The Wall Street Journal, Vital Signs, July 22, 2010 by Cari Tuna
http://bit.ly/cI3jHG

Violent crime across the Bay Area is declining even though unemployment remains high, mirroring a national trend that has confounded criminologists. The region’s four most-populous cities—San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont—each reported fewer violent crimes such as murders and aggravated assault in 2009 than in 2008, says the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s counterintuitive because people expect felonies such as armed robberies to increase as more workers lose their jobs, says University of California, Berkeley, law professor Franklin Zimring.

San Francisco Chronicle, July 4, 2010 Editorial
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/04/EDBS1E6MO8.DTL

“There is no clear and highly predictable relationship between economic variations and the rates of life-threatening crime,” said Franklin Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law at UC Berkeley.

From demographics to drugs to incarceration policies, they’ve all proven to be inadequate to the task, said Barry Krisberg, Distinguished Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law. “Ultimately you’re trying to model individual decisions by millions of people,” Krisberg said. “It’s very, very difficult.”

San Francisco Chronicle, June 30, 2010 by Will Kane
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/30/MNM91E6R5R.DTL

“These celebrations become provocations. It is a way of saying to the opponents, ‘I dare you,’” said Frank Zimring, a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley who studies gang violence. “It rubs the community’s nose in the vulnerability and the violence.”

The Washington Post, June 13, 2010 by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061103259.html

But in a groundbreaking and often-replicated look at the details of criminal attacks in Chicago in the 1960s, University of California at Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring found that the circumstances of gun and knife assaults are quite similar: They’re typically unplanned and with no clear intention to kill. Offenders use whatever weapon is at hand, and having a gun available makes it more likely that the victim will die.

-The Salt Lake Tribune, June 11, 2010 by Christopher Smart
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/49749347-73/death-penalty-gardner-execution.html.csp?page=1

“The law is not very good at specifying who should live and who should die,” argues Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at University of California at Berkeley.

-Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2010 by Maria L. La Ganga
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fort-bragg-killing-20100612,0,2242136,full.story

Franklin Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley, said that deciding on an appropriate sentence will be “a nasty balancing act” for Brown. “It’s not like there’s a long list of these,” Zimring said. “These are head-on collisions between the severity of the criminal harm and the enormity of the long-term mitigating circumstances.”

Contra Costa Times, June 4, 2010 by Thadeus Greenson
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_15226179?nclick_check=1

“Plea negotiations are not common in California criminal justice, they’re pervasive,” said Franklin Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law … adding that more than 90 percent of criminal cases in the state end with guilty pleas.

“In a world in which so many sentences are draconian and the prosecutor has the capability to lay on so many charges just to build up huge liabilities, the answer is there should be some flexibility,” Feeley said.

Contra Costa Times, May 20, 2010 by John Driscoll
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_15123814?nclick_check=1

Zimring said that showing one’s client was insane at the time of a murder could be a means of showing that a trial is likely to be long and complicated, which can be a motivation to press the prosecution to plea bargain.

NPR, May 19, 2010 by Alan Greenblatt
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126928416

“It’s a very important down payment on a more activist Supreme Court limiting what governments can do in the punishment of offenders. This is a down payment on what the court might do two or three judges down the line.”

KALW Crosscurrents, May 19, 2010 by David Onek
http://bit.ly/bGFs7I

“The thing that is being missed about the lessons from New York City is that the two largest assumptions that have been driving crime policy in this country are probably the wrong way to go about things. Our theory was that … only incapacitation works. New York has disproved that.”

East Bay Express, May 13, 2010 by David Downs
http://bit.ly/9cgZiD

“Their incarceration rate is down 28 percent and their crime is down 80 percent. So we now know that you don’t need mega-imprisonment policy to have substantial decline in crime…. The second article of faith in America is that you can’t get crime control without winning the war on drugs. But when you take a look at New York City’s drug overdose death rate, and it’s down 15 or 20 percent, but their drug killings are down 90 percent. All of a sudden you realize that drug violence and illegal drug use may be two different problems.”

