Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence--And a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets

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 offers 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 potential of our cities' most disadvantaged communities and help us to bridge the nation's larger economic and social divides.Urgent yet hopeful, Bleeding Out offers practical solutions to the national emergency of urban violence -- and challenges readers to demand action.

About the Author :
Thomas Abt is a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice. Previously, he served as a policymaker in Barack Obama's Justice Department and worked for New York governor Andrew Cuomo, overseeing all criminal justice and homeland security agencies in the state. Abt lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Brad Raymond is a narrator of audiobooks known for his Earphones Award-winning reading of Respect, the biography of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, among others.

Review :
Bleeding Out fills an important gap in the emerging criminal justice canon...For Abt, reducing the homicide rate is the first step toward achieving broader social change...Bleeding Out makes a strong case that 'sustainable crime control does not happen without social justice, and vice versa.'-- "New York Law Journal " Bleeding Out is a readable guide for newcomers and a corrective for academics, establishing that urban violence truly is our greatest criminal justice problem. Thomas Abt knows what matters: neither the get-tough rhetoric from the right nor the denial on the left really address what ails urban poor people as they struggle with violent crime.-- "Jill Leovy, author ofGhettoside: A True Story of Murder in America" Bleeding Out is an illuminating and engaging book. Building on evidence involving anti-violence evaluations and dozens of face-to-face interviews, Thomas Abt's new paradigm for understanding and combatting urban violence is persuasive. This is required reading for all concerned citizens and policymakers.-- "William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University" [Abt] presents a vision for dealing with urban violence by fundamentally rethinking how law enforcement and other government resources are used...Bleeding Out makes a compelling case that there is a path forward."--Vox A fine new book, Bleeding Out, by Thomas Abt, sheds light on the issue of urban violence and offers some practical, street-tested solutions to it...Abt's approach is, in the classic American manner, an empirical one...[He] recommends neither noxious stop-and-frisk policies nor amorphous community policing but, instead, what he calls 'partnership-oriented crime prevention'-using all of a city's resources.-- "Adam Gopnik, New Yorker"

"Thomas Abt is one of the world's authorities on urban crime, and this fascinating and important book offers many surprises, much insight, and positive recommendations."