Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence

by Patrick Sharkey

Over the past two decades, American cities have experienced an astonishing drop in violent crime, dramatically changing urban life. In many cases, places once characterized by decay and abandonment are now thriving, the fear of death by gunshot wound replaced by concern about skyrocketing rents.

In 2014, most U.S. cities were safer than they had ever been in the history of recorded statistics on crime. Patrick Sharkey reveals the striking consequences: improved school test scores, since children are better able to learn when not traumatized by nearby violence; better chances that poor children will rise into the middle class; and a striking increase in the life expectancy of African American men.

Sharkey also delineates the combination of forces, some positive and some negative, that brought about safer streets, from aggressive policing and mass incarceration to the intensive efforts made by local organizations to confront violence in their own communities.

From New York’s Harlem neighborhood to South Los Angeles, Sharkey draws on original data and textured accounts of neighborhoods across the country to document the most successful proven strategies for combatting violent crime and to lay out innovative and necessary approaches to the problem of violence. At a time when crime is rising again and powerful political forces seek to disinvest in cities, the insights in this book are indispensable.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, History, Urbanism, Social Justice, Crime

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2018

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The point of the book is what to do about urban violence in America, but it bounces all around the place, with a good chunk devoted to consequences of violence (spoiler: violence is bad) and other tangents.

Sharkey argues that community groups and police responding to violence were very important for the historic decline in violence, and that the peak in violence they were responding to was caused by the concentrated lack of opportunity in the ghetto (See Kerner report), and overall as per Pinker there's a long-term global trend downwards in violence anyway. (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined) His main thesis is sort of circular and self-contradictory [public spaces were abandoned because of crime, so retaking those spaces is how to stop crime]. Whatever. Okay, fine.

Even if you accept his overall story, then the real question would seem to be: What do we do in the U.S. about socioeconomic segregation? The main approaches so far have been reactive remedies with some severe consequences like mass incarceration (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. A model solution preferred by the author is an elite golf club in Atlanta where they tore down nearby public housing projects and built a subsidized mixed-income neighborhood. The mixed-income part makes sense, but that's not what he highlights and it's hard to see how this bizarro Band-aid is generalizable.

Given that a lot of the book is about segregation and why urban kids do poorly in school, it seems weird that he fails to mention the diverse schools movement or Raleigh, where the whole school district is succeeding without the need for unsustainable subsidies, and without first wiping out violence. Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I travelled across the continental US by bus for two months in 1989. One of the constant subjects of concern in the hostels where I stayed, was how unsafe American cities are in comparison to cities in Europe, Canada and Australia. It was the same as well in the US media at that time. However, my own personal experience of wandering the cities and its streets as a backpacker was quite positive. I felt safe everywhere. I had a brief incident of getting robbed in the Greyhound bus station in Miami, but it happened so unobtrusively and non-violently that I wouldn’t even put it down as dangerous. Fast forward twenty years, I started reading in magazines and newspapers that American cities have reached a level of drop in crime that is simply historic. The change seems to have happened so gradually and consistently over two decades that we didn’t even seem to notice it. Perhaps, we were all busy worrying about terrorism, stock market bubbles and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ! Statistics show that violent crime dropped across the board all over the US since the early 1990s and was reaching its lowest by 2014. Naturally, academics had to step in and explain why and how this came about.

The most spectacular theory on this was advanced in 2009 in the book ‘Freakonomics’. It claimed that the liberalization of abortion law in the early 1970s led to a decline in the number of children born to mothers who were not equipped to provide the type of resources, attention and nurture necessary for healthy development. Consequently, tens of thousands of potential offenders were never born, resulting in less number of criminal adults by the 1990s and hence, less crime. Another prominent theory was the drop in exposure to lead poisoning which changed the behavior of an entire generation of youth and hence, decline in crime. Other theories pointed to the shifts in age distribution of the US population, super economic growth, increased immigration, decline in alcohol use and more airconditioning(!). Video games, time spent on smartphones and PCs at home on social media were other explanations. However, holes were picked in each of these propositions. It emerged that no single factor altered the behavior of Americans in such a stark manner as to explain why violent crime fell so sharply. Author Sharkey weighs in with his own research on why crime declined and what we can do in future to keep it that way.

