The history of American crime and drugs situation, as well as strategies of managing crime rates, is full of contradictions. As positions of authors regarding the effectiveness of crime policies and the roots of the problems vary, it is quite difficult to find out the nature of increasing quality of prisons, growth of crime and violence rates as well as associated issues. This paper is purposed to analyze the reasons of American crime drop, evaluate the effectiveness of crime policies, reveal the contradiction between crime drop and raising incarceration and provide analysis of the war on drugs and crime and its consequences. Drugs and crime are tightly connected. Thus, to solve this problem, it is necessary to rethink crime and to consider other social problems that require a complex approach.
American Crime Drop
As crime and violence have always been the most crucial and topical issues for the U.S., the decline in crime and violence rates interests the researches. Regarding the roots of such an unexpected decline, it is worth separating those who believe that crime drop is temporal and those who think that it is genuine. However, Walker claims that this question is no longer valid: crime drop is real because evidence demonstrates that previous crime rates have not returned. Among the factors that confirm that crime drop is genuine, it is worth mentioning the statistics, namely, the results of NCVS report that proves a decline in crime, which is considered to be very reliable. A decline in crime has been lasting for 15 years, it allows to conclude that this drop is not temporal. FBI Uniform Crime Report confirmed the results of the NCVS report and demonstrated that significant crime drop for the last 15-20 years took place. The decline in crime is confirmed by other social phenomena such as the decline of teenage pregnancy and infant mortality, which demonstrate positive changes in American criminal behavior, even though the unemployment rate has recently risen.
The reasons for this situation include incarceration, community policing, reduction of crack and cocaine use and positive shifts in the economy. In order to find out the reasons of crime drop, Zimring compared the decline in crime in the U.S. to other countries. Canada has also experienced a decline of violent crimes, even though the policy directed towards solving the problems was opposite to the U.S. policy. For instance, the U.S. increased incarceration, while Canada reduced it. Moreover, the quantity of police officers in Canada has reduced, whereas the police in the U.S. has increased in numbers. Zimring argues that it is difficult to explore the roots of these contradictions, which requires comparing not only visible social factors but also a broad cultural situation in the U.S. and Canada concerning the behavior of the population.
Effectiveness of Crime Policies
Among the factors that affect criminal behavior in the U.S., the authors distinguish contextual factors and policy factors. Contextual factors include demographic factors: “the rise and fall of the crack cocaine epidemic, and changes in labor markets”. The criminal justice policies that influence violent crimes rate are gun control policies, increased incarceration, consequent anticipation of offenders and some innovations in policies. None of these dimensions alone is considered to reduce violent crimes. Walker offers a sensible approach, according to which interplay of different policies and factors affects the decline in violent crimes. In order to measure the effectiveness of crime policies, it is necessary to analyze communities in which consequences of criminal justice policies are visible.
Evidence-Based Crime Policy.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of specific crime policies, a new standard called evidence-based crime policy was created. This approach is a good point to start rethinking of current policies and strategies to improve public health and safety. This is a scientific standard that is used in criminology and health care policies. It gets evidence from the valid research, while the quality of evidence determines the effectiveness of policies. The contribution of the evidence-based approach is that of scientific rigor for policy debates. The application of this approach means that a new vision on the reliability of judgments has been constituted. Specifically, intuition and as