Thomas Abt, "Bleeding Out"

Thomas Abt discusses his bok, "Bleeding Out", at Politics and Prose.

Drawing on his extensive experience as a policymaker in the Obama Justice Department and as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety to Governor Cuomo in New York, Abt shows that we have the necessary tools to rid our cities of violence. Proposing a targeted, data-driven approach, Abt argues that we should focus on the “hot spots”—the blocks and corners where most crime takes place—and on the “hot people”—the groups of men who commit the majority of the crimes. By homing in on the violence itself, rather than on the gangs, guns, or drugs, Abt believes we can achieve a 50% drop in homicides over the next decade.

Thomas Abt is a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. 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. Abt lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Produced by Tom Warren