This book’s research runs in the face of what the left and the liberals generally believe to be the cause of crime and violence in society. Prof. Sharkey says that crime did not decline due to exogenous shocks like abortion or lead poison or video games but due to endogenous forces. In other words, changes that were a response to the crisis of violence itself are the reason. He believes that the transformation of public space to be the most important change since the early 1990s that contributed to the decline of violent crime. City neighbourhoods which were abandoned, are now overseen by police officers, private security and cameras. The expanded reach of the criminal justice system, aggressive prosecution and punishment are other causes which helped reduce crime. Not only these, but community residents and organizations too played their part in mobilizing to confront violence and playing a key role in reducing crime. On the other hand, the author says that these strategies have brought great costs to society. It has fostered an approach of disinvesting in low-income communities and diverting the resources to the police and the criminal justice system. As a consequence, these poor communities have been abandoned and punished, giving rise to injustice. Aggressive prosecutions and punishments have resulted in mass incarcerations, particularly African-Americans, which cannot ever be considered a good thing.

In spite of all the explanations for the drop in crime given in the book, I felt an unease as I finished reading the book. I did not feel as though we have a solid understanding of why crime really dropped and how to preserve this uneasy peace in the future. Sharkey says that crime started going up again since 2015 and that the ‘current state of peace’ is an uneasy one with costs in heavy incarcerations and an increasingly militarized police force. If increased police presence, enhanced prosecution, wide community watch and ubiquitous cameras caused crime to drop in the past two decades, then why the same methods are now failing to keep crime downward in 2017? Doesn’t it mean that we don’t really know why crime came down substantially? The author’s suggestions of ‘community quarterbacks’ and ‘society guardians’ seem like more and more policing of our neighbourhoods and more and more ‘stop and frisk’ operations. Locking up more and more people in prisons cannot be considered a successful and sustainable strategy in reducing violent crime. It is already known that black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at an average rate of 5.1 times that of white Americans. In some states that rate is 10 times or more. It is believed that some 120000 prisoners in the system are actually innocent of the crime for which they are convicted. Since African-Americans are disproportionate in number in the prison system, it is a logical consequence that more of them are likely among the innocent ones. Any strategy that exacerbates this situation is detrimental to our society.

Finally, one cannot help casting one’s mind to other societies similar to ours in terms of culture, values, prosperity and composition, but not having our problems with regard to violent crime. Whenever I visit Europe, I cannot but be struck by the feeling of pervasive safety and security in those countries. I would have liked to see the author discuss the reason why industrially advanced nations like UK and Germany are so extremely safe in comparison to the US, but not ours. Can’t we duplicate some of their best practices in this regard?

[victor harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating analysis of the crime drop from the 90s until recently, although there is another surge in some areas. Good mix of data and statistics to support the main arguments. A major point is the emphasis on committing resources to high crime areas to contain criminality and preserve " public space" for the benefit of everyone. Mass incarceration is hardly a preferred solution. It is expensive and does not contribute to social capital.
Social Science readers will find this particularly appealing.

[Peacegal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won an ARC of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.

UNEASY PEACE is an intelligently-written and thought-provoking book about violent crime in America. While many of us reflexively rate society as more violent now than in decades past, violent crime has in actuality been steadily dropping in the US for quite some time, as the author carefully charts.

A wide variety of people, including authors, sociologists, public officials, and cultural commentators, have tried to pin down the reason for the sudden decline in violent crime that first began in the 1990s. Their hypotheses have ranged from conventional to highly unusual. Sharkey makes the case that no one event can be credited for this drop—rather, it’s been a combination of a wide variety of factors that aligned and resulted in safer neighborhoods, parks and streets.

One terminally overlooked factor is the on-the-ground work of community activists, the author argues. It makes sense that no one wants to live in a neighborhood in which you can’t walk outside without fearing for the safety of yourself and your loved ones, after all. Fed-up residents have banded together to take back their public spaces and have started community groups that seek to head off the lure of violent lifestyles for young people. It won’t be surprising to learn that such efforts are often ignored and underfunded by state and federal governments in lieu of an increasingly militarized police force.

