Assault is the third one, and usually were interested in what most states calling a sated assault aggravated assault where you have serious bodily injury. And that would be the third. And robbery is the final one, although robbery is somewhat of a hybrid because theres a property motivation; that is, a theft motivation. And its a combination really of theft and violence. So some people might include other things, for instance, kidnapping or some might even include arson which could, obviously, cause death or injury. But criminologists, i guess, dont include kidnapping because theres so few instances of it and dont include arson because its mainly a property crime can with people destroying the property to, say, collect on insurance or something along those lines. System that developed in our history. Africanamericans in the south in part were influenced by whites in the south and develop the culture of violence in dealing with personal insult, personal disagreements, arguments and quarrel. The use of this agreements was common in the south and was common amongst the whites and black. This resort to violence to resolving personal conflict, especially the migrated north with the africanamerican population, the the great migration was not only great but it was really good. It was a great positive benefit who moved away from the gym jim crow system. They shed the backbreaking labor of the sharecroppers and to really inspired the Great Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, but there was also this high rate of interpersonal violence which was the negative side of the great migration and was transported north with the black population. By the way, this was a massive migration. In the 1960s, 60s, the estimate is about 800,000 africanamericans moved out of the south to the north and to the west coast. Then in the next decade, a million and a half. This was quite a major migration. Unfortunately, and there was a lot to look at and deal with this issue, unfortunately this does bring a great deal of Violent Crime to northern cities and is a big factor in the rise of Violent Crime. The other two big factors, and they relate to this in some way, were first demographics. The baby boom, as its come to be known, cohort came of age, so to speak and reach their most criminal genic years in the 1960s and 1970s. Those years are roughly 18 to late 20. For males, especially, this is when we expect in Violent Crime. So we have this demographic bulge after the war when the soldiers came home, given the prosperity of the country, we had many people marrying and having children, having families and these children, the baby boom generation, reached their most criminal genic years in the late 60s and early 70s. This was true for blacks and for whites. That alone would be enough to explain the Violent Crime amongst this group but something happened where crime became what we might call a contagion, where young people tend to copy the behavior of other young people. So amongst this baby boomer group we have this crime contagion. This crime contagion grows like wildfire and reaches what we call a Tipping Point and just explodes. That brings us to the third factor. When the crime boom reaches the Tipping Point and explodes, the freedom of Justice System cant cope. It swamped. Its the swamping of the system that provides the third major element in the great crime tsunami. What happened was police started arresting fewer people. We know the numbers. We could see what we look at the , what we call the clearance rates, lets say arrest per complaint for each crime, we see the numbers actually go down in the late 60s while crime is5uz rising. Then the conviction per case charge goes down in the prison commitments for conviction actually begin to diminish and the crime perfect conviction goes down. While crime is going up and we expect the system to respond to that by arresting more people and imprisoning more people and giving them longer sentence, the opposite is happening. The system is caving. Its collapsing. It cant handle the sudden and massive increase of crime. The three factors, the migration of africanamericans the poor and impoverished africanamericans are engaging in crime in the northern cities, the baby boom and the collapse of the criminal Justice System, all threecontribute to what became the great crime tsunami. I want to focus in on this question of norms and culture of violence that you mention. Where does this come from . How can we understand that question. Its very important because we dont want to be understood as making biological argument for saying that some races are more prone to crime than others. No one believes that. I certainly dont believe that. But what accounts for some group engaging in more crime than others . Well it isnt a genetic or biological explanation so there must be some other explanation. Thats where i think values and norms and what we call culture enters in. Culture can be viewed as a Distinctive Group and some would say the behavior and i would include over a fairly long period of time, though it cant be something short run. When a group begins adhering certain values and leads to certain types of behaviors over a long period of time, we say that is the group culture. As it happened in my research, i discovered something interesting. Im probably not the first to discover it either. I found that a, four people monopolize violence crime. They do the overwhelming amount of Violent Crimes. However, some poor groups to more Violent Crime than other poor groups even though they are comparably poor. Their adversity may be comparable but there crime rates are not. Why should that be . Why shouldnt we be able to measure and find a correlation between the depths of poverty or the depths of adversity and Violent Crime . Usually we can. That led me to conclude that there must be cultural differences between groups. Apparently, this is a world wide phenomenon. I came across an article by criminologist and he was talking about afro caribbeans