MURDER IN NEW YORK CITY

Hardback. The author dramatically expands what we know about urban homicide, and challenges some of the things we think we know. His unprecedented investigation covers 2 centuries of murder in America's big city, combining newly assembled statistical evidence with many other documentary sources to tease out the story behind the figures. As we generally believe, the last part of the 20th century was unusually violent, but there have been other high-violence eras as well. Not, however, since the 1890s, although one might expect that decade to have a high murder rate based on the criteria of immigration, poverty, crowding, and corruption. Lethal crime was low then, as it was in the 1830s and the 1950s; until 1958, in fact, New York City had a lower homicide rate than the United States as a whole. The other periods of highest violence were the late 1920s and the mid-1800s, the latter notably because the absence of high-quality weapons and ammunition makes that era's stabbings and beatings seem almost more vicious. The author's long view allows us to look back to a time when guns were rarer, poverty was more widespread, and racial discrimination was more intense and to ask what difference these things make. With many vivid case studies for illustration, the author examines the crucial factors in killing through the years: the weapons of choice; the sex, age, race, and ethnicity of offenders and victims; and the circumstances and settings in which homicide tends to occur. There are surprises: political killings, for instance, were common in the mid-19th century, and political parties maintained their own militia. Murder by children is far from unique to the late 20th century, whereas the proportionally large number of offenders approaching or at the age of 20 is demonstrably new. In a final chapter, the author looks to the international context and shows that New York - and, by extension, the United States - has had consistently higher violence levels than London and Liverpool. No single factor, he says, shapes this excessive violence, but exploring the variables of age, ethnicity, weapons, and demography over the long term can lead to hope of changing old patters. With List of Tables and Figures, Appendix on Sources, Notes and Index. 238pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in F. dw.