In the wake of ugly incidents of police violence, many people in low-income communities are afraid to go to the police when they need help. They feel, not unjustifiably, that their problem will be ignored or that they themselves will be accused of a crime. Sharkey writes of a visit to Perth, Australia, where the Aboriginal community there has formed their own neighborhood security squad. These officers live in the communities they work in, and it seems to have been a rousing success. The author argues that this model needs to be launched in America:

I saw what happens when members of a highly disadvantaged group see friendly faces of authority on the street rather than combatants. Social problems and conflicts don’t go away in their presence, but the space becomes more welcoming and safer. In places where violence has reached a crisis point, where residents are unwilling to talk with law enforcement, a new type of security force is needed. We have relied on warriors to control urban streets for the past several decades; it’s now time to turn the streets over to advocates.

While overall, everyday violence has gone down in America, we obviously have a long way to go. The US is far more violent than many other developed nations, the author reminds us. And violence has taken the ugly new turn of rampage mass murders rather than the classic model of person-on-person violence. Rather than the violent person shooting you and stealing your money, we now have the violent person who mows down roomfuls of strangers with seemingly no goal other than infamy.

I’ll end this review with these thoughts from the author:

As a nation, we need to fight a new, urgent war on violence. Not a war on crime that is waged through the police and the prison. Not a war on drugs that is waged through feel-good public service announcements and brutal enforcement on the streets. At this moment, we need to fight a war on violence, and we need to do so in a way that is entirely different from the past.

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to win an advance reading copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. It will be officially released in January 2018.

Patrick Sharkey is a sociology professor in New York. He notes that the amount of crime committed is decreasing in cities all over America; however, some neighborhoods are staying just as violent as they were during the crime waves of the late 20th century. He discusses why and what community and law enforcement can do to fix it.

Perhaps the most important note I took from this read is that people feel safe when they feel connected to the people in their neighborhood. This would be an excellent read for urban police officers, activists, or anyone who is interested in building or facilitating the growth of an urban community.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of Uneasy Peace trod familiar territory about the remarkable decline in violent crime the entire US experienced between the 1960s and 2010s, and offered some standout examples of how uneven that development has been across space. Still, some cities remain incredibly violent and the successes in NYC, Philadelphia, and Seattle have not translated over to the same extent for Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, and others.

The book really hits full-swing when Sharkey channels Jacobs and addresses the role of street "presence" and community groups as a more effective violence deterrent than "warrior" police. This section is based on research he had conducted on the contribution of community organizations to the decline of violent crime, given that other explanations (crack epidemic, banning of lead paint, etc.) have been woefully short of being primary causes when empirically tested.

Sent to the publisher in 2017, the book precedes all the defund the police rhetoric whose focus on community empowerment borrows heavily on the book's second half and concluding message. I particularly enjoyed the few pages in which he recounts time in Perth spent following the Nyoongar Patrol one Friday night. The Nyoongar are a group of Aboriginals who are paid to patrol the street (i.e., compensation is necessary in order for the model to be sustainable), have the deep community ties to know where the beefs and feuds are coming from, and are able to engage in conflict mediation and de-escalation in ways that have eluded cops. He muses on a world where the Nyoongar are the norm, not the militarized police.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crime rates in American cities increased dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s. Then came a downturn, and 2014 was New York City’s safest year on record. Patrick Sharkey examines what caused the increase, what caused the downturn, and what can be done going forward. This could have been a dry subject but this well written book is actually quite interesting.

[Shannon Callahan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I abandoned this book after 58 pages. The book didn’t hit my mind right. Just typical research book etc. I think the author should bring this to a different focus. Right now, it felt like outdated information.

[Lance Cahill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended exploration of important themes, but one that falls flat in the back half and less data driven than aspects of the analysis that seem to be underplayed.

Sharkey summarizes well the themes of his book at the end: (i) the decline in violence in real, and it has transformed American city life; (ii) violence fell because an array of different groups mobilized to take over city streets; (iii) the decline in violence has led to stunning benefits for the most disadvantaged segments of American society, most notably young African American males; (iv) the strategies that have been used to confront the dual problems of urban poverty and violent crime have also brought great costs.

(i) - (iv) are fairly well supported and comprise the first half or so of the book. The first half of the book deserves five stars. The remainder of the book was slightly less persuasive and on point and appeared contradictory, at times, with earlier aspects of the book.

