Criminal Justice and Neighborhoods
PADM-GP 4401
Elizabeth Glazer, Distinguished Visiting Urbanist
Office hours: Tuesdays, 8:30-10:30am, Puck, Office 3045, or by appointment
Contact info:
Synopsis of class themes and purpose
Fighting crime has been associated historically with police, prosecutors, jails and prisons. But more recently a different understanding has emerged in cities across the country that crime reduction goes well beyond the province of traditional criminal justice agencies. Instead this approach develops and deploys an array of strategies and partners to identify the drivers of crime and to reach durable solutions that shift the role of guardians of the peace from police to neighborhoods. This course will look at both the social context of this new approach, including the rise of cynicism about police and government as well as the possible solutions, such as how the architecture of particular buildings and whole neighborhoods, neighborhood cohesion and concepts of legitimacy can change the crime picture. The course will use New York City as a touchstone and lab and will draw on national and international examples for context.
The purpose of this class is to prepare future policy makers to understand and synthesize established and emerging theories of crime control; to translate and apply them to current problems; and to convey those proposals to decision makers in a simple and concise way.
Grading and assignments
Grades will be based on:
· class attendance and participation (20%);
· 3-5 page policy recommendation due in Week 4 (30%) You will select from a series of problems that New York City faces (for example, chronic offenders cycling through the jail system, gun violence, domestic violence, opioid addition, low conviction rates, concentration of enforcement in particular neighborhoods). In the form of a decision memo to the Mayor, you will outline the dimensions of the problem, using open data sources; identify how other jurisdictions are addressing the problem and offer one or several solutions to the problem that rely primarily on entities and ideas from outside the criminal justice system.
· PowerPoint presentation (50%) Building off your work on the problem you selected earlier in the course and integrating, as relevant, the primary ideas discussed in the course – legitimacy, collective efficacy, design and urban planning – you will produce a compelling presentation that further develops the ideas presented in your original paper. This detailed presentation will include a final recommendation, proposing an actionable solution that relies primarily on an approach outside the criminal justice system and can be scaled to the dimensions of the problem you identified. A list of topics and a suggested approach will be provided in the first class.
For the readings below, those starred are required and the others are supplemental.
Week 1: Crime and incarceration in the US from the 1970’s to the present
After approximately 50 years of relative stability, incarceration in the United States in the 1970’s took a sharp upwards turn reaching approximately 2.2 million people in 2012, a rate of incarceration that was by far the highest in the world. Even as the incarceration rate rose, the crime picture remained relatively stable until the 1990s when murders peaked. In New York City, for example, murders topped 2,000 in 1990 in contrast to the 330 murders that ended 2016. Since those peaks in crime and incarceration, there has been a steady reduction in both. Why crime increased and decreased, what effect incarceration has or had on the rising or falling crime rates is a matter of much debate and not much certainty. In this class, we will set a foundation of facts relating to the crime and incarceration picture nationwide, with a particular look at New York City, and explore some of the explanations for the rise and fall of both.
Zimring, Frank, The City That Became Safe, Chapter 1 “The Crime Decline: Some Vital Statistics,” 3-27 2012 (Oxford University Press)
Travis, Western, Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, 1-11; 33-69 (2014)
Pfaff, John, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration, (2017), Introduction: American Exceptionalism
Jacobson, Michael, Austin, James, “How New York City Reduced Mass Incarceration,” Vera Institute of Justice, 2014. https://www.vera.org/publications/how-new-york-city-reduced-mass-incarceration-a-model-for-change
*Barker, Vanessa. 2010. Explaining the Great American Crime Decline: A Review of Blumstein and Wallman, Goldberger and Rosenfeld, and Zimring. Law & Social Inquiry, Volume 35, Issue 2, 489–516.
*Green, Judith, Schiraldi, Vincent, “Better by Half, “The New York City Story of Winning Large-Scale Decarceration while Increasing Public Safety,” Federal Sentencing Reporter (2016) https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/ocpa/cms/files/criminal-justice/research-publications/fsr2901_04_greeneschiraldi.pdf
*Levitt, Steven D. 2004. “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 18, No. 1. 163-190.
