★附上作者介紹本書的影片供參考：https://youtu.be/-RQqnUtT_sM?si=YuxjzxRcWTumqc7p
A data-driven investigation into why crime rates rise and fall in the same way in countries all over the world by a senior analyst at the UK Home Office
We think we know a lot about crime. Every day on the news we hear alarming statistics, while thrillers and true crime podcasts top the charts. But the reality is that we’re spectacularly bad at predicting crime trends.
Most of our assumptions about law-breaking are just not supported by the data, from the idea that crime rises on hard times to the suggestion that tougher sentences and more police on the street will always bring crime down. What are the true causes of crime, and how can we tackle them?
Nick Morgan has been a crime researcher at the Home Office for nearly two decades. In this book, he analyses the data and looks back to the 1960s, the beginning of a global crime wave that lasted until the turn of the century – a pattern that was almost identical in America, the UK, Australia, and across Western Europe.
Drawing on wide-ranging international case studies, Nick Morgan compares homicide trends across nineteen European nations; examines Japan’s striking divergence from the Western crime wave; explores post-Communist homicide spikes in Eastern Europe; analyses Romania’s abortion ban as a natural experiment; and looks at alcohol prohibition in Bihar and drug-market shifts affecting cities from Scandinavia to southern Europe.
By treating crime as a transnational phenomenon shaped by shared cultural change, demographic shifts and global market forces, the book moves far beyond an Anglo-American narrative. Using a mixture of historical exploration and data analysis, and breaking through media hysteria, Morgan examines the recent trend in criminality, and considers how we might make our streets safer for good.
