Bleeding Out The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence—and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets

Thomas Abt

eBook - 2019

From a Harvard scholar and former Obama official, a powerful proposal for curtailing violent crime in America Urban violence is one of the most divisive and allegedly intractable issues of our time. But as Harvard scholar Thomas Abt shows in Bleeding Out, we actually possess all the tools necessary to stem violence in our cities.Coupling the latest social science with firsthand experience as a crime-fighter, Abt proposes a relentless focus on violence itself — not drugs, gangs, or guns. Because violence is "sticky," clustering among small groups of people and places, it can be predicted and prevented using a series of smart-on-crime strategies that do not require new laws or big budgets. Bringing these strategies together, Abt o...ffers a concrete, cost-effective plan to reduce homicides by over 50 percent in eight years, saving more than 12,000 lives nationally. Violence acts as a linchpin for urban poverty, so curbing such crime can unlock the untapped... more