This book has three main aims: the first is to show that what separates the USA from other countries is not crime rates but lethal violence. Crimes like burglary and theft are a part of modern urban life worldwide; shootings and stabbings are not - they are particularly American. Why is this so? Secondly , the book seeks to clarify the causes of violence by looking at the proximate causes of deadly violence - guns, violence in the media, drugs and the tradition of lethal violence are all examined. The concluding section of the book concerns the prevention of lethal violence as a priority issue. The authors discuss a range of anti-violence alternatives from change in the criminal law to social and physical environmental factors and social values and attitudes.

Zimring and Hawkins are not afraid to ask awkward questions and express quite a radical scepticism about current policy directions. * David Smith Labour Campaign for Criminal Justice Newsletter no 49 *
This is an extremely useful book that should definitively explode a number of myths about the nature of the crime problem in the USA * David Smith, Labour Campaign for Criminal Justice Newsletter no 49 *

Franklin E. Zimring is the William F. Simon Professor of Law and Director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley. Gordon Hawkins is Senior Fellow at the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.