Chapter 7 was a particular chapter which I thought was not as persuasively argued compared to other chapters. Unfortunately, it was the longest of the chapters in the book. Much of the chapter seemed dedicated to reassuring left-of-center readers that concerns they hold regarding law-and-order rhetoric are legitimate and not subject to revision given the vast evidence presented in the first half of the book of the strategies which worked to reduce violent crime and those that did not.

In this chapter, Sharkey provides a 100,000 foot view of urban violence starting from the 1960s, with a focus on the Kerner Commission and federal policy which followed (with LBJ essentially ignoring the findings of the committee). Sharkey attempts to frame policymaking with a matrix that contrasts justice versus punishment and investment versus abandonment. The analysis is a bit hamfisted and appears to ignore several initiatives, whether it is moving to opportunity voucher program and other initiatives to evaluate the effectiveness of urban renewal projects.

Unfortunately, Sharkey's discussion of the relevant issues would provide the reader an impression that the tremendous rise in the prison population is disconnected from the decrease in violent crime with a tremendous amount of focus on proposals related to non-violent offenders. However, as Sharkey has to know, the increase in the prison population is attributable to lengthier sentences for violent crimes (see the great book by John Pfaff, "Locked In" [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...]). Moreover, to further burnish credentials, he endorses the view that the crack cocaine versus powdered cocaine sentencing disparity from a 1986 law was a purposeful way to target blacks, despite Sharkey referencing research in the early part of his book specifically linking the crime surge in the 1970s to early 1990s to the crack cocaine trade. A more reasonable position might be that the disparity fell harshest on minorities given differential arrest rates for powdered versus crack cocaine use and that advocates held very little influence to reduce the sentencing disparity given the composition of the offender population (someone caught up in the crack trade is not very sympathetic) compared to users of powdered cocaine.

Sharkey provides passing references to the work of William Julius Wilson but doesn't necessarily grapple with his work, which I was looking forward too. Wilson's insight was that the decline in marriageable men led to the breakdown in family structures which contributed to an increase in social dislocation indicators (one of which is crime). Did Wilson's predictions hold true?

Moreover, but for the chapters on the impact of policing on violent crime, the other chapters appear to be less rigorous versions of the case study method: providing overview of one specific case and his perceptions of what happened and what can be learned. Thin gruel to guide federal appropriations. Turning the streets over to the advocates might work in areas where the peace has been secured, but based on the evidence presented in the early part of his book, will not do much to stave off violent crime.

[Michaela Kollin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected a bit more. I appreciated the analysis of the benefits of the decline in violence that happened during the 21st century, from the increased life expectancy of Black men to improved scholastic performance among impoverished kids, and I liked Sharkey’s exploration of potential contributing factors to that violent crime decline as well as the collateral damage that arose from some of the tactics used to decrease violent crime, such as mass incarceration and overly aggressive policing. My main complaint is that the breadth of Uneasy Peace and its wide analysis of the benefits, causes and correlating side effects of the great crime decline in less than 200 pages led to some shallowness of analysis in my view. This isn’t Sharkey’s fault, but I also caught myself wondering what a contemporary analysis of crime and the criminal justice system published this year would look like. The US no longer had the highest incarceration rate in the world, stop and frisk policies and been greatly curtailed, and many jurisdictions have implemented rehabilitation programs meant to divert low level offenders out of the cycle of offending, incarceration and recidivism. At the same time, progressives’ highest hopes for completely overhauling all punitive components of the criminal justice system haven’t really panned out, and some cities that have implemented those very progressive criminal justice policies are now rolling them back. I’d like to read an analysis of where we are now, and what academics think a just and effective equilibrium would look like. Analyses of social trends inherently tend to be a snapshot in time, and I unfortunately feel like I read Uneasy Peace too late for it to feel as relevant as it could have.

[Santi Ruiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing read. Sharkey makes a compelling case that violence reduction over the past 40 years has resulted in massive gains for young black men - and more generally that the poorest and most violence-ridden neighborhoods benefited the most from this reduction in violence.

But Sharkey doesn't actually answer the question "why did violence decline" in any compelling way, and his argument that broken windows policing/proactive policing didn't drive it is especially flimsy. Multiple lines like: "Crime was declining, yet the number of arrests for misdemeanors more than doubled," with no response to the argument that perhaps those two phenomena were linked. It was also interesting to read this criticism of small-ball sentencing directly after Quinones' "Dreamland" and "The Least of Us," both of which draw on research and hundreds of personal interviews to argue that prosecuting small drug crimes is one of the few levers we have to push addicts into effective treatment.

