Enlightenment Now – The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, by Steven Pinker, 2018.  

Extract on violence reduction starting on page 172:

Violent crime is a solvable problem. We may never get the homicide rate for the world down to the levels of Kuwait (04 per 100,000 per year), Iceland (03) or Singapore (02), let alone all the way to 0. But in 2014, Eisner, in consultation with the World Health Organization, proposed a goal of reducing the rate of global homicide by 50% within thirty years. The aspiration is not Utopian but practical, based on two facts about the statistics of homicide. 171   The first is that the distribution of homicide is highly skewed at every level of granularity. The homicide rates of the most dangerous countries are several hundred times those of the safest, including Honduras (904 homicides per 100,000 per year), Venezuela (53.7), El Salvador (41.2), Jamaica (39-31 Lesotho (38), and South Africa (31)* Half of the world’s homicides are committed in just twenty-three countries containing about a tenth of humanity’ and a quarter are committed in just four: Brazil (25.2), Colombia (25.9), Mexico (12-9), and Venezuela. …The lopsidedness continues down the fractal scale. Within a country, most of the homicides cluster in a few cities, such as Caracas (120 per 100,000) and San Pedro Sula (in Honduras, 187). Within cities, the homicides cluster in a few neighborhoods; within neighborhoods, they cluster in a few blocks; and within blocks, many are carried out by a few individuals.’/ In my hometown of Boston 70 percent of the shootings take place in 5 percent of the city, and half the shootings were perpetrated by one percent of the youths. 172  The other inspiration for the 50-30 goal is evident from figure 12-2: high rates of homicide can be brought down quickly. The most murderous affluent democracy the United States, saw its homicide rate plunge by almost half in nine years; New York City s decline during that time was even steeper, around 75 percent.  Countries that are still more famous for their violence have also enjoyed steep declines, including Russia (from 19 per 100,000 in 2004 to 9.2 in 2012), South Africa (from 60.0 in 1995 to 31.2 in 2012), and Colombia (from 79.3 in 1991 to 25.9 in 2015).20 Among the eighty-eight countries with reliable data, sixty-seven seen a decline in the last fifteen years.21 The unlucky ones (mostly in Latin America) have been ravaged by terrible increases, but even there, when leaders of cities and regions set their mind to reducing the bloodshed, they often succeed.2* Figure 12-1 shows that Mexico, after suffering a reversal from 2007 to 2011 (entirely attributable to organized crime), enjoyed a reversal of the reversal by 2014, including an almost 90 percent drop from 2010 to 2012 in notorious Juarez…….

The math is straightforward: a 50 percent reduction in thirty years is not just practicable but almost conservative.

The lopsided skew of violent crime also points a flashing red arrow at the best way to reduce it. Forget root causes. Stay close to the symptoms—the neighborhoods and individuals responsible for the biggest wedges of violence—and chip away at the incentives and opportunities that drive them. 173  

Here is Eisner’s one-sentence summary of how to halve the homicide rate within three decades: “An effective rule of law, based on legitimate law enforcement, victim protection, swift and fair adjudication, moderate punishment, and humane prisons is critical to sustainable reductions in lethal violence”.  Adjectives effective, legitimate, swift, fair, moderate and humane differentiate his advice from the get-tough-on-crime rhetoric-c favored by right-wing politicians. The reasons were explained by Cesare Beccaria two hundred and fifty years ago. While the threat of ever harsher punishments is both cheap and emotionally satisfying, it’s not particularly effective, because scofflaws just treat them like rare accidents-horrible, yes, but a risk that comes with the job. Punishments that are predictable, even if less draconian, are likelier to be factored into day-to-day choices. 174

Recent reviews of what does and doesn’t work in crime prevention back up Eisner’s advisory/ particularly a massive meta-analysis by the sociologists Thomas Abt and Christopher Winship of 2,300 studies evaluating just about every policy/plan, program, project, initiative, intervention, nostrum, and gimmick that has been tried in recent decades. They concluded that the single most effective tactic for reducing violent crime is focused deterrence, k “laser-like focus” must first be directed on the neighborhoods where crime is rampant or even just starting to creep up, the “hot spots” identified by data gathered in real time. It must be beamed at the individuals and gangs who are picking on victims or roaring for a fight. And it must deliver a simple and concrete message about the behavior that is expected of them, like “Stop shooting and we will help you, keep shooting and we will put you in prison.” Getting the message through, and then enforcing it, depends on the cooperation of other members of the community—the store owners, preachers, coaches, probation officers, and relatives. 174

Also provably effective is cognitive behavioral therapy. This has nothing to do with psychoanalyzing an offender’s childhood conflicts or propping his eyelids open while he retches to violent film clips like in A Clockwork Orange. It is a set of protocols designed to override the habits of thought and behavior that lead to criminal acts. Troublemakers are impulsive: they seize on sudden opportunities to steal or vandalize, and lash out at people who cross them, heedless of the long-term consequences. These temptations can be counteracted with therapies that teach strategies of self-control. Troublemakers also have narcissistic and sociopathic thought patterns, such as that they are always in the right, that they are entitled to universal deference, that disagreements are personal insults, and that other people have no feelings or interests. Though they cannot be “cured” of these delusions, they can be trained to recognize and counteract them.* This swaggering mindset is amplified in a culture of honor, and it can be deconstructed in therapies of anger management and social-skills training as part of counseling for at-risk youth programs to prevent recidivism. 175

….aggressive drug enforcement yields little anti-drug benefits and generally increases violence,” while “drug courts and treatment have a long history of effectiveness.”  176

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