviction are expunged, and proposes strategies for eliminating discrimination based on criminal history, such as certifying the records of those who have demonstrated their rehabilitation.