and asians in the u. K. And he said the asians are oddly treated in england. There victimized in terms of discrimination. They are relatively impoverished. Their situation, in terms of adversity, is roughly comparable to the afro caribbean. But he added, the afro caribbeans have much higher homicide rates. That struck me as well this must be universal condition because i found other examples as well in other places. It seems that some groups have seen similar adversities than do more violence than others. Thats where i think culture must enter in. There must be something about the values of the group are the behaviors of the group over time that lead them to engage in more Violent Crime than other groups. Now im only interested in Violent Crime but there could be other behaviors as well that are distinctive for some groups. Im sure there are. Im only interested in the Violent Crime. When you think about this in the United States contacts, when youre looking at it in the south where you see the start a great migration in the outflow, where does the silent culture come from in the United States . Can we begin to trace that . That is fascinating. I came across a book by fisher called albion seeds. He was the ancient roman name for what was called the united kingdom. This book traces the migration from england to the United States in largely the 18th century. Fisher points out that some of the migrants from england, especially from a distinctive part of england, the portion between scotland and england, were a very Aggressive Group of people. That was unlike their from other part of england. Turns out that the very Aggressive Group from their borderlands between england and scotland ended up coming roughly to the area around pennsylvania and migrated south to georgia. The other groups, the puritans tended to migrate to new england. He went on to describe the norms and values and behaviors of this group that came from the borderland and ended up in the south. Low and behold, it turns out they were a rather violent lot. They were very sensitive to insult. They tended to take the law into their own hands they imposed retribution on those viewed as outlaws and deserving of punishment. They engaged in a lot of lynching, selfimposed justice and this became, and so fisher claimed the southern culture of violence. This group in the south and developed in the south among white southerners. Its my hypothesis that this is the origin of the southern culture of violence. I should explain that this involves generally interpersonal conflict where people have disputes, either longrunning grudges or just sudden disputes arising out of perceived insult. These disputes are often resolved violently. This became a way of behaving in the south for, it seems one or two centuries or more. In fact it was written in the late 19th century which i came across that compared the murder rate in the south and the murder rate in new england, linda has been true and persistently true that new englands murder rate are much lower than that of the southern states. Something accounts for so it is my argument that this is the origin of the southern culture of violence. It sometimes referred to as an honor culture, sam, which sounds a little exaggerated or oldfashioned. What they mean is that people are easily offended, they are very sensitive to slights and indignity and they are willing to resort to violence to defend their quote honor. This culture of honor develops in the south. Its my contention that africanamericans who were enslaved in the south and liberated but remained in the south, because we have to remember 90 of the africanamerican population lived in the south throughout the 19th century and into the early decades of the 20th century. The great migration begins roughly turnofthecentury, but really accelerates in the 1920s and in the 1940s. The worst provided job opportunities. Its my contention that in the late 19th century, africanamerican develop because of the influence of their white neighbors this honor culture. This culture of violence, and its my claim that because of the jim crow system, because of the racist practices in the country, because blacks were not permitted to advance to middle class until really late in the 20th century, this cultural violence is perpetuated throughout the 20th century in the lower income africanamerican neighborhoods. Thats why will we have the disgrace of these groups through the northern cities we have this transportation of violence with that group. Now one of the other things mentioned when talking about the culture of the south, and ill read from a section you quote, in such regions where the state has little power to come, the state has little power to control the south, the individuals how to take upon themselves. What you mean by that. In the south, especially in the rural areas they have no policing. Thats why i noticed most of the lynchings took place in rural areas, never in cities, cities, because there were no police. So, if you have an area where there are no police, you have a much greater likelihood of people taking the law into their own hands. Lynchings. So this is what happened in the south. They remained largely rural. Cities were never as big as they were in the northeast. The immigrants from your europe who packed into those cities seldom went south. The south remained isolated and largely rural. This really fed into this culture of taking the lawn to your own hands, engaging in violence to respond to insult, perceived or real, and indignities. Thats by this honor culture, this culture of violence takes root more in the south. They discussed a book called ghetto side where she argued that there was basically, this cultural state indifference in the Africanamerican Community. Do we see something similar driving the culture in this time. Where really the state neglects the Africanamerican Community and that also contributes to this where the state has abandoned you. I read the book. Its a fine book, very interesting. I noticed