Chicago Tribune, May 2, 2010 by Clarence Page
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0502-page-20100502,0,557609,full.column

In his 2007 book about the sudden, unexpected nationwide crime drop in the mid-1990s … Franklin E. Zimring, a University of California at Berkeley law professor, found that experts were consistent in their complete failure to forecast that the crime drop was going to take place and how long it would last. Instead, he found “cascades of good news encourage optimistic assessments” about the crime-fighting abilities of government, adding that “crime increases invite observers to conclude that ‘nothing works.’ “

New America Media, April 29, 2010 by Aaron Glantz
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=7a54346b5af80c001d6b898dd2598f55

“Oakland’s recent high year for homicide was 2006, with 149 killings. All but six victims were black or Hispanic,” noted Frank Zimring, who directs the Center for Studies of Criminal Justice at UC Berkeley. While the race of every perpetrator is not known, Zimring guesses that there was at most one homicide with a black offender and an Asian victim. “The resentment is probably not rare, but the victimizations are,” he said.

The New York Times, Bay Area Blog, April 13, 2010 by Gerry Shih
http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/after-another-murder-another-proposed-law/

Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, told The New York Times that sex offender laws were sometimes nothing more than a barometer of public opinion. “They’re a plebiscite on sex offenders, and no one likes sex offenders,” Professor Zimring said. “It’s not like they have a lobbying group.”

-The New York Times, March 6, 2010 by Gerry Shih
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/us/07sfoffender.html

Franklin Zimring, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said he believed that the law was never meant to be enforced. “It’s almost completely symbolic,” Professor Zimring said of the original ballot measure, Proposition 83. “As long as the decisive question is sentiments, you don’t have to ask any of the practical questions.”

-The Press-Enterprise, March 7, 2010 by Sarah Burge
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_W_offender08.4169fea.html

“There’s no way to create a zero-risk universe for this,” said Franklin Zimring, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “That’s not merely hard, that’s impossible.”

-Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2010 by Cathleen Decker
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-week14-2010mar14,0,5837387,print.story

Franklin Zimring, a UC Berkeley law professor who has studied the measures, said they have largely become “symbolic politics.” Few have bothered to question whether the measures actually promote public safety, he said, because of the stigma of defending sex offenders. “Nobody wants to be photographed in close embrace with sex offenders,” he said. “Unless something is very expensive, it’s not apt to get much political scrutiny.”

The Washington Post, February 14, 2010 by Desiree Hunter and Kristin M. Hall
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/13/AR2010021303506_pf.html

“Workplace shootings of that kind are overwhelmingly male,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

New America Media, January 28, 2010 by Franklin E. Zimring
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=972db69d1a1e75acf735f4650918ea22

Before the city fathers of San Francisco dance too far out on a limb in claiming credit for good news, the recent experience in Richmond, Calif., should inspire some caution. In 2008, the number of homicides in Richmond dropped substantially—from 47 in 2007 to under 30. This was a very encouraging development in a city of 100,000, where lethal violence is the primary civic problem. But the relief proved temporary, because the homicide toll for 2009 returned to 47.

The New York Times, January 4, 2010 by Adam Liptak
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05bar.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

“The A.L.I. is important on a lot of topics,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “They were absolutely singular on this topic” — capital punishment — “because they were the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States.”

Times-Standard, December 5, 2009 by Chris Durant
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_13933755

“In large cities it’s rare, but the smaller the town, the more visible cases are,” Zimring said. “And you have to remember … it is an elected position.”

St. Petersburg Times, November 2, 2009 by Jeffrey Fagan and Franklin E. Zimring
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/myths-of-get-tough-law/1048326

We find no evidence that any of the get-tough laws such as Florida’s law produced significant crime declines among young teenagers in Florida or anywhere else…. As extra prevention, juvenile life without parole is useless.

San Francisco Chronicle, October 2, 2009 by Chip Johnson
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/01/BA9H19V673.DTL

“The prosecution may want this out of town because the political implications are that if you get an unpopular verdict, the town may burn,” he said.