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really vital book for anyone hoping to get more context about some of the events of the past year.

[Mary-K · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[ingrid]

hey so read this for school but super digestible and easy read and a really great source of interesting and new info if youre into this sorta stuff. also published in 2017 so moderately still relevant!

[Erhardt Graeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a highly readable summary of what we know about the rise and fall of violence in American cities during the 20th and 21st centuries. Violence during the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s hurt the urban poor (mostly Black and Latinx) the most, creating not only a public health crisis but one that depressed educational and economic outcomes for people already facing marginalization. Not surprisingly, the drop in violence in our urban centers has helped these folks the most. But this renewal is incomplete and the nature of violent crime is still misunderstood.

Patrick Sharkey's research and analysis renews the calls for a policy and investment agenda that addresses violent crime by addressing urban poverty and inequality. Policing has its role in controlling violence but it is only part of the solution and will require different measures for success than those dominating the profession during the past several decades. We need to continue to shift our model of police as "warriors" to police as "guardians," working alongside community organizations and individuals who share in the task of neighborhood guardianship with durable investment that supports social, economic, and educational opportunities across multiple generations of the urban poor.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a rare combination: academically rigorous, practical, and beautifully readable. Sharkey tells the story of the decline in violent crime in America from the 1960s to the present, blending together competing explanations for the change, while going in depth about what both violence and its decline have meant for urban youth. His basic thesis is that crime has declined due to both a increase in policing and incarceration, and an increase in community organizations fighting to make their neighborhoods more livable. Incarceration, he argues, has had unacceptable consequences, especially for black communities who were disproportionately criminalized. Sharkey argues that only by building stronger communities can crime be brought down while at the same time addressing the root causes of violence and fighting racial disparities. He lays out some road-maps for how this has been done, and how it might be scaled up in the future.

I deeply appreciate his concrete, practical approach to discussing the problems of violence, urban poverty, and incarceration. He does not flinch from the horror of it, but this book is ultimately a call to action not a rumination on injustice. Credit where credit is due though, he cites Coats' and Alexander's descriptions of the black experience of violence and incarceration substantially.

That said, I do have some critiques. Sharkey seems quite blase about gentrification, and handwaves away displacement of communities as an acceptable cost for the increased resources which enter neighborhoods with wealthy people. I would have liked to see this argument in particular backed up with more evidence. Also, he seems to conflate a drop in death rates with a drop in violence, which due to advances in medical responses is not necessarily true. Chicago in particular has developed military style emergency services to address epidemic gun violence, leading to a much better survival rate, and this point is left out of his celebration of the drop in violence there. Overall though, this is a great book and worth reading for anyone interested in urban development, prison reform, and creating a more just and safer America.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

With 2014 reaching historic lows for violence across the country, Sharkey looks at the things that may have resulted in the great decline in violence since the 90s. He discounts the impact of some theories while suggesting that others like policing and community organizations have probably had the greatest effect while admitting that some of the tactics may have resulted in other negative issues. 

He also looks at the effects violence has on people, especially kids, and how it affects all other areas of their lives from education to health care and life expectancy. He talks about the revitalization of cities with the decrease of violence and how lives have changed for the better in many places due to reduced violence over the past 20 years. 

Mostly though this book felt like something that was a great idea to write in 2014, but by the time it's published in 2018 already seems out of date with violence skyrocketing to historic highs in cities like Baltimore and Chicago. He doesn't completely ignore this situation, but even though he does mention it more than once he also seems to discount it in order to continue on with the original thesis of his book. I can certainly see how the impact of violence he talks about though is alive and well in these cities though and it seems like a neverending death spiral as violence begets problems that lead to more violence.

[Allessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won an advanced copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway.

Rating: Three stars (Good)

Review: The rise and fall of crime in America during the second half of the 20th century has always fascinated me. Most books I've read have been more interested in what caused crime to decline in the 1990s than what caused it to rise from the 1960s-1980s, so I was particularly excited to read this book.

