Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence – and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets
The 21st Century Cities Initiative and the Urban Health Institute at Johns Hopkins welcome Thomas Abt for a discussion of his new book Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence – and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets on September 10 from 5:30-7pm in Sheldon Hall (W1214) 615 N. Wolfe Street in the School of Public Health. 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.
Thomas Abt is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for International Development, where he leads CID’s Security and Development Seminar Series. He is also a member of the Campbell Collaboration Criminal Justice Steering Committee, member of the Advisory Board of the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge, and a Senior Fellow with the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.. 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.