From The "Crime Capital" To The "Safe City"

In the 1990s, crime control has increasingly become an important public policy around the world. In the decade, crime rates substantially increased in many countries, on the contrary, crime rates of the U.S. have decreased signifcantly, crime rates of New York City decreased far more than the whole country. New York city is not only the economy and cultural center of U.S., but also cosmopolitan and international city, its sharp decrease in crime rates draw the U.S. and the rest of the world attention.In the 1960s, due to changes in industrial structure, accelerating urbanization, civil rights movements, as well as the prevalence of anti-mainstream culture, New York City crime rates rapidly rise. Robbery, murder cases frequent occure, drug prevalence, the flood of guns, all this like nightmare plagued New York. In the 1970s, New York City is still in turmoil. The economic situation remains severe, combined with the Government's financial crisis, the police corruption scandals, crime rates continuously rise. In the late 1980s, the new drug "crack" spread, the dramatically increase of violent crime and property crime ensued.In the late 1990s, especially Giuliani became New York Mayor in 1994, the New York City's crime rates began to decline rapidly, both with property crime and violent crime down. Because of its good order, New York City was named "one of the top ten safe cities."In the early 1990s, the crime of New York City is still serious.In order to change this situation, the mayor Deakins and police chief Brown implemented a reform, they introduced the "safe streets, safe city program", however, for various reasons, the reform has only brought crime data decline, and the social order has not changed. Giuliani came to power in 1994, appointment Bratton as police chief, he strongly supported the reform of New York City Police Department, crack down on all kinds of felonies, carried out "zero tolerance" to minor crimes; implement technological innovation, introduce computer statistical techniques to improve police efficiency; vigorously advocate community policing, improve the relationship between police and people to prevent crime. This reforms not only crack down on crime, but also prevent the crime, the number of criminal cases dropped considerably.The flood of guns and drugs also greatly troubled New York City, a lot of innocent people died from guns every year, the large number of young people were arrested for drug crimes. In order to combat crime more effectively, New York City carried out a variety of special actions which aimed at crimes involving drugs and guns. Control firearms and conduct a thorough investigation of the drugs through various measures, crack down on various crimes related to them, crimes involving drugs and guns has dropped dramatically.In 1992, the economy of New York City started to recover, the information industry, services, cultural industries, tourism fiourished. Economic prosperity has brought a significant increase in jobs, The labor matket of New York City has been improving, and wages rose, labor return to the legal market. The number of adolescent Relatively reduced and the unemployment rate dropped, the educational level of immigration increase and the living conditions of blacks improve, which reduced the decline of crime.Although the crime rate of New York City dropped very clear in the 1990s, social order profound change. But there are a series of issues in police reform, especially in the process of the implementation of "zero tolerance", they violate civil rights, enforce law enforcement violently and so on, Diallo case is typical of police abuses.The decline of crime rates in New York City is not short-lived, so far from the early 90s, it maintains low, the city has been very good public order, public sence of security enhance, which provides a good economic environment. Lower crime rates upgrade New York City's international image and international standing, a large number of immigrants have moved to New York, tourists also increased rapidly, driving the development of relevant industries of New York City. In addition, Other cities in U.s. draw lesson from the successful experience of New York City Police Department's crime control, Sweden, Canada, China also began to learn from its experience.