On the whole, Sharkey delivers. The main thrust of the book is that the crime rate declines when law enforcement and community members come together to guard public spaces and ensure that people can transverse public spaces without fear. He argues that the federal government responded to the crime wave with a strategy of "punishment and abandonment," and that while increased law enforcement presence in unsafe neighborhoods unquestionably made them safer, we must invest significant resources in impoverished neighborhoods if we hope to achieve peace and prosperity long-term. I found his arguments persuasive because Sharkey is a thorough guy. He never throws out a theory as stupid or expects the reader to take him at face value because he's an expert. He takes pains to walk the reader through his analysis and to use clear, accessible language.

Sharkey's thoroughness is as much a strength as a weakness. He labors his points and cites study after study. About halfway through the book, I found myself skipping his descriptions of the studies and methodologies to get to the conclusion. There's a saying in non-fiction publishing, "is this an article or is this a book?"; at times I felt like Sharkey was using studies as filler to stretch a paper or article into a book. This may have been due to my own familiarity with the topic; other readers who haven't encountered these studies may find them more compelling.

Bottom line: Uneasy Peace can be plodding at times and sags in the middle, but it's worth reading for its thoughtful, thorough analysis; its clear, accessible style; and Sharkey's refreshing nonpartisan approach as seen in his willingness to take on all theories and ideas.

Who Should Read: students and academics; people who love a good white paper; if you want to get into the weeds of sociological studies of urban spaces

[Meir Brooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a reasonably interesting look at the decline in crime from the 1990s onward. The book makes some important points-- especially demonstrating the decline in violent crime and pointing out some points of controversy, such as that mass incarceration probably played a limited but real role-- but is unfocused and hence rather forgettable. It reads as a summary of various advances in social science on crime and highlights some interesting research, but one is left wanting more rigorous arguments on the controversial parts (such as on mass incarceration and police brutality) and a more coherent overall point beyond "Communities need to play a role."

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the realm of policy wonkery, this book is high art. Sharkey has an accessible writing style and a storyteller's sense. His mission is to explain how violence prevention works and to shed light on an overlooked explanation for the dramatic drop in urban violence of the past 20 years.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharkey's research is unbelievably important. He details the fall in the rate of violent crime in American cities, showing that (despite media portrayals) there has been a profound transformation in urban life: the most violent neighborhoods now have the same violence rates as the least violent neighborhoods in the early 1990s.

He shows how truly destructive violence is: not just the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, but the ripples violence creates through neighborhoods with measurable effects on learning, health and investment. For example, students recently exposed to a homicide in their neighborhood perform three grade levels behind their peers on tests; likewise, the increase in life expectancy for black males due to decreased violent crime is the same as the highest estimate of what it would be if obesity were eliminated entirely.

And then Sharkey identifies three primary causes of the decline in violence: increased policing (public and private), increased incarceration, and community activism. What is interesting about this list is that Sharkey attributes the decrease in violent crime to precisely the interventions intended to reduce violent crime, not outside factors like lead, abortion or immigration. According to Sharkey, American society mobilized to reduce crime and, for better and for worse, achieved that goal with impressive results. His findings on the efficacy of having local non-profits working to reduce violence in their neighborhoods, in particular, are fascinating: these are things that get feel-good local news coverage but aren't always understood to have such deep systemic effects.

I imagine these findings will challenge thinkers on both the left and the right: while not inconsistent with either liberal or conservative thinking, they sit somewhat apart from each. It certainly helped move my thinking.

Like most such books, there's a lot of policy recommendations that are honestly outside Sharkey's area of expertise and aren't that original/interesting. But the first 2/3 is pretty fascinating.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to say that this has been my least-favorite read of 2020. You can tell I wasn't excited about reading it because I didn't finish it in 1/2 sittings. Something about it feels extremely tone deaf, and falls extremely flat, especially in light of the ongoing conversations about what defunding the police would actually look like. It seems like Sharkey basically couldn't envision a future where the police were defunded; at one point, I think he actually suggested increasing funding? The idea of transforming the role of police in communities is nice in theory, but seems extremely unrealistic (and a generally ahistorical take on how and why police came to exist and their role in society). Also, I'm pretty sure he was like, 'ok well we can't do anything about the billionaire class so maybe we just get them to buy up land and invest in neighborhoods' which is like ok, no.... -.-. He also seemed to be arguing that gentrification was basically a good thing and everybody complaining about being displaced from their neighborhoods just don't understand.