Week 2: Nuts and bolts of the criminal justice system - Rikers case study
Understanding the mechanics of how the criminal justice “system” works is the foundation to identifying solutions to crime and incarceration that may lie outside of that system. In this class, we will examine how federal, state and local functions intersect and affect, intentionally and not, both crime and incarceration. We will look at New York City’s jail system as a bell-weather for the effects that crime, incarceration and reform policies have on the ground.
Materials on system mechanics will be distributed during the first meeting of the class
*Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Road Map to Closing Rikers Island, City of New York (2017) http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/criminaljustice/downloads/pdfs/Smaller-Safer-Fairer.pdf
*“The Jail Population: Recent Declines and Opportunities for Further Reductions,” Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (2017) http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/criminaljustice/downloads/pdfs/justice_brief_jailpopulation.pdf
*Kling, Ludwig and Katz (2005) “Neighborhood Effects on Crime for Male and Female Youth: Evidence from a Randomized Housing-Mobility Experiment.” Quarterly Journal of Economics.
A More Just New York City,” Report of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform (2017) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/577d72ee2e69cfa9dd2b7a5e/t/595d48d1e6f2e1e5bcaa411a/1499285717652/Lippman+Commission+Report+FINAL+Singles.pdf
Week 3: From “Broken Windows” to Black Lives Matter
In 1982, James Q. Wilson, a prominent political scientist, and George Kelling, a criminologist, published an article entitled “Broken Windows” in the Atlantic Monthly. Underscoring the importance of informal social controls, Wilson and Kelling described how signs of physical disorder could invite an escalating scale of anti-social behavior. The theory was embraced by NYC’s new police commissioner, Bill Bratton, in the early 1990s and was grafted onto an approach to policing that posited that aggressive enforcement for low level crimes was the pathway to reducing more serious crimes. Broken windows policing became associated with high levels of enforcement in poor African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In New York City, the death of Eric Garner, a seller of loose cigarettes, combined with a growing national concern over fatal encounters between police and civilians, sharpened broad and deep concerns, crystallized in the Black Lives Matter movement, about the role that race and a history of racism plays in the way our cities our policed. This class will look at the evolution of both Broken Windows and Black Lives Matter and the role of race and neighborhood in the making of criminal justice policy.
*Kelling/Wilson “Broken Windows, The police and neighborhood safety,” Atlantic Monthly (1982)
*Broken Windows, Neighborhoods, and the Legitimacy of Law Enforcement or Why I Fell in and out of Love with Zimbardo (2015) - Meares
*Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of "Broken Windows" (2004) - Sampson and Raudenbush (*)
*Expanding Public safety in the Era of Black Lives Matter (2016) - Sentencing Project
How Black Lives Matter Came to Define a Movement (2016) - New York Times
*Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Myth of Police Reform,” Atlantic Monthly (2015) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-myth-of-police-reform/390057/
*Heather Mac Donald, “The Ferguson Effect,” The Washington Post (2016). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/07/20/the-ferguson-effect/?utm_term=.f3d447257bce
Do Police Matter? An Analysis of the Impact of New York City’s Police Reforms (2001) – Kelling and Sousa
The Problem with “Broken Windows” Policing (2016) – Frontline
Week 4: Why do people obey the law? The role of legitimacy and informal social controls
Decades of research and practice support the premise that people are more likely to obey the law when they believe that the laws are just, are enforced in a neutral way and when those subject to the enforcing authority are treated with respect and have a voice that is heard by decision makers, even if the voice doesn’t carry the day. These four principles of legitimacy – voice, respect, neutrality and transparency – affect not only the relationship of people with the police but also with their relationship to government more generally. When people are cynical about the law, its enforcement and their role, they are less likely to comply. Building community trust has become a moving force among police departments which recognize that compliance, and beyond that participation, in the norms the law expresses, are a central piece to reducing crime while reducing enforcement. The readings below explore these concepts, how they translate to operational practice, how race plays a central role in the challenges of building a foundation of trust.
*Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (May 2015) [Executive summary 1-5; Pillar 1: Building Trust and Legitimacy 9-19; Pillar 4: Community Policing and Crime Reduction 41-51]
*Tyler, Jackson, Popular Legitimacy and the Exercise of Legal Authority, Psychology, Public Policy and the Law (2014).
