ABSTRACT
This book explains street crime trends in America following World War II; especially the crime "wave" of the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that the grooves that contained human conduct in the postwar United States started to become broader and wider in the early 1960s. The book describes the specific relationships between major social institutions and crime patterns during the postwar period. It presents the general contours of changes in political, economic, and family institutions. The book also argues that public trust in government began to seriously erode in the 1960s and 1970s, and considers the possibility that rising levels of distrust were directly related to the rapid increases in street crime rates that followed. It then argues that changes in family institutions contributed to rising crime rates. At the end of World War II, the United States was the undisputed leader of the global economy.