The overall messages seem mostly right, which are: (1) cities have become overall less violent, (2) poverty and violence are linked but not as simple as we might expect given that cities are now simultaneously safer and less socioeconomically equal, and (3) is that moving away from the "punishment" model (aggressive policing and mass incarceration" towards a "justice" model, without a corresponding investment in poor communities is setting everybody up to fail.

Also, I don't really understand statistics but I understand enough to know that they can be manipulated. I don't care about statistics enough to learn how to properly interpret them because that just seems extremely boring to me. So I need someone I trust that knows about statistics to also read this book and tell me if it was mostly legit or mostly bullshit.

What I'm saying is that what I probably want from a book is for it to say "defund the police and kill Jeff Bezos and redistribute his wealth" and this book doesn't really say that.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uneasy Peace describes a stunning decrease in violence in US cities since the early 90s. Measured by homicides, Sharkey makes the case that 2014 was the safest year in US history. People in urban places don’t necessarily always feel safer, but objectively are.

Sharkey attributes this first to the heavy hand of broken glass policing throughout the last 25 years, but also to the work of community organizations. CDCs and other “neighborhood quarterbacks”, when intentional about doing so, have been effective peacemakers & more. But there’s an unhappy ending. As the book was published in 2018, the trend had been reversing. The headlines show that murder increases certainly continued in 2020.

Looking through the prism of my hometown - Holyoke has a high murder rate. We are a small city of 40k. In 2012, Mayor Alex Morse could celebrate a year without a murder. But as reported here, four homicides occurred in 2011, four the year before that, and at least one homicide each year dating back to 1987.

https://www.masslive.com/news/2013/01....

Except for that respite, at least one murder annually remains the norm. It’s important to recognize, of course, that tiny numbers skew statistics. Four murders in a small city causes a much higher rate than one. Still, you’d hope four would be an anomaly, and it’s not.

Unsurprisingly, 2020 was a bad year - four murders. Two last January occurred on properties owned by the Community Development Corporation I lead. A fifteen year old child was murdered on a street on Dec. 15. Holyoke’s murder rate last year higher than Boston or NYC’s.

The book was a valuable first read of the year, full of helpful ideas and models for my practice as executive director of a Community Development Corporation. I recommend it, especially if you work in the community organizing field.

[Ed Terrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1968 Kerner Commission Report found that poverty and institutional racism were the driving forces of violence and homicides in the U.S.. "Uneasy Pease" is a cohesive compilation of studies on violence during the fifty years since. Violence dropped dramatically especially since 1980's and 90's with intensive policing and mass imprisonment (10x those of Europe). But, the cost was the creation of the racial caste system and loss of productive lives. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his book "Between the World and Me" paints a bleak picture of inner city tensions and black ghettos, at whose heart is lack of opportunity and fair wages (wages for lower income earners has remained stagnant for decades).

The number of homicides reached a low of 5/100,000 persons in 2014, half that of the 1980's. But this change is not linked to commiserate changes in urban inequality and poverty, so the truce is fragile at best. Sharkey points out that there is no simple solution but a complex mix of education, community involvement, outreach programs, public investment in poor communities, and in the transformation of public spaces.

Homocides rates have started to increase since 2014, its our choice what to do about that. Do we continue with a "law and order platform" with it's theme of abandonment and punishment? Or do we look for new ways to deal with inequality and injustice in to order to reduce prison populations and strive for reintegration back into these fragile communities?

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"On days when the terror alert system was set to 'orange' or high alert, there were about seven fewer crimes in Washington, a decline of almost 7 percent from the normal average of roughly 110 crimes per day. The decline in criminal activity was greatest in the area surrounding the National Mall, where much of the increase in police presence was focused. The conclusion from this analysis, one of the strongest studies yet of how the sheer presence of police affects criminal activity, is that if police patrols are increased by half, one should expect crime to drop by roughly 15 percent." (46)

"The most fundamental change that took place in U.S. cities was the transformation of public spaces. Streets that had been abandoned for decades were taken over by police officers, security guards, and community groups. Opportunities for criminal activity began to shrink, and violence began to fall." (60)