* “Calls to 911 from Black Neighborhoods Fell After A Case of Police Violence,” New York Times, September 29, 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/upshot/calls-to-911-from-black-neighborhoods-fell-after-a-case-of-police-violence.html*
*Legewie, Joscha, “Racial Profiling and the Use of Force in Police Stops, Am. J. Sociology (2016) (September 2016): 379–424
*Stevenson, Bryan, “A Presumption of Guilt,” New York Review of Books (2017) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/07/13/presumption-of-guilt/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8OgypRCEqY&t=3s
Desmond, Matthew, Papachristos, Andrew, Kirk, David, “Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community,” American Sociological Review 2016, Vol. 81(5) 857–876
Lynch, James P. and William J Sabol. 2004. Assessing the Effects of Mass Incarceration on Informal Social Controls in Communities. Criminology & Public Policy, 3, 2.
*Tyler, T. R., Goff, P. A., & MacCoun, R. J. (2015). The Impact of Psychological Science on Policing in the United States. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16(3), 75-109.
Week 5: The power of place (part 1): From hot spots to collective efficacy
To the extent that reducing crime is simply about managing risk and controlling behavior, social science offers many routes to that goal. As a society, we have focused mostly on the role of police and the criminal justice system in reducing crime. There is a strong commonly held belief that incapacitation of the right people is the most direct route to crime reduction. Although the causes of the crime decline of the last few decades are still disputed, at least one theory has been widely embraced and deployed by most police departments: the focus of police resources on “hot spots” of criminal activity. Concentrated enforcement has also brought with it other criticisms, as residents voice concern about perceived over-policing of neighborhoods. Running parallel to the concept of hot spot policing is another theory, harder to operationalize, collective efficacy. Collective efficacy refers to the ability of community members to control informally the behavior of their neighbors through a sense of social cohesion and shared norms. It is closely linked to the concept of legitimacy. The readings below outline 1) the development of hot spot policing and the tensions it can engender in neighborhoods and 2) how collective efficacy might highlight another route to neighborhood safety.
*Sampson, Robert, The Great American City, Chapter 6 «Broken Windows» and the Meanings of Disorder; Chapter 7, The Theory of Collective Efficacy
*Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy (1995) – Sampson, Raundenbush, Earl
*Weisburd, David, Eck, John, “What Police Can Do to Reduce Crime, Disorder and Fear? Annals, AAPSS 42-60 May 2004
*Weisburd, Bushway, Lum and Yang, “Trajectories of Crime at Places: A Longitudinal Study of Street Segments in the City of Seattle.” Criminology 42(2). 283-321.
MacDonald, John M. 2002. The Effectiveness of Community Policing in Reducing Urban Violence. Crime & Delinquency. 48(4), 592-618.
Sharkey, Stuck in Place, 1-20, 166-99 (2013).
Week 6: The power of place (part 2): The role of design and architecture – beyond defensible spaces
Sampson offers a sometimes bleak view of the durability of place and an explanation of why some neighborhoods continue to represent the highest crime locations, even as crime declines. In our own city, we see that story repeated in East New York, Mott Haven and other locations. Other thinkers have pointed to the role that the arrangement of physical space can have on human dynamics. We will look at the evolution of the theory of place, including Jane Jacobs’classic description of how human dynamics can produce an organic sense of neighborhood safety and Oscar Newman’s theory of “defensible space” which informed a new field of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design” (CPTED). Finally, we will look at some contemporary approaches, including the architect Jeanne Gang’s work on the creation of a “civic commons” which merges principles of legitimacy and architectural and urban planning as drivers of human behavior
*Jacobs, Jane (1961). Death and Life of Great American Cities. Chapter 2
*Whyte, William H. (1980). The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Chapter 1 – Plazas
Film alternative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRbpKXtf6xk
*Newman, O. (1996). Creating Defensible Space. Retrieved from: https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/def.pdf
*Gang Civic Commons (2016): http://studiogang.com/project/civic-commons
Studio Gang (Polis Station architectural model): http://studiogang.com/project/polis-station/pdf
*Felson’s Port Authority Case Study: http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_06/01_Felson.pdf
*Placemaking When Black Lives Matter: https://www.pps.org/blog/placemaking-black-lives-matter/
*https://www.fastcodesign.com/3061873/how-urban-design-perpetuates-racial-inequality-and-what-we-can-do-about-it
Gehl Institute. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design: A Public Life Approach. Retrieved from: https://gehlinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CPTED-Public-Life-Approach-1.pdf
Tackling Social Inequalities in Public Lighting. Retrieved from: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/42486432.pdf