Thomas Abt is a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. 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.
Urban violence is one of the most divisive and allegedly intractable issues of our time. But as Thomas Abt shows in "Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence--and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets," 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.