"I found that black children who were given the assessment in the days after a local homicide took place performed about four-tenths of a standard deviation worse on tests of verbal and language skills, on average, than black children in the same neighborhoods who were assessed at a different time. To put this impact in perspective, it was as if the children who were assessed right after a local homicide had missed the previous two years of schooling and had regressed back to their level of cognitive performance from years earlier." (86)

"A poor, unemployed city resident in 2015 had about the sam chance of being robbed, beaten up, stabbed, or shot as a well-off, high-paid urbanite in 1993." (112)

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. The author is writing about the decline in crime, changes in demographics and policing and changes in perspectives over the last 20ish years.

I found myself trying to mix the ideas in this book into my everyday observations of the world. Some of the information ran counter to what I thought - generational mobility is increasing, ie being born poor or rich has less to do with your outcome than it used to. I thought generational mobility was decreasing so good news! He illustrates the differences in crime rates nicely, talking about the experience of victimhood and how many people experienced crime in different places and times in clear language. He documents places and organizations like Hollywood Boulevard's Business Improvement District in their immediate and local effects as well as the more general trends. Neighborhood improvement groups are discussed similarly. Neighborhood policing is also covered and juxtaposed with the "Broken Windows" policing that is more famous. A good book covering an important and overlooked trend.

Read as an audiobook through the Libby App for Android and the SF Public Library.

[Charlotte Osborn-bensaada]

Sharkey is trying to make several points with this book-the rise in violent crime during the 1960 had disproportionate impacts, police/incarceration played some part in bringing it down in the early 2000's but also a significant rise is the nonprofit sector also placed a crucial part. But and big but, the use of carceral police state has a declining benefit because it has a disproportionate impact on people with the least power. Two points in this book that I found most useful is to think of crime not just as those that comitt crime, but also about how space increases its liklihood. Thus well lit, space with people a lot less likely to be a scene of a crime. Second point is to think about how a wide range of community groups functions as guardians of a space and in doing so make it safer. Homicide in this country was rising pre-covid, but has accelerated during the pandemic. The question of how we decide to embrace public spaces again may be critical to the question of how much homicides escalate in the future.

[Gabriella · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a required book for my major's senior seminar. Our class is meeting with Sharkey next week, and wish I were more surprised or intrigued by his findings, but they just seem like recycled versions of things less privileged/tenured/etc urbanists have been saying for decades.

I'm sure I'm just in a jaded place with the overwhelming savior complexes of many white people who have made their livings off of "fascinations" with cities and the (poor, POC) people living in them. However, Sharkey's particular complex kind of made this book insufferable at times.

He simultaneously insults the intelligence of longtime residents fearing gentrification (which he, like all of my professors, says is an "imprecise term" to discuss the "complex phenomenon") and waxes poetic about how these people need to "join the front lines" of the war on violence by becoming "community advocates."

In short: he thinks highly of himself and his ideas, and I'm not sure any of them warrant the praise.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was interesting and a good bi-partisan outlook on crime and violence in the US. It does a good job of acknowledging the benefits and mistakes of past policing policies and best ways to move forward in the new age of urban environments. There was good analysis on the psychological impacts of violence and the influence that perception of public safety has on communities (spoiler: crime rates have drastically increased since the 90s but public perception on safety can cause retreat from public spaces allowing room for increased violence). I liked that this book never got too political (can we cut the BS and reality TV drama and really look at the issues? please?) and really focused on the core of the issue and what I'd think most people would agree on: violence perpetuates more violence and preventing violence is largely dependent on investment and focus on neighborhoods and public spaces.

[Joshua Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the somewhat circular structure of the book, I found the content really interesting, and a helpful supplement to the New Jim Crow, Between the World and Me, other books about crime, the criminal justice system, et al.

Notably, in an Uneasy Peace, the author goes into depth on Routine Activity Theory and I found lots of application to my work, where we use public safety technology to:

. increase the efficiency of capable guardians
. stop habitual offenders
. decrease the volume of suitable targets

When we combine all this, we decrease crime and increase opportunity for a thriving community.

However, Im motivated to explore the final chapters more. What does a world look like with more community-based guardians? People from the community, working for the community, as a barrier between people in need and law enforcement? Intervention and social helpers.