"Barry Latzer's "The Roots of Violent Crime in America" is a sweeping, comprehensive, in-depth history of murder, assault, rape, and other crimes of violence in the United States. Latzer challenges much of the conventional thinking about violent crime by combining the theoretical perspectives and methodological rigor of criminology with both a synthesis of historical scholarship and original research and analysis. In doing so, he provides a record of the rise and fall of violent crime in American history, especially from ...
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"Barry Latzer's "The Roots of Violent Crime in America" is a sweeping, comprehensive, in-depth history of murder, assault, rape, and other crimes of violence in the United States. Latzer challenges much of the conventional thinking about violent crime by combining the theoretical perspectives and methodological rigor of criminology with both a synthesis of historical scholarship and original research and analysis. In doing so, he provides a record of the rise and fall of violent crime in American history, especially from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Great Depression, and contests many of the shibboleths associated with that history. Many of Latzer's conclusions belie current thinking about crime in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For example, he suggests that urban poverty was not a significant cause of violent crime in the era. Indeed, in the late nineteenth century, when U.S. cities were expanding at a torrid pace and impoverished immigrants were flooding into city slums, violent crime rates and predatory attacks on strangers were relatively modest, especially when compared to what he deems the crime tsunami of the post-1960s era. Latzer goes on to show that rural areas were far more violent than large cities in the period, when the rural South and the thinly populated Far West had much higher levels of violent crime than the big cities of the East and Midwest. He contends that the weakness of government controls and the subculture of violence of southerners played significant roles in elevating rural violence. Latzer downplays racism and bigotry as causes of violent crime, pointing out that many social groups confronted massive levels of discrimination and abuse, yet only some engaged in violent crime at high levels. According to him, much depends on the cultural predispositions of the group in question. For instance, both African Americans and white southerners were particularly violent, though the mistreatment of blacks far exceeded anything experienced by white southerners, and both manifested powerful subcultures of violence. Jewish and Italian immigrants to the urban slums of New York City confronted discrimination and urban squalor, but the Italian immigrants engaged in much higher levels of violent crime than the Jewish immigrants. Latzer also contends that Prohibition in the 1920s was not a significant cause of violent crime. Instead, he argues, the Nineteenth Amendment prevented more violent crime than it caused. Though the bootlegger wars contributed significantly to the murder toll in some of America's biggest municipalities, Latzer points out that Prohibition also killed big city saloons, the hub of vice, corruption, and much of the criminal violence of the period. Moreover, the law dramatically reduced alcohol consumption, which given the well-established link between alcohol and violence, reduced crime overall, and especially crime that was violent. "The Roots of Violent Crime in America" will serve as a reference on the history of crime in the United States. Its unique and well-documented insights also take this work to the next level, providing thought-provoking challenges that are bound to reframe the narrative surrounding this fascinating issue"--
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