that she touches on victimization without looking at the offenders and i think you need to look at both sides of the story. Ive heard it said, and i suppose suppose there is in one sense and under policing in black communities, but of course also there is the claim that there is the over policing in black communities. Is this responsible for people taking the law into their own hands . Im not fully persuaded. I think its more likely, simply that thats the traditional way handling things. If you are insulted, if youre offended you take care of it and you resort to violence. Young men are often members of gang so you have quarrels between gangs. This is just an extension of that kind of interpersonal violence. I dont think this is a matter of lack of policing, to to tell you the truth, i think its just that thats the way things are done and theyve always been done that way. I wasnt in full agreement with her. I wasnt in full agreement with the point she made. Where police made more arrests of homicide of perpetrators, and it used to be much higher for homicide, the arrest rate that is, black crime didnt go down. In fact, it went up. Im not persuaded that more aggressive policing would really change this culture of violence. Can i go off on another issue, slightly different but related . What will change is culture. What does change is culture. I think once people advanced to the middle class this changes the culture, because once you move to the middle class, and this applies to any Group Whether its africanamericans or white ethnic groups, it doesnt matter. Once people moved to the middle class they develop very strong disincentives to personal violence for obvious reasons. You can use your lose your family and your job. Youd probably mumble it and end up in prison as well. Theres very good reason not to engage in violence if youre in the middle class. Now by contrast, if you are young single male and you dont seem to have a lot of lucrative opportunities ahead of you, then you dont have a lot of disincentive to violence. Thats why its the young low income male thats most likely to engage in the violence and most likely to accept and be a part of this culture. So i think the cure, if you will, for this culture of violence is the movement to the middle class. By the way, this is, this is not just speculation on my part. When i studied the earlier part, the part thats not quite yet in print, the pre1940s time period, i saw very high crime rates among mexicans who had come to the United States in the 1920s and southern italians who came between 191910. What happened with these groups . The italians melted in the great melting pot, they melted in and moved to the middle class. They moved up the social economic ladder and they shed their involvement with Violent Crime. This all also happen to the irish who had very high rates of violence in the 19th century. Once they were able to move to the middle class, their culture of violence is abandoned because it would ill serve them now and so they simply stop engaging in Violent Crime. I firmly believe that as we dismantle racist practices in this country, and we have gone a long way toward doing so already, and as we continue to do so and africanamericans become more middleclass, this discussion that we have about high rates of africanamerican Violent Crime will simply not be made any longer. It will be something out of history. Lets actually get into why crime tumbles, because as you note in the 19 90s we see a decline in crime. What are the factors that lead to this dramatic change . It was sudden and dramatic, as sudden and dramatic as the rising crime. Crime actually begins to fall in the early 1980s and i think that happens because the baby boom generation which was a major player in the crime rise began to age out. Aging out, as you well know is a wellknown phenomenon among criminologists. Since young men, roughly 18 to late 20s or perhaps early 30s at the most engage in those Violent Crimes, as they age and move into middle 30s and beyond, they begin to retire from Violent Crime so what happens is the baby boom generation begins to age out and my hypothesis is that what continues to happen, crime would continue but for a new phenomenon that really threw a monkeywrench into the whole Crime Reduction and that was crack cocaine. So crack cocaine becomes the new contagion. It takes place in the late 1980s, rightfully 19871988, continues to the early 1990s and when the crack cocaine epidemic ands, 1993 to 1994 the crime rate continue to fall and they keep on falling. We have a new crime crop. A new low. For low crime. Now you say that we have this mini bubble created by the crack cocaine, why doesnt this take us scrap skyrocketing again . What disrupts this tran . Why doesnt continue, thats whats fascinating. This is another contagion another phenomenon where young people who tend to copy one anothers behavior, we know this, we know they are very influenced by their peers, the young people who tend to copy one anothers behaviors begin with this contagion relating to cocaine use. Even though, intellectually they may know that cocaine use is so disruptive, the addict in, the disease the likelihood of being arrested, the shootings that take place among cocaine gangs all of these negatives are perhaps intellectually known to the young people but it doesnt matter because everyones doing it. Its cool its copied. Therefore it becomes a contagion. It reaches a Tipping Point now this cocaine business is responsible for a major spike in crime. Why . Because first of all the people who become addicted to cocaine in the crack form where you have , by a cooking process little pellets of cocaine, its cocaine mixed with other things, but its essentially cocaine. These little pellets, when heated, give off give off a vapor and the vapor, if inhaled gives the euphoria that the creek cocaine user craves. This euphoria, which is extremely intense wears off in maybe ten minutes or so. Then there is a